Jasper Jones

Published in 2009 and written by Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones is a coming-of-age novel that follows the teenage protagonist, Charlie Bucktin, after he helps an ostracized teen named Jasper Jones dispose of the body of a local teenage girl. Charlie and Jasper attempt to find out who killed the girl, and in the process, they both learn secrets about their own families and the town around them. The novel won numerous awards, including both the Indie Book of the Year Award and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award, as well as the Michael L. Printz Honor Award in 2012. The novel was made into a film in 2017.

This study guide refers to the 2009 Random House Kindle version of the novel.

Content Warning: The novel discusses sexual abuse and incest, murder, and suicide and ends with an apparent act of arson. It describes an act of sexual harassment, numerous acts of discrimination and racism, and incidents of language that are demeaning toward the Jewish and Christian faiths. The main characters sometimes use language that is derogatory toward people with intellectual disabilities.

Plot Summary

The novel opens as Charlie Bucktin, the first-person narrator and protagonist, hears a knock on his bedroom window. It is Jasper Jones, another teenage boy who is known throughout their hometown of Corrigan to be a troublemaker. Charlie is honored that Jasper has come to him for help, and he follows Jasper on foot out of town and into a clearing in the woods. Jasper warns Charlie that he will wish he never saw what he is about to see, but Charlie follows him anyway and finds the body of a local teenage girl, Laura Wishart, hanging from a tree.

Jasper is very distraught because this is a clearing in which he spends much of his time, and he knows that the entire town will believe that he hanged the girl. He tells Charlie that he has taken Laura here before, and Charlie will eventually learn that Laura and Jasper had a serious relationship and were planning on running away together. Because Laura was beaten before she was hanged, Jasper believes that her death is a murder, not a suicide. He convinces Charlie to help him dispose of her body in the water nearby, and Charlie complies. The boys tie a heavy rock to Laura’s leg so that her body will sink into the water. The two plan to uncover the murderer, but Jasper already believes that Mad Jack Lionel murdered Laura.

Soon, the town begins a massive search for Laura, and Charlie’s parents tell him that he must stay within sight because the town is concerned that there is a kidnapper afoot. When Charlie ignores this advice, Charlie’s mother, Ruth, becomes livid and forces her son to dig a huge hole in their backyard in the blistering sun. After hours of this labor, she tells him to fill the hole back up, undoing all the work he just finished. Charlie becomes enraged, but his father convinces him to stay calm in the face of his mother’s injustice.

The narrative shifts to other characters and describes Jeffrey, who is an amazing cricket player even though the other kids do not let him play on the team. When he goes to practice, the coach laughs off the bullying of the other team members. One of the team members also sexually harasses Laura’s sister, Eliza, by showing her his penis as she walks by. Eliza and Charlie have feelings for each other, and one day Eliza kisses Charlie. Because he carries the guilt of hiding Laura’s body, he worries that he will one day feel compelled to tell her what he did in order to unburden himself of this secret.

One day, Jeffrey finally gets to play cricket when the team needs a player, and when it appears that the team will inevitably lose, he saves the day and wins the game. He is ecstatic until that night, when men from town destroy his father’s prized garden and beat his father because he is Vietnamese. When Charlie’s father comes to physically defend Jeffrey’s father, Charlie is proud of him. Later, during the annual New Year’s celebration, Jasper and Charlie confront Lionel about Laura’s murder. They discover that he did not murder Laura; instead, Jack Lionel is Jasper’s paternal grandfather. After Lionel and David, Jasper’s father, were estranged, Rosie, Jasper’s mother, tried to make amends. Lionel would frequently go over to have a meal with Rosie, but one day she experienced appendicitis, and when he attempted to drive her to the hospital, the car hit a pothole, and she died in the accident. Rumors swirled about Lionel, and he was ostracized from the town. This permanently severed the relationship between David and Lionel.

That night after the fireworks, Eliza comes to Charlie’s window and asks him to come with her. She takes him to the clearing and explains that she saw her sister hang herself there. Eliza did not know what her sister was about to do, and she did not know why Laura had such a huge argument with her parents. She saw her sister write a letter and then sit on a branch. She did not notice the rope around Laura’s neck until after Laura purposefully fell from the branch, killing herself. When Eliza read the letter that Laura wrote, she learned that Laura was pregnant with her father’s child. On the day she died by suicide, she told her mother about the incest, but her mother did not believe her. Her father then beat her. Laura and Jasper were supposed to run away together, but he had been gone for a time making money, and she believed he left without her. This led to the despair that convinced her to take her own life.

Jasper comes to the clearing, and they tell him the whole story. He decides to leave town, but unlike Laura, no one notices that he is missing. Charlie goes to Lionel’s house on a dare from the other children to prove his courage, and after he proves to the children that he is brave, the children all see smoke and discover that Eliza has burned her house down.