Thirteen Reasons Why

Betrayals by the people on Hannah’s list continue to “snowball,” causing increasingly negative social, emotional, and psychological effects for Hannah. Meanwhile, Clay searches for understanding about Hannah’s death and struggles with his own feelings of guilt. Asher expands on the themes of the harmful power of rumors, the sexual objectification of women, the far-reaching effects of choices and small actions. The theme of the finality of death is introduced. Motifs of stealing and hindsight continue to inform the narrative.

Hannah accuses her listeners of serious violations: betraying her trust and friendship, continuing to erode her reputation, and robbing her of things that give her solace and safety. Hannah implicates Jessica because the other girl betrays their growing friendship and trust. Jessica’s choice to believe the rumors that Hannah and Alex had been together, rather than the truth, negatively affects Hannah emotionally and socially. The scar that Jessica leaves on Hannah’s face represents the permanent consequences of her actions, foreshadowing the theme of the permanence of death. The scar also illustrates the idea that Hannah’s image is made up of what others project onto her. Rumors prove more believable, and more damaging, than truth.

By spreading and believing rumors about Hannah, Jessica and Alex also steal Hannah’s initial small, but important support system. Hannah feels that her two friends cast her aside, and Monet’s Café is no longer the home base, or “olly-olly-oxen-free” (62), where she can safely express her thoughts and feelings. Like the rocket slide and the snowball, the phrase “olly-olly-oxen-free,” is emblematic of childhood games and suggests the loss—or stealing—of innocence. Another theft occurs when Tyler steals Hannah’s sense of safety and security in her home and destroys Hannah’s feeling of freedom and connection to the outside world: She can no longer see the stars at night and watch the lightning during storms.

Although Asher does not explicitly state that Hannah has any mental health concerns, Hannah’s tone and actions offer evidence that she is struggling emotionally. As rumors about her multiply and her personal losses increase, Hannah feels a lack of control over her life, which she also felt in her old town. Hannah is lonely in Crestmont and admits that Jessica and Alex helped fill “whatever void needed filling at the time” (62); the word “void” echoes the language of mental illness symptom descriptions. At the same time, Hannah downplays their importance to her, asserting that she “never thought of Jessica or Alex as friends” (62), although they spent hours together. The episodes with Jessica and Alex show that Hannah longs for, but struggles to maintain, feelings of connection.

Asher complicates the reliability of Hannah’s narrative through his treatment of the topics of victimhood and revenge. Hannah describes the first three listeners (Justin, Alex, and Jessica) as “liars or jerks or insecure people lashing out at others” (75), and hopes they feel miserable at her funeral. This draws attention to heavy irony: Hannah is “lashing out at others” posthumously by making the tapes. Hannah also disrupts Tyler’s home refuge and privacy the way that (she believes) he took hers. Hannah angrily tells Tyler that his feelings about his security and privacy are “not for you to decide” (89)—they are under her control. Notably, neither Hannah nor Courtney definitively proves that Tyler is the Peeping Tom. Hannah assumes that he was because Tyler owns cameras and he seemed embarrassed at school. If he is innocent, Hannah has just started a damaging rumor about him which results in his persecution later. Ironically, this small negative action, a rumor, is exactly how her problems started. While Hannah gives a cautionary message about rumors to her listeners, Asher uses irony to give a cautionary message about rumors and self-awareness to the reader.

Although Hannah insists that she is not spying on Tyler for revenge, she does admit that taking revenge “would have given [her] some sense of satisfaction” (83), However, she concludes that revenge “satisfies nothing” because she has already decided to end her life, saying: “My mind is made up” (83). Her reflection on the pointlessness of revenge after she is dead provides an example of Hannah beginning to think of herself as dead, signaling a development in her symptoms of mental illness to the reader.

The first-person narratives of Clay and Hannah push past tonal juxtaposition to direct conflict at points. Clay recognizes that, had Hannah made different choices such as calling the police about the Peeping Tom, things may have turned out differently. He also recalls an upcoming party in which Hannah yelled at him, instead of sharing her feelings. After her death, Clay is still trying to find the “real” Hannah, not the wounded, vengeful person from the tapes. Clay feels that they are filled with the “ugliness” of others’ actions, but possibly also Hannah’s. Asher uses Clay’s opinions—sometimes in conflict and sometimes in harmony with Hannah’s—to give their narratives a contrapuntal (both independent yet interdependent) relationship. This both obscures the reliability of each narrative but suggests that one is not complete without the other.

Clay, distraught with worry about how he might have injured Hannah—and sure that he must have done something terrible since he is included on the tapes—feels guilty that he did not do more to help Hannah. He wishes he could go back and “rewind the past” (60): to stop the hot/not list from getting out and keep Hannah from meeting Jessica and Alex. Clay’s desperate desire but inability to alter the past illustrates the novel’s message of the importance of making a connection while you have a chance. His desire to turn back time also draws attention to the novel’s layered temporality: Hannah’s past self is an intimate part of Clay’s present, and that of the others who listen to the tapes. This generates a tantalizing but erroneous idea for Clay that the past is close enough to change.

Hannah keeps both readers and Clay in suspense, foreshadowing more injustices and shocking revelations about Courtney Crimson and Mr. Porter, while Clay remains in agony, wondering what his crime is.