66 pages • 2 hours read
Jay AsherThirteen Reasons Why
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Cassette 4: Side B-Cassette 5: Sides A and BChapter Summaries & Analyses
Cassette 4: Side B Summary
Content Warning: The following summaries and analyses contain discussions of suicide and rape.
Hannah writes poetry at Monet’s after school. She enjoys poetry because of its abstraction: It is like a puzzle to solve, and one never knows the poet’s exact intent. Poetry is a good way to express emotions. She urges her listeners to write a poem to release the anger they must be feeling. She thinks poetry is therapeutic and sees the tapes as “a form of poetic therapy” (177). Hannah stops writing poetry when she no longer wants to explore her thoughts. She returns to poetry to cheer herself up. Hannah attends a free poetry class at the public library that is supposed to focus on positive expression, but the two female instructors focus on dark and depressing poetry. Ryan Shaver, a fellow high school student and editor of the school’s “Lost-N-Found Gazette,” also attends the class.
Ryan compiles scraps of writings and drawings which he photocopies and distributes around school. After the poetry classes, Ryan and Hannah share their poetry notebooks. Hannah admires Ryan’s poems. Ryan particularly appreciates Hannah’s poem “Soul Alone,” which she wrote on the day the class discussion of suicide derailed. In the first stanza, the speaker greets someone who does not respond to her, and thinks she lost an opportunity to discover if they are soulmates. In the second stanza, the speaker laments that their mother only sees their outward appearance. In the final stanza, the speaker wishes that they could strip away their physical body and people could see their inner soul. Ryan finds a deeper meaning in her poem that Hannah did not recognize: that Hannah is rejecting herself.
Clay, still sitting at Rosie’s, thinks he is the boy in the first stanza. He remembers talking to Hannah at the movie theater box office, and how he regretted waiting until the recent party to apologize for taking so long to get to know her. He was afraid of her reputation. Clay blames himself for not being there for Hannah. He thinks he could have prevented her suicide, and that he deserves to be on the tapes. Tony finishes his meal and leaves. His car backs up but does not drive away.
When “Soul Alone” appears in the “Lost-N-Found,” Hannah accuses Ryan of stealing her poem. Although printed anonymously, the poem finds its way into English classes where it is discussed and dissected. Hannah suspects that Ryan told people she wrote it, when students cruelly read parodies of the poem to her. Clay remembers others teasing Hannah, and how he did not intervene. Hannah feels that Ryan stole the sanctity of her thoughts. “Soul Alone” is Hannah’s last poem before she stops writing poetry completely.
Rosie’s closes. The counterman refuses to take Clay’s money because he realizes that Clay is having a hard time.
Cassette 5: Side A Summary
Tony calls Clay over to his car. Clay is the ninth person Tony has followed: Tony has the second set of tapes. Hannah was not bluffing. Clay feels physically ill and starts crying, but Tony reassures him. Clay listens to the next tape as Tony drives.
Hannah calls Clay her “Romeo” and reveals how much she wanted to know the real Clay Jensen because it was hard to believe that his reputation was so good. No one has any bad or juicy gossip about Clay. Hannah assures Clay that he does not belong on the list, and that she includes him only because he is an integral connection to other parts of her story, and because she wants to apologize. Hannah describes a pivotal party at which she and Clay truly “connected,” and other stories converged. Clay remembers that night as the night of the accident when the elderly man crashed into and killed the teen driver. Clay wonders why he must listen, but Tony says that Clay wants to know, and Hannah wants him to know.
Although grounded because of her grades, Hannah goes to the party because Clay will be there—a rarity—and she wants him to get to know her. Although initially hopeful, when Hannah stops at her old house, she feels a sudden loneliness because her past there is meaningless, and the old man living there does not acknowledge her.
Clay avoids Hannah at first, but they eventually have a deep conversation. Sharing one side of a couch with them is another couple that Clay identifies as Jessica and Justin. Hannah regrets not getting to know Clay sooner, since she has already decided not to let anyone get close to her again. She worries about sharing her most private thoughts.
Clay and Hannah make out on a bed in an empty room, but Hannah’s loneliness returns. She worries about other times when she thought she was connecting with someone but got burned. She thinks that the same could happen with Clay. Despite the rumors, Hannah has only made out with a few people. Clay apologizes for waiting so long to get to know her. Hannah briefly thinks that she can start over with Clay, then remembers Justin’s kiss and all the people who hurt her, and how she is probably just adding to her bad reputation because Clay will kiss and tell. She pulls back from Clay and pushes him physically away, telling him to get out. When Clay tries to talk to her, Hannah screams into a pillow. He waits, hoping she will change her mind, but eventually leaves. Clay regrets following her order to leave. Hannah, crying, sags to the floor.
Clay is upset with Hannah and himself: He wanted to help her, but she rejected him. He believes she had already decided to end her life. Clay tries to get her attention at school, but she avoids him. Hannah later makes a list of three dozen people who flashed through her head when she was kissing Clay and narrows the list to those people who connect, like Justin, Alex, and Jessica. Hannah cycles through tears, anger, frustration, and hatred. Justin will feature again on the next tape. Hannah apologizes to Clay.
Tony pulls the car over to check on Clay, who is emotionally upset. Clay laments that he only had one night with Hannah, and only now knows what she was experiencing. Clay now truly misses her.
Cassette 5: Side B Summary
Clay feels that he did not hurt Hannah like the others, and did what she requested by leaving, but he was the only person who could have helped her. Clay hopes that no one blames him. Tony reassures him. Clay left the party feeling positive, feeling that he and Hannah could start a relationship. Tony stops the car at the party house. Clay finishes the tape.
Hannah stays on the floor in the dark room on the far side of the bed. She hears the pair who were on the couch—whom Clay identified as Justin and Jessica—enter the room. Jessica is very drunk, and Justin puts her on the bed. Hannah realizes she is also partially drunk and does not want to try and leave. Justin tries to make out with Jessica, but she is too drunk. Justin leaves.
Hannah gets up to leave but hears Justin talking to another boy outside the door. The other boy wants to come in and have sex with Jessica. Justin tries to deter him by saying she is unresponsive. The other boy says he will be quick. Justin does not respond, and the other boy enters. Hannah retreats into a closet. She hears the boy tell Jessica to “[j]ust relax,” a phrase that Clay recognizes as something Bryce Walker always says. Because of the loud party music, no one hears Hannah scream into the clothes in the closet, and no one hears Bryce rape Jessica.
Clay throws up. He asks what Tony did, and why he has the tapes. Tony tells him to finish listening.
Hannah knows she could have stopped the rape but feels that she could not talk, could not see, and could not think straight. She feels that her actions no longer matter much because her life is in turmoil. Bryce leaves. Hannah runs from the room. She sees Justin and thinks that he has now also ruined Jessica’s life. She wonders why Justin is still friends with Bryce, but imagines it is from denial.
Hannah feels guilty and blames herself. Both she and Justin could have helped Jessica but did not: They allowed the rape to happen. Hannah agrees that what the other boy—Bryce—did was worse than her and Justin’s inaction, but if she sent Bryce the tapes, they would stop with him, and he would leave town.
Cassette 4: Side B-Cassette 5: Sides A and B Analysis
Guilt consumes both Clay and Hannah’s narratives in this section which emphasizes their interdependence. Clay’s role in Hannah’s tapes causes him to struggle with feelings of both self-blame and self-justification. Guilt is also an important influence in Hannah’s increasingly negative self-talk which reinforces her mental health crisis. Hannah’s suicidal ideation grows more defined and explicit. Asher expands on themes of The Damaging Effect of Rumors on Reputation: Concealing One’s True Character, Every Action Counts, and “Just Relax”: The Trauma of Sexual Objectification. The motif of Stealing informs another of Hannah’s losses.
Clay’s suspenseful agony is finally resolved when Hannah assures him that he is merely a link in her story and does not deserve to be on the tapes. The revelation of her feelings reflects and, in some ways, explains the interdependence of their narratives. Hannah continues to control her listeners and her narrative, however—and keeps readers turning pages—with foreshadowing and threats of consequences. Some of those on her list, she hints, could face jail time. In addition to exacting revenge by making her listeners squirm with guilt, Hannah suggests that the tapes can offer personal insight, allowing listeners to make positive life changes.
Hearing Hannah’s experiences enlightens Clay’s memories of the party and makes him feel guilty that he did not stay in the bedroom and help Hannah. Clay believes that he alone could have prevented Hannah’s death. Clay’s self-recrimination is typical of guilt felt by those impacted by suicide, which, according to the University of Texas at Austin Counseling and Mental Health Center, can occur when someone close to you dies by suicide: It can be prompted by feelings of regret or unresolved issues. Clay could not have known at the time what Hannah was planning. To the contrary, Clay left the party thinking that he and Hannah were on the cusp of a relationship. The UT Counseling Center advises that “[i]t is human nature to blame oneself when experiencing a loss, rather than accepting the truth that things were out of our control” (“Coping with Losing a Friend, Partner, or Family Member to Suicide.” University of Texas at Austin Counseling and Mental Health Center).
Clay blames himself for Hannah’s death and blames his inaction on his fears about his own reputation, which, as Hannah notes, is beyond reproach. Clay’s fears reveal that he is conscious of, and guided by, others’ opinions, causing his feelings not to offer a fresh perspective on Hannah’s but to mirror them. Clay is also angry because he feels that Hannah blames him, though she rejected his efforts to help and to connect with her. Clay asserts that her tapes are “not fair […] because I was there for you” (211). This declaration offers a reflection on the obscuring and one-sided nature of first-person perspective.
Hannah’s poem “Soul Alone” reveals her desire for others to know the real her. These emotions are reflected in Hannah’s initial hope, then loneliness, on her way to the party. She hopes that Clay will be able to know the true Hannah, as she will get to know the real Clay. This hope elucidates Asher’s choice to present the two narratives of each of the characters contrapuntally: Clay and Hannah are side-by-side throughout the novel but fated to diverge. She cuts off her meaningful conversation with Clay because she has already planned “on never being close to anyone” (211) and fears showing Clay her bleak, innermost thoughts.
Building upon the ironic presentation of several characters’ lack of self-awareness, Hannah is uncomfortable examining her own role in her unhappiness. Ryan observes that Hannah wrote “Soul Alone” because she feared “dealing with herself” (188). At a point in the novel in which Clay is now deeply emotionally tangled in Hannah’s story, Asher now employs another character, Ryan, to offer a secondary insight into Hannah. After her poem is stolen by Ryan, Hannah shies away from further self-introspection. Ryan has stolen her private thoughts, and Hannah stops writing poetry to deal with her emotions.
The rape scene is written to evoke shock and horror. Bryce’s instruction to “just relax,” which he also said when he groped Hannah in the liquor store and to his “girlfriend” at the movies, indicates his indifference toward women’s feelings. Asher’s use of the imperative form—“relax”—underscores the fact that Bryce attempts to control the feelings and experiences of those around him. The word “just” shows that Bryce dismisses the significance of rape while he dismisses the agency of Jessica who is drunk, unresponsive, and incapable of sex—if she were even old enough to give legal consent. He epitomizes the novel’s theme of the traumatic effects of sexual objectification. The physical shock of the rape is reinforced by the fact that Hannah mirrors Jessica’s incapacity: She is also drunk and feels helpless. Ultimately, however, Hannah guiltily admits that she could have done something, providing another example of inaction in the novel.
Aside from Hannah’s feeling of guilt, the rape of Jessica is not addressed again. This reinforces the sense that characters around Hannah are flat and only discussed in her personal context. The lack of narrative care toward a rape survivor is made all the more jarring by the fact that Jessica may be learning about being raped for the first time by listening to Hannah’s tapes. This is left to the imagination of the reader, which emphasizes the fact that Hannah and Clay’s narratives leave significant gaps in the story of other characters and underscores the theme of rumor when it comes to the full picture of a character.
