Dovi Sherman
Period 2
Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why takes place in Crestmont. In this present day novel, Crestmont is described as a small town, made up of just one high school, one hospital, and one park, and everyone seems to know each other for one reason or another. Throughout the story, Hannah Baker, the voice of the mysterious tapes, takes the main character, Clay Jensen, on a journey through her final footsteps. Each destination is described through Hannah’s point of view, in a dark, gloomy fashion, with the intent to show Clay why she killed herself. Moreover, Asher’s vague description of each scene allows the reader’s imagination to wander, and to create its own details. For example, when Clay is led to the movie theater, a place where he and Hannah worked together, I imagined music playing in the background as customers’ walked in and out discussing how good or bad the movie was. The lack of a definitive
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She speaks through six double-sided tapes to convey the exact reasons why she killed herself. Many may say that her reasons were unjustified and that suicide was just an extreme measure for an unstable, unhealthy teenager. Though others might believe that without being in Hannah’s shoes we cant fully understand anything she has done. However, unhealthy or not is not the message Asher expects the readers to receive. Majority of Hannah’s thirteen reasons were about everyone else’s views of her. The main purpose of these tapes was to explain how these seamlessly harmless rumors offer a much greater threat in the long run. Although Hannah admits that taking her life was a decision made entirely on her own, it is important to understand that a person’s words, or in this case, thirteen people’s words will ultimately do more bad than good. I agree with this message and I believe most readers would as