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Katelyn Hadyniak 9/12/11   ENGL 409 Tucker ** Book Rationale ** The primary rationale for choosing to have our students read //13 Reasons Why// by Jay Asher is because, as we have seen in recent history, bullying is a

problem in our schools. Students being unfairly bullied is seen as the primary reason for the numerous school shootings that have occurred in among the years,

specifically detailed in the notes, videos, and statements made by the students behind the weapons brought into their schools. The students that have been cut down in

these attacks that number greater than the amount of attacks made on the country prompting us to engage in a decade long war, have not always been the bullies.

They have been parents, teachers, other students who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Many instances of bullying that have been attributed as the causes of the students deciding to bring guns to school haven’t actually been students being

beaten up, belittled, or even having bullies make fun of them to their faces. It has been rumors being spread, students talking about the personal lives of other

students behind their backs, and even students being ostracized because of perceived or rumored differences that are completely unfounded, and in many cases

untrue. In many of these cases, students will not think that they are being bullied, rather, they will feel, simply, that they are odd and negatively different. Their friends

will stop talking to them and other students will be very negative towards them.

In //13 Reasons Why,// a student named Hannah Barker is harassed by her fellow classmates based on rumors that had been unjustly started by one person. The

other students start spreading rumors about what she does in her private life. This leads to Hannah becoming depressed, and eventually taking her own life. Before

she does commit suicide, she records 7 audio tapes, 6 on both sides, making a total of 13 recordings, detailing the reasons why she killed herself. Each of these reasons

was a specific person who she went to school with. The entire book is told from the perspectives of the one person who receive the tapes in the mail, Clay Jenson.

The primary reason to have students read this book is so that if they are, in fact bullying other students, or even talking about them behind their backs, they

need to realize that what they are doing will have consciences. These students will to realize that, although they go home and do not have to think about the things they

said to other students and about other students, the students they have been talking about go home and think about them. Being picked on, being bullied, and being

talked about behind your own back has been one of the primary reasons listed in suicide notes, and in the notes left by those who have decided to take revenge

against the students who have bullied them.

A lot has been done to eradicate bullying from our schools by way of giving help to those who are being bullied, by students who have been brave enough to

step in between the bullies and their prey, and by faculty members assigning punishment to the students they witness being bullies. An area of the bully/prey

dynamic that has not been addressed nearly as much as it should be is that of the affects of what the bullies’ actions have. Through reading //13 Reasons Why//, the bullies

should realize that what they are doing is wrong and will hopefully show them that it is simply better to be nice to their fellow students because, in the end, it could

literally save a life.