On the Jellicoe Road

I live on the Jellicoe Road. Where trees make canopies overhead and where you can sit at the top of them and see forever.

—Taylor Markham

On the Jellicoe Road (or Jellicoe Road for US/UK readers) is an Australian novel for young adults by Melina Marchetta, author of Looking for Alibrandi and Saving Francesca. It's the story of Taylor Markham, reluctant leader of her dorm houses in the underground battle between the students at Jellicoe School, the nearby Townies, and the Cadets (Sydney boys who come for a six-week training exercise). The closest thing to an adult she has - Hannah - has disappeared, just as Jonah Griggs -- the new leader of the Cadets, and the boy she ran away with a few years ago -- has come back. In between skirmishes and diplomatic fights for territory, she starts uncovering her past, and things take a rapid downturn...

Running parallel is the story Hannah is writing about five kids twenty years earlier. Three of them are survivors of a horrific car accident and become students, one is a Townie, and the other is a Cadet. They meet and become friends, but it isn't long before things get worse, and keep doing so.

Tropes used in On the Jellicoe Road include:

• Abusive Parents: Too many.
  • Oh boy. Jonah's father is probably the worst example, but by no means the only one.
  • Played with concerning Hannah. She's Taylor's aunt; Tate told her that she shouldn't be anything like a mother to Taylor because Taylor already had a mother. Hannah kept Taylor at arm's length for years, and Taylor became envious of the warmth Hannah showed to other girls like Jessa.
• Adult Fear: Three junior girls get taken hostage. In a camp full of deprived teenage boys. Subverted in that they get protected from the boys, but it's still pretty terrifying.
  • A young boy is so scared for his mother and brother, the victims of violent abuse, that he ends up killing his own father.
  • Two young children are left with a child molester. Taylor was the lucky one. Her friend wasn't.
• Apathetic Teacher: Most of the teachers at the Jellicoe School are temporary, so they don't have a vested interest in keeping a close eye on things. The students run rings around them.
• Armor-Piercing Question: "What did you use on your father, Griggs? Was it a gun or a knife?"
• Ate His Gun: The Hermit killed himself this way.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Taylor and Jonah
• Big Brother Worship: Jonah, for his little brother.

My brother is my God. I can't tell you how decent that kid is.

• Big Brother Instinct: This and Parents in Distress is why Jonah kills his dad.
• Bittersweet Ending
• Blood on These Hands: While Jonah doesn't actually say the phrase, he does look at his hands and talk about regret.
• Breaking the Fellowship: After Webb dies, everything falls apart: Fitz realises what he did and goes nuts, Tate runs away, and Hannah's left alone until Jude returns, in a perpetual state of misery.
• Call Back: Taylor's middle name is Lily. Lily is Tate's younger sister, who died in the crash.
• Chekhov's Gun: That tunnel Jessa's always going on about, the one her father used to tell her about? It's just a myth, right?
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Choi, when captured by the Students, is forced to play chess. To be fair, they only did it because they thought he'd be good at it. (He wasn't.)
  • Griggs stays at Santangelo's house for the holidays. So does Jessa. Not only does she never shut up, Santangelo is half Italian and thus has about a billion relatives (including overbearing old women) staying. Griggs and Santangelo are a minority, and end up bonding just to get out of there.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason For Abandoning You: Jessa's dad Fitz/the Hermit leaves her because he thinks he's bad luck. He keeps to the periphery of her life until he kills himself.
• Driven to Suicide: The Hermit and in a slower version Tate both commit suicide; Jonah and maybe Hannah were stopped before they did.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: More like earn your Bittersweet Ending.
• Evil Uncle: Jessa. She also has an Evil Aunt.
• Face Death with Dignity: Tate, Taylor's mom chooses to die this way.
• Foreshadowing: "Someday, I'll be Mrs Dubose and you'll read to me."
  • Towards the beginning, Taylor reflects on how many screw-ups are in her hall, saying they have three pyromaniacs and it's only a matter of time until they're all burned to death in their beds. In the end it's an electrical fire, and everybody survives, but it still counts as foreshadowing.
• Friendship Moment: Jude with the flower seeds.
• Gilligan Cut: Before breaking into the Brigadier's tent.

"I'm going home," [Santangelo] says, ignoring my question. "Count me out."
Raffy dismisses him with a shrug. "We'll do it on our own, Taylor. Joe Salvatore said he was hopeless under pressure, anyway."

---

It doesn't take Santangelo long to get the lock open.

• Harmful to Minors
• The Heart: Webb was. It's combined with We Were Your Team and Breaking the Fellowship in that once he dies, the group breaks up, unable to handle the trauma.
• Hope Spot: Taylor ends up hoping that Fitz is still alive. Unfortunately, she witnessed him blowing his brains out years before. She didn't know who he was at the time, though.
• I Die Free: Tate.
• In Name Only: The tunnel. It's basically a few metres of tiny, cramped hole that's so dark it gives people nightmares.
• Interrupted Suicide: Though Taylor didn't realize it at the time, she was this to Jonah. She was also the reason Tate's slow suicide took seventeen years instead of happening immediately. Subverted with Fitz, aka the Hermit, who Taylor had to witness die. Tate and the rest of the group also may have interrupted Hannah's attempt.
• Ironic Echo: The territory wars started as a game, for fun, played by three groups of friends and ended as serious rivalry.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Taylor to Jonah and Tate. Webb to his entire team, especially Fitz. Hannah for Taylor.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: It's played straight with Taylor, who finds out who her dad is the boy in the picture and her aunt is Hannah. This is played with for Jessa; Taylor (a third party) finds out her father is the Hermit late in the story, but its unclear if Jessa connects her dad to the person who killed himself.
• Mama Bear: Tate for Hannah.
  • Trini, a side character, feels this way.

If those cadets come near my Year Sevens again, I will maim them.

• • Tate, when she finds out her neighbor left her daughter and a friend with a child molester, goes berserk.
• Meaningful Echo: A number of them throughout the story. One also combines with Book Ends:

The book starts with the line: My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted.
The last chapter has Taylor thinking My mother took seventeen years to die. I counted.

• Measuring the Marigolds: When Webb and Jude look at a beautiful landscape, Webb sees a beautiful landscape and Jude sees a prospective fighting ground.
• Military School: It's assumed that's where the Cadets go to school.
• Mood Whiplash: Taylor references this when she says that she feels like an abusive father, one second a monster, and the next human.
  • Same with Griggs' father- he did occasional nice things in between beating the shit out of his family, and Griggs fears that one day he'll forget about the bad things and start believing that he killed an innocent man.
• Motor Mouth: Jessa never, ever shuts up.
• Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly: The 'band' put together by the three groups consists of two guitarists, a DJ and a violinist. It works. Somehow.
• Authority Figure Abandonment: Hannah mysteriously leaves at the start of the book, which kicks off the plot.
• Parents in Distress: To protect his mom (and brother) Jonah kills his dad.
• Reality Ensues: Tate dies, because The Power of Love and a reunited family aren't going to stop cancer. Nobody ends up magically getting along well.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Chaz's dad, who is a decent guy and a good cop.
• Rule of Drama: The two cars containing Webb's and Narnie's parents, and Tate's parents and sister survive more than two hours after the collision and wait patiently for Fitz to pull all the survivors and the bodies out of both cars ... and then explode spectacularly a mere minute after the last person gets clear.
• Sanity Slippage: Taylor goes slowly insane over the first half of the book. She gets better, though.
• Self-Made Orphan: Played half-straight. Jonah killed his father, but his mother's still alive. The bastard deserved it, though.
• Shoot the Messenger: Ben gets his fingers stomped on for being the messenger.
• Tagalong Kid: Jessa for Taylor. Taylor hates it.
• Team Mom: Raffy
• True Companions: There are two circles of close friends, tied by blood. The first is Narnie, Tate, Fitz, Webb and Jude, also known as Hannah, Taylor's mom, the Hermit, Taylor's dad and the Brigadier. The second one is Taylor, Jonah, Raffy and Chaz.

Chaz: What are you so sad about? We're going to know him for the rest of our lives.

• There Are No Therapists: Taylor didn't seem to get any after her childhood, or witnessing the Hermit kill himself in front of her. Averted in that it's mentioned several times Jonah went to therapy.
• Urban Warfare: Inverted.

The Cadets are wanna-be soldiers. City people. They may know how to street fight but they don't know how to wade through manure.

• Vitriolic Best Buds: Raffy and Chaz.
• Wham! Line: "And then he told me to close my eyes. And I think I've been afraid to do just that, ever since." Taylor, after the Hermit killed himself in front of her.
  • "And I thought I must have killed a fucker of a bird." He shot Webb.
  • "He was a prick, but even pricks don't deserve to get smashed over the head with a baseball bat." Griggs about his father, taking away any question of whether or not he actually did kill his father.
  • "Taylor. Jude isn't just a Cadet. He's the Brigadier."
• With Friends Like These...: Chaz and Jonah.
• The World Tree: The Prayer Tree.
• Your Mom: Played straight and then lampshaded

Townie: No. That's the beauty of it. They don't actually have to insult. The words Your mother are enough.