And you, lucky number thirteen, you can take the tapes straight to hell. Depending on your religion, maybe I’ll see you there. — Hannah Baker

Thirteen Reasons Why

Jay Asher

漢娜的遺言

Hannah Baker, a girl who just had just killed herself, sent a box of tapes recorded thirteen reasons causing her to commit a suicide. Each story described a person what he or she had done to Hannah physically or mentally and the scar they left on her heart. As I collected some sentences which I considered meaningful and touching, I am going to share those sentences by three topics: how Hannah was in her classmates’ eyes, how Hannah was in Clay’s eyes and how Hannah saw herself was.

Hannah on classmates' eyes

But it’s more just than a scratch. It’s a punch in the stomach and a slap in the face. It’s a knife in my back because you would rather believe some made-up rumor than what you knew to be true.

Hannah was betrayed by her two friends who she considered they were her friends, Jessica and Alex. In that period when Hannah already had some negative rumors on her, she thought she was lucky to meet Jessica and Alex in Monet’s restaurant. They even had a secret passphrase. However, how happier they experienced in Monet’s, how much painful she suffered after Jessica trusted those rumors instead the real Hannah in front of her. Hannah was hurt again. To Jessica, because she was afraid that Hannah might attract her boyfriend, Alex, she decided to keep away from Hannah and use those rumor as her excuse.

Because in there, I admitted that I was at a point in my life where I really could have used any encouragement anyone have left me. Encouragement …… that he stole.

There was an activity in a popular elective class, Peer Communication. Students were asked to observed someone and toss a note to paper bags with their names on it that encourage him or her anonymous. The character in this story was Zach, who once consulate Hannah in Monet’s when she was cheating by a boy but not got return what he wanted by Hannah. Hence, he did take off all encourage notes in Hannah’s box to revenge her. Maybe we did not consider those notes so important because it was just a request of an elective class. While to Hannah, a girl who had lost confidence to friendships and bear so many rumors, those notes were a beam of light that might pull her up. And Zach stole them just because he felt unhappy when Hannah refused his help when she was upset. And that made Hannah enhance her determination to leave the world.

I mean, you are who you are and everyone wants to go to a party with you. To at least be seen entering a party with you. Everyone! Boys. Girls. It doesn’t matter. That’s the kind of admiration people have for you. Most of them, unfortunately, don’t realized how carefully you plan that image.

In school, Hannah was really a nice girl who seldom act bad. Then the nice image made others consider she was easily to be used. Courtney, who had such a sweet smile on her face but used Hannah as a tool to make her image better. As Courtney thought Hannah won’t refused her request for participating a party together, she was shocked when hearing Hannah’s refuse. With no doubt, what Courtney had done actually cooled down Hannah’s motivation to live in the world that it dawned on Hannah herself was just a tool to help Courtney to show off her charm. Her heart was once be broken when she wanted to try to trust others.

Accordingly, we can know that Hannah’s trust to the world gradually collapsed when she had experienced so many times of betrays, cheating and shaming things.