Suicide Blamer

It is just another normal day. You wake up. Get dressed. Go to school. Fall asleep in third period. And get on the bus to go to home. But when you get to your doorstep and see a package addressed to you by that girl that had just committed suicide the week before, you would start to get a little worried. Wouldn’t you? Jay Asher’s novel entitled “Th1rteen R3asons Why,” shows a deeply disturbing take on suicide and how some pathetic people use their own lives to get revenge on their enemies.

I am just going to be flat out here: “Th1rteen R3asons Why” is the most deeply disturbing, selfish, psychotic novel I have ever read. The plotline consists of a girl who is driven to kill herself by “13 people.” But the thing caught me was that this “Hannah Baker” girl has enough nerve to record herself, kill herself, and then send the “Thirteen Tapes” to everyone, telling them how THEY killed HER. And that was the thing that REALLY made me angry. First off, when people choose to kill themselves, they do not necessarily plan to as much as Hannah did. They also try to do it discreetly; where Hannah Baker followed all of the signs as though it was her job to. And most importantly, suicide victims should NEVER blame people for their actions. Hannah was almost using her body; her soul as a way to get revenge. Like it says in the novel, “Then Hannah’s voice tells Clay that his name is on the tapes – and in some way, responsible or her death.”

This poor girl did have a lot of rough times in her high school life. And I am not trying to say that she should not have been affected by this, because is this kind of stuff happened to me, I would be pretty torn apart too. But no matter how much you get bullied, you should never blame anyone else for your actions. When Hannah Baker killed herself, she did not have to make those tapes to get revenge. And some on the thirteen (now) victims of little Hannah’s trap, did not even do anything! Take Clay for example. Clay Jensen is the main character in this novel. All through the book we hear about how these teens are doing terrible things to Hannah Baker, and when it comes to Clay Jensen’s name, it turns out that he did nothing wrong. Hannah basically congratulated him for helping her make herself feel beautiful and such at a party a long time ago. When I read this, I think, “Couldn’t she have done this on a separate tape?” Or she could have easily not even said this at all. For the rest of poor Clay Jensen’s life, he will know all the secrets about the people who did wrong to her. And he is easily scarred for life.

Hannah Baker sacrificed herself for her own pleasure of getting back at others. She is a sick girl who is probably so, because she has gone through a lot the last couple years of her life. Even though I thought that “Th1rteen R3asons Why” is a strangely twisted novel, it does have a good moral: “One should never suffer for another’s actions.”