Thirteen Reasons Why

            The young adult novel, “Thirteen Reasons Why” by Jay Asher, tells a tragic story of Hannah Baker’s reasons to commit suicide. She makes thirteen different cassette tapes, each giving the reason why she doesn’t want to live any more. The cassette tapes get sent to each person who is responsible of her death, then the tapes get passed to other people, and the tapes somehow ended up in to Clay’s hand. Clay is the always the good boy, he would always turn in his homework, and never go to parties. He goes through a painful process listening all the cassette tapes that an anonymous person left on his porch. Clay goes through each tape questioning if he is one of the reasons that Hannah committed suicide.

            Reason number one is Justin Foley. He was the one who stole Hannah’s first kiss, she slid on the slide, slid in to her kiss, as she quotes it. This leads to her suicide because it starts to create a snowball effect. He accuses her of being a slut, creating a rumor that everyone believed. The second reason why is because of Alex Standall. He created a list of the hottest ass in freshman year. He added Hannah’s name, creating a bigger snowball. The third is Jessica Davis. She also accused her of something, creating another rumor, which made Justin’s more believable. She blamed Hannah, apparently, stealing her ‘man’. The fifth cause of her death is Tyler Down. He stalked her, took pictures of her, and even masturbated in front of her bedroom window. Hannah then told the entire school that she has a peeping tom, taking pictures of her, and it is Tyler Down, the student in the graduation book club. No one believed her, because she had no evidence what so ever.

     Reason six is because of Courtney Crimson. Everyone in Hannah’s high school loves Courtney, they adore her, she is the goodie two shoes that every mother would dream of. In reality, she is a fake. She became Hannah’s ‘best friend’ to use her, she used her for car ride to parties. Courtney isn’t always a sweet and nice, just like everyone she has a dark side. She created a horrible rumor that made the whole school give a disgusted look to Hannah Baker, which made the snowball increase drastically. Evidently, Hannah has a stash of sex toys in her dresser. Marcus Cooley is the seventh cause. Marcus asks Hannah for a date a Rosie’s Diner, which she happily accepts. While the two were sitting in a booth at Rosie’s, Marcus forces Hannah to touch him sexually, humiliating her in public space. The eighth is because of Zach Dempsey. Zach was in Rosie’s when Marcus humiliated her, he comforted her, assuring that everything is going to be okay. Hannah rejects his effort in comforting her, she doesn't know who to trust, after all those people who back stabbed her. Zach gets angered by this ad decides to steal Hannah's notes of encouragement from her Peer Communications class. Those were the only things keeping Hannah going. The ninth reason of Hannah’s story is because of Ryan Shaver. He is the editor of the school’s papers. He steals Hannah’s missing poem and publishes it at her English class, where the teacher annotates and studies the poem word by word, but no one knows who wrote it. The tenth reason is Clay Jensen. Seemingly, Clay was not one of the reasons. She was really sad she didn't get to know him. Clay helped bring the better person Hannah is.

     The eleventh reason is with the help of Jenny Kurtz. After a wild party that Hannah went, Jenny, being the ‘kind and generous’ person she is, gives a drunk Hannah Baker a ride home. Hannah falls asleep in the car, but was soon woken up by Jenny crashing in to a stop sign. Jenny gets scared and wants to flee then get her car fixed as soon as possible. On the other hand, Hannah want to report this to the police, but Jenny refuses and kicks her out of the car in to the cold rain. A few days has passed, and Hannah was informed that a senior that goes to her school was dead, because there was no stop sign. Hannah blames herself and forms suicidal thoughts. The second to last reason is Bryce Walker. Hannah joins Courtney in to the hot tub. Bryce Walker joins in and starts to sexually assault Hannah. Hannah doesn’t stop Bryce from what he is doing, she wants to “let myself go completely”. The last and final reason behind Hannah Baker’s suicide is because of her guidance counselor, Mr. Porter. He had the power to stop Hannah from killing herself. He was too busy trying to inform her parents what Hannah is going to do to herself, that he didn't realizes that Hannah Baker’s time is up.

 In conclusion, all of Hannah’s meaningful reasons behind her death was because almost everyone had two sides to them. They would always lure Hannah in with their kindness, but they would always turn Hannah down by revealing their true side.