Not Quite Dead Yet
57 pages • 1-hour read
Holly JacksonNot Quite Dead Yet
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child death, graphic violence, cursing, illness, and death.
The Value of Living in the Present
Jet’s defining characteristic throughout the first part of Not Quite Dead Yet is her dissatisfaction with her current life. She insists that she can fix it in the future but makes no real effort to do so. With her diagnosis, however, Jet’s focus shifts to the present, and as her story develops, the novel explores the benefits of enjoying everyday life and living in the now.
When the novel begins, Jet feels miserable in her current life and is constantly looking toward the future. She has no job and spends her time coming up with different ideas, like an app for dog walking, that she hopes will make money with minimal effort. She has dropped out of school and returned home to live with her parents, while also despising both her family and the people of Woodstock. Even after she learns she is going to die, she lashes out against her family, isolates herself, and focuses on the investigation, which she has determined will define her legacy and be the “something big” she always dreamed of doing. Jet’s thoughts and actions are rooted in her indeterminate vision for her future, emphasizing her inability to enjoy and value her present everyday life. As she asks Billy about his guitar playing, “[W]hat’s the point in doing it, if it’s not to achieve something big?” (145). She starts the novel with no friends or familial relations, no real goals, and a general lack of direction, failing to value the present and instead looking toward the future.
Over the course of the murder investigation, however, Jet changes. Paradoxically, it is only once Jet faces death that she learns to enjoy living her life, underscoring the importance of changing before it is too late. After spending the first several days panicking about the investigation, harassing people, and insisting that they need to help her because she is dying, Jet has a moment of clarity when she walks home with Billy. She asks him to simply walk around town with her, and they end up lying in the grass and looking at the stars. Jet appreciates her time with him and simply enjoys the moment for the first time in the text. She makes this shift more explicit when she calls Billy from jail, telling him:
Looking up at the stars […] I didn’t want to stop because I was having too much fun. I was just being…well, me, being an asshole, but I think that, maybe, I accidentally stumbled upon it. […] Billy, this past week, I haven’t really been dying. I think, maybe, it’s the opposite. I’ve finally been living. And that’s all because of you. You showed me (318).
With Billy’s help, Jet finally learns to value the small things in her life that make it worth living. Instead of expecting something to happen that will make her happy, she realizes that spending time with people like Billy, doing simple things like looking at the stars, and living in the present are what truly hold value in life. Although Jet’s ending is tragic, her journey throughout the novel conveys an important message about the benefits of living in the present and enjoying the small moments of everyday life.
Reconciling With the Past
As Jet tries to uncover the mystery of her murder, several other secrets come to light within her family, some stemming back to her childhood. She discovers that her brother, Luke, killed her sister, while Luke’s real father, Jack, covered it up and kept his identity a secret. Her mother had an affair with Jack for years, hiding it from everyone in her family, even as Luke discovered the truth on his own. In addition, although the family gives the impression that they are wealthy and powerful, Mason Construction has actually been struggling for years, with Luke turning to fraud and theft to try to keep it afloat. The Mason family made every effort to hide their past, failing to appropriately reconcile or address their wrongdoings. As a result, each of these secrets leads to disastrous consequences, coming to a head as the truths come out during Jet’s investigation.
Jackson’s novel emphasizes the importance of facing the truth and the dangers of keeping secrets. Jet’s murder is a direct result of her family’s secrets, as Jack killed her both out of anger for Dianne’s spurning of him and to ensure that Scott left Mason Construction to Luke. Had their affair been exposed years before—starting with the admission of Emily’s death—it would not have festered and spiraled into the violent attack on Jet. Similarly, within Mason Construction, the business’s debt and Scott’s decision to keep his sale of the business a secret lead to Sophia’s poisoning of Scott and ultimately the burning down of the offices. One character outside the family who exemplifies the danger of hiding the past is Henry. Through no fault of his own, he is injured while at work, accrues insurmountable hospital debt, and is unable to pay for his surgery. Had Mason Construction addressed its financial troubles appropriately, he would not have been taken off the payroll and would have been covered by insurance. Ultimately, Jet’s decision to leave her money and belongings to Henry emphasizes her desire to finally reconcile with the past: She is attempting to right a wrong done by her family’s business, even if she can only do so in death.
Through each of these conflicts that unfold throughout Not Quite Dead Yet, Jackson conveys the dangers of failing to face the past. The consequences are extreme—murder, arson, and financial fraud—and emphasize the lasting and widespread implications of secrets and deception. Through her investigation, Jet exposes the truths her family has hidden for so long, forcing them to finally reconcile with what they’ve done, leaving their lives in ruin but giving them a chance to finally move on and heal.
The Connection Between Privilege and Corruption
In Not Quite Dead Yet, right and wrong are defined by consequences rather than any sort of moral compass. This is largely true because of the entitlement of the characters who are followed: Jet and her family are extremely wealthy and prominent in the community, while Jack and Billy have the influence of the police department. The privilege of these characters allows them to function and even thrive for years despite their transgressions, insulated from consequences by their wealth and authoritative positions in the community. Through Jet’s quest to discover her killer, Jackson explores how her privilege, when coupled with the urgent need to find her murderer, leads to moral corruption as she sets her ethics aside to serve her own interests.
Nearly every central character in the novel is morally ambiguous, committing acts of violence, fraud, adultery, or even murder with little remorse. For the last 17 years, Luke and Jack have kept the murder of 16-year-old Emily a secret, allowing Luke to rise to prominence in the company and community and Jack to become an important ranking member in the police force. At the same time, Jet’s mother, Dianne, has kept her affair with Jack a secret, also hiding the identity of Luke’s father and, by extension, facilitating Jack’s violence and anger toward Jet. Similarly, Sophia spends months essentially poisoning Luke’s father to force him to retire, an act that Jet effectively hides from the police and largely dismisses as unimportant. The list of wrongdoings in the novel goes on to the point where the discovery of their criminality becomes commonplace throughout Jet’s murder investigation. These characters utilize their privilege to escape consequences, and they are disconnected from the idea of morality, caring little about who their actions hurt.
Although Jet begins the novel as a morally upright character, she slowly descends into the moral ambiguity of the other characters as she tries to solve her murder. Initially, this manifests in increasingly rude behavior to characters like Dianne, Detective Ecker, and Owen, who try to help her, insisting that she has “no time” to be polite or wait. Then, she crosses the line into illegality, breaking into her father’s office and threatening Luke with a gun to get him to confess. She also fails to report on the truth of Emily’s murder, the fraud within Mason Construction, and Sophia’s harming of her father, considering those crimes to be of lesser importance than her own murder. Through Jet’s character, the novel points to an important truth about how privilege can lead to corruption—when she judges her problems more important, Jet uses her privilege to achieve her own ends, regardless of the morality of her actions.
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