preview

Nineteen Reasons Why By Jay Asher

Decent Essays

The novel Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher would be a very good addition to this course because of the unique way Asher defines haunting. In the novel, a boy, Clay Jensen, receives a box of cassette tapes from an anonymous sender. Upon finding an old cassette player, he begins listening to the tapes and discovers that they are from his classmate Hannah Baker. The only problem with this is that Hannah Baker killer herself a couple weeks before Clay received the tapes. On the seven tapes, Hannah tells the main thirteen reasons she committed suicide. Each reasons is centered around a different person, these people being people who did something to make Hannah’s life worse, eventually leading to her suicide. The tapes are sent to each person who appears on the tapes so all the people who “contributed” to Hannah’s suicide discover their part in it all. This means that Clay is on the tapes - the only problem is that he loved Hannah and believes he never did anything to make her kill herself. The story follows Clay around the town he and Hannah once shared while he is listening to the tapes. We later learn that Clay is on the tapes not because he hurt Hannah, but because he could have saved her. The ghost and haunting aspect in Thirteen Reasons Why is not what one normally imagines when they hear the word “haunted”. Instead of being haunted by a ghost in a haunted house or even having a physical ghost, Clay is haunted by the memory of Hannah, the tapes she sent, and the

Get Access