3. Characterisation

3. Characterisation of Clay Jensen

Hello and welcome back guys, today I´m going to tell you about Clay Jensen. He´s a main character in 13 Reasons why and therefore very important for the story, so you´d better listen closely. (Most of the information about his appearance is from the series, because the book doesn´t provide enough to properly characterize him!)

First of all, some general information about Clay Jensen. He is a 16 years old boy and lives in Crestmont, California. Currently, he´s attending the "Liberty High School" and also

working at a theater named after his hometown "The Crestmont". Generally, he´s a handsome and tall boy, with blue eyes and brown hair. It´s very difficult to characterize Clay because his character traits or feelings aren´t really explained by the book, so we have to build our own picture, using his action and reactions to Hannah´s tapes. This is called an indirect characterisation. In my opinion, he´s a good-natured, honest, sensitive, sympathetic, considerate, but also a little shy person. From Hannah´s perspective, he´s generally a good person, who is hilarious and someone you can have good conversations with. Because Clay is one of the thirteen people, receiving the tapes, he thinks, he´s partly responsible for her death. But later we find out, that he is on the list for another reason. Clay had a crush on Hannah, who also worked at "The Crestmont", this explains why he´s so upset about her suicide. At a party, they even kissed, but Hannah didn´t let it happen and tried to avoid Clay from this point. To put it in a nutshell, Clay is by far the most important character (after Hannah), because their relationship is different from the other thirteen. Clay is a good person, who tried to help Hannah and is therefore remembered differently on the tapes. 

Well, what do you think about this special character? Tell me in the comments down below.

Till next time.

Tim