Character Analysis Of Hannah Baker In Thirteen Reasons Why

Suicide is a decision one makes to end his or her own life. People who make the decision to end their own life have often experienced depression, guilt, emptiness, or a combination of those, and many more negative things. Hannah Baker is a character in the book Thirteen Reasons Why By: Jay Asher who has lost hope in all aspects of her life. In this story, a boy who contributed to Hannah’s suicide receives tapes of her explaining the reasons why she did it. The tapes take him throughout the city they live in and help him understand further how and why she did this to herself. In this journal, I will be predicting that Clay will help Skye, questioning why both Justin and Hannah said nothing about what happened to Jessica, and connecting Hannah

to Taylor Hillridge from the movie Cyberbully.
A prediction that can be made in this story is that Clay will help Skye. A reason this prediction can be made is because he begins connecting her actions to those of Hannah’s: “But Skye’s walking down the same stretch of hall where I watched Hannah slip away two weeks ago. On that day, Hannah disappeared into a crowd of students, allowing the tapes to say her good-bye. But I can still hear the footsteps of Skye Miller, sounding weaker and weaker the further she gets,” (Asher 287). He sees Skye, and he sees her almost as his second chance, his chance to make things right after not being able to make things right with Hannah. It will make himself feel so much better if he can change the course of her actions and mindset because he was unable to do so with Hannah. He also has firsthand experience with how it feels to lose someone to suicide, so he has some insight on how the people who care about her will feel if she were to go. He will help her sort her thoughts and try to make her feel okay with her life, and maybe even create an indelible (vocab word) bond for each other.
A question one could have after reading this book, is why Justin and Hannah never spoke up after witnessing Jessica get raped. One answer to this question could be that she and Justin were simply too shaken up to say anything about it to anyone, so they just tried to quell (vocab word) what happened: “But to stop it, I felt like I’d have to stop the entire world from spinning,” (Asher 277). Another reason is because they know they could have done something to stop him from doing that to her and they did nothing so they would rather remain in a state of denial instead of fessing up to what they had seen. Hannah only wished her life could return to the quiescent (vocab word) state that it was in before any rumors about her existed.
A connection one can make to the character Hannah Baker in the book Thirteen Reasons Why is to the character Taylor Hillredge from the movie Cyberbully.

One can connect these two characters because they both became very depressed and suicidal because someone started rumors about them that changed their whole perspective on life: “ ‘Not like a conspiracy or anything. But it feels like I never know when something’s going to pop out of the woodwork,’ ‘And get you?’ ‘I know, it sounds silly.’ ‘Then explain.’ ‘Its hard to explain unless you’ve heard some of the rumors about me,’ “ (Asher 274). Hannah has some pretty harsh rumors about her spread around school and that leads her to the state that she’s in, and similarly in the movie Cyberbully Taylor gets bullied online which starts some nasty rumors about her that leads her ultimately to her suicide attempt.

Suicide is a very dark topic that is covered very thoroughly in this book. Hannah Baker is not able to save herself in the end, but hopefully this book can shine a light on and spread awareness to the issue of suicide, and help people know that every life is precious an every life matters substantially, and that there is hope along with people who truly care. In this journal, I predicted that Clay would help Skye, questioned why Justin and Hannah didn’t say anything, and connected Hannah Baker to Taylor

Hillredge.