It’s a Saturday night. You decide to buy a bottle of wine to celebrate a successful week of getting through life. Happy hour? you think. Adulthood has taught you many things, acceptance and gratefulness among them, so you accept that you’d like a beverage but you’re grateful for your couch. Heading home, you pick up a spirit at the corner store, and as you pry the cork from a bottle of cabernet, something begins to happen. Smoke pours from the top of the bottle, spilling over the edges and forming the shape of a wispy man. You begin to wonder who slipped drugs into your dinner as the genie says, “I am here to grant you three wishes. The only caveat is that you must repeat high school.”
And then you smash that bottle on the floor, crunching the glass beneath your boot just for good measure. You didn’t even think, acting only on impulse.
Repeat high school? Over your dead body.
13 Reasons Why, Jay Asher’s 2007 novel, details exactly why repeating high school in today’s world would be The Worst. Certainly not for all, but the logistics, mechanics, and decisions of teenagedom today can be too much to bear for many…. many who cannot see a way out besides death. Hannah Baker could not see that way out and details the thirteen reasons she decided to commit suicide.
For more on 13 Reasons Why, recently made into an original series on Netflix, please continue.
On The Way Up... 