Thirteen Reasons Why

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.