Jellicoe Road Themes

Just to put things in perspective, allow us to drop this statistic on you: There are only two major characters in Jellicoe Road who come from a family without at least one parent who is abusive, ab...

Jellicoe Road is largely about Taylor's search for family—not just in the sense of looking for her lost mother, but wondering what it would be like to belong to one. And she has a lot of reasons...

If you've spent any time at all looking over the themes of Abandonment and Family, one thing should be super clear to you: The characters in Jellicoe Road are seriously lacking functional authority...

Why is it that competition can bring out the worst in people? Athletic contests go from simple scrimmages to full-on high stakes fights to the death, rival teams prank each other, and participants...

Between the cliquey social politics of high school, meeting parental expectations, and figuring out just what the heck you're going to do with your life, being seventeen isn't exactly easy. Think t...

For the inhabitants of Jellicoe Road, dredging up the past typically just leads to a lot of arguments and bad feelings. We have people whose whole families are wiped out (oh hi, Hannah), teenagers...

Jellicoe School has some pretty weird rituals going on—most notably, a battle-to-the-death war with the Townies and Cadets and carving song lyrics and personal expressions into a giant tree. What...

We tried really hard to find a nice way to say this, but there just isn't one, so here it goes: A lot of people die in Jellicoe Road. So many people die, in fact, that it makes you question just ho...

If you're a teenager and you haven't had some kind of existential crisis yet, we hate to break it to you, but it's coming. It's just part of growing up, it seems. The Jellicoe Road kids are obvious...

One thing's for certain: The characters in Jellicoe Road have plenty to be angry about. Under normal circumstances, Hannah should have shunned Jude for causing Webb's death, Jonah should feel zero...