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Mya Babcock

Mrs. Cramer

Comp PD. 8

15 November 2019

Traditions Don’t Have to Stay Traditions

Situations such as bullying, sexual assault, and stigma around talking about women’s

health is normalized in today’s society. The book, Tradition tries using situations that happen

often in today’s society with the hope that teenagers can relate to what’s going on in the book

and connect on a personal level. A major theme that reoccurs throughout his book is that the

main characters in the book are trying to change the traditions that their school is known to have

because they aren’t appropriate, and most are condescending in several ways, so they don’t agree

with them. Brendan Kiely’s Tradition depicts current issues of sexual assault, the stigma around

talking about women’s health, bullying, and it gives the reader hope that things could change for

the better.

First, sexual assault is sadly a major situation that happens nowadays, and in this book, it

just never got talked about by anyone. Throughout this book, the hockey team was all for it, but

never would consider it as that. Using hockey pucks, the players would tally their one-night

stands in their windows. As the players saw others getting more pucks, the team would

congratulate the one who had the most pucks. They saw it as a competition of who could sleep

with the most girls, and have nothing to do with the girls after. They treated girls as if they were

all objects and were only good for one thing. Also, throughout the book, there was high school

parties with drinking and drugs. At one of the parties, one of the main characters, Jules, was
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sexually assaulted by her ex-boyfriend, Ethan. “Come on, for old times’ sake.” (Kiely, Pg. 175)

Her ex-boyfriend was drunk and took her into the woods, and even despite her telling him “No.”

several times, he didn’t listen to her, and was trying to force Jules to kiss him. He believed it was

okay because they used to date. “His hands were everywhere, and I couldn’t move, pinned by his

weight.” (Kiely, Pg. 176) After she repeatedly told him that she didn’t want to do anything, he

continued to take advantage of her. While he was assaulting her, she was fighting to push him

off, but she wasn’t strong enough to get him away, so she had to go through that until Gillian,

Ethan’s current girlfriend, found them. After this assault happened to Jules, it opened her eyes,

and made her push for the tradition of taking advantage of girls to be stopped and put to an end,

because it wasn’t right and nobody ever paid attention to how messed up it was.

Another major thing that Jules wanted to change was the stigma around talking about

women’s health. Everyone always seemed to be grossed out or uncomfortable by the topic.

Anytime it would be brought up, people would complain or ask for the conversation to stop. On

the first day of the new school year, Jules had a table set up where the newcomers were coming

in. A mother grabbed one of Jules’s pamphlets and read the title. She didn’t believe it was

appropriate. (Kiely, Pg. 17) Jules was handing out flyers about women’s health and how to stay

safe and how to take care of yourself, and a woman was uncomfortable with it. A woman was

offended by something that we have to deal with every day, so the mother took the pamphlet out

of her daughter’s hand and then reported Jules for trying to spread awareness about something

that should be talked about. Another major thing that signified that others become uncomfortable

with this topic was over a tampon. A student spotted a tampon on a desk and was offended by it.

(Kiely, Pg. 80) Jules was in class and she had to go to the bathroom, so she got out a tampon, but

then realized she shouldn’t leave class, so she set the tampon down on her desk. Others in the
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class noticed the tampon and were distracted by it, which drew attention of her teacher. He then

noticed that she had the tampon sitting where everyone could see it. He made a big deal out of it

and proceeded to accuse Jules of disrupting the class. Jules pointed out that it’s part of everyday

life. (Kiely, Pg. 81) Jules began to question why everyone was grossed out by it because it is

something girls deal with on a daily basis, and shouldn’t be a big issue to talk about. After all

that she went through, she decided that this topic should be normalized and shouldn’t be

something that people can’t talk about.

Also, bullying is also something that happened a lot throughout this book. For example, a

tradition for the new coming girls every year was to stand in front of the upperclassmen and see

how far they can fit a banana down their throat. Jules knew how being in that position felt, so to

save the new girls the embarrassment, Jules did it again, but in the most obnoxious way possible,

so the attention would be taken off the younger girls. The upperclassmen stated that they

shouldn’t be like Jules. (Kiely, Pg. 95) One of the upperclassmen said that to the younger girls in

a way to put Jules down after Jules did that. Also, for the Winter Ball, an upperclassmen guy is

paired up with an underclassmen girl. After the dance is the “Senior send-off" which is basically

the senior guy sleeping with his date to the ball and then never associating with her again. Jules

tried giving one of the girls advice for that night and the young girl was ignorant about it. The

upperclassmen girls called Jules crazy and clingy. (Kiely, Pg. 286) That’s what the

upperclassmen girls were telling the underclassmen about Jules. Everyone called Jules crazy and

paranoid because she was one of the only ones trying to change what needed changed. Even with

the bullying, she still continued to try and change what needed to be different.

Brendan Kiely’s Tradition did an amazing job at depicting the current issues of sexual

assault, the stigma about discussing women’s health, and the bullying that goes on, and it showed
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me that things really could be changed for the better. Throughout the book, we were shown the

problems with that specific school, and we were taken on the journey of the main characters

trying to fix what was “broken” there. Even with all the struggles and obstacles that were thrown

at the main characters, they still pushed through it all and kept trying their hardest to make a

change.
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Works Cited

Kiely, Brandon. Tradition. New York. MARGARET K. McELDERRY BOOKS, 2018.

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