The Main Aspects Which Lead To Commit A Suicide And It‘s Reflections In Jay Asher‘s Book „Thirteen Reasons Why“

Summary. i. Introduction. Theoretical overview of ya literature. Defining suicide and types. Suicide in Young Adult literature. Defining bullying and depression. Focalization and Narration. Analysis of aspects which leads to suicide. Verbal and social bullying in Jay Asher‘s Thirteen Reasons Why. Physical bullying in Jay Asher‘s Thirteen Reasons Why. Depression and loneliness in Jay Asher‘s Thirteen Reasons Why. Conclusions.

This novel has a lot of elements of suicide aspects, moreover, it provides how other members, especially the closest, reacts and feels about other’s decision to kill themselves. The aim of this paper is to show the main reasons of suicide with reflections in Jay Asher’s novel “Thirteen Reasons Why”.

With intention to reach this aim, this paper will be focused on 4 reasons of committing a suicide: verbal bullying, physical bullying, loneliness and depression. Also, this paper is divided in to four sections and includes the list of references. The introductory paragraph provides the information about author and page layout. Section 2 focuses on theoretical section: the main definitions are providing, also, the explanation of focalization and narration. Section 3 concentrates on the analysis of reasons which leads to commit a suicide with a reflection in “Thirteen Reasons Why”. Section 4 provides conclusions about course paper and the main aspects which were analysed through the whole research paper.

This chapter will provide the main definitions of terms connected to suicide - what types of suicide exist in the world and why people decide to commit it. Therefore, this section will present how these suicide aspects are used in Young Adult literature. Also, the term of focalization and narration will be explained.

According to Giddens, there are four main types of suicide:

2. Anomic suicides are caused by a lack of social regulation.

4. Fatalistic suicides occur when an individual is over-regulated by society (Giddens, 15).

So, there are many different types of bullying that can be experienced by both - children and adults, some are obvious to spot while others can be more invisible to spot. Important to say, that this course paper is going to analyse only three types of bullies: verbal, physical, and social.

Unlike physical bullying, by definition to verbal bullying is harder to see and stop it. Verbal bullying includes name calling, insults, teasing, intimidation, homophobic or racist remarks, or verbal abuse. Usually, a person who uses verbal bullying, wants to gain more power over other students. Not surprising fact that verbal bullying can lead to depression and anxiety,

External focalization – the narrator says less than character knows; vision from without (Schmid, 235).

Therefore, these two terms are very connected in the narrative and sometimes it can be tricky to say what is the narrator and what is the focalizer.

3.1. VERBAL AND SOCIAL BULLYING IN JAY ASHER’S NOVEL “THIRTEEN REASONS WHY”

Verbal and social bullying against the girl named Hannah in Jay Asher’s novel “Thirteen Reasons Why” became a tremendous cause which forced a girl to commit a suicide. First of all, this novel includes two main characters – Hannah, who left 13 cassette tapes of people which she blames, and Clay – the one, who listens all these tapes through all the novel.