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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/on_the_jellicoe_road.png]]
2->''I live on the Jellicoe Road. Where trees make canopies overhead and where you can sit at the top of them and see forever.''
3-->-- '''Taylor Markham'''
4
5''On the Jellicoe Road'' (or ''Jellicoe Road'' for US/UK readers) is an Australian novel for young adults by Creator/MelinaMarchetta, author of ''Literature/LookingForAlibrandi'' and ''Literature/SavingFrancesca''. It's the story of Taylor Markham, the reluctant, newly-made leader of the students at the Jellicoe School (located in country New South Wales), as the annual underground war between the students, the nearby Townies, and the Cadets (Sydney boys who come for a six-week training exercise) begins. The closest thing she's got to a parent, Hannah, has mysteriously 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...
6
7Running 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.
8----
9!! This book provides examples of:
10* AbusiveParents: Too many.
11** Oh boy. Jonah's father is probably the worst example, but by no means the only one.
12** Played with concerning [[spoiler: 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.]]
13* ApatheticTeacher: 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.
14* ArcWords: "We're going to know him for the rest of our lives" and variants thereof.
15* ArmorPiercingQuestion: [[spoiler: "What did you use on your father, Griggs? Was it a gun or a knife?"]]
16* AteHisGun: [[spoiler: The Hermit]] killed himself this way.
17* [[ParentalAbandonment Authority Figure Abandonment]]: Hannah mysteriously leaves at the start of the book, which kicks off the plot.
18* BelligerentSexualTension: Taylor and Jonah.
19* BerserkButton: Taylor asking Griggs [[spoiler: how he killed his father]] makes him nearly beat the crap out of her.
20* BigBrotherWorship: Jonah, for his little brother.
21--> My brother is my God. I can't tell you how decent that kid is.
22* BigBrotherInstinct: This and ParentsInDistress is why Jonah [[spoiler: kills his dad]].
23* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Tate dies, but Hannah and Jude get engaged, Taylor gets her mother back for long enough to have an actual relationship, and the friendship between Jonah, Taylor, Chaz, Raffy, Ben and Jessa is cemented.]]
24* BoardingSchool: The Jellicoe School and the Cadets' camp.
25* BreakingTheFellowship: After [[spoiler: Webb dies]], everything falls apart: [[spoiler: 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.]]
26* CallBack: Taylor's middle name is Lily. Lily is [[spoiler: Tate's younger sister, who died in the crash.]]
27* ChekhovsGun: That tunnel Jessa's always going on about, the one her father used to tell her about? It's just a myth, [[TemptingFate right]]?
28* TheChewToy: Ben, who's constantly belittled and abused by the House captains, when he isn't getting beaten up by the Cadets.
29* ChildrenForcedToKill: A young boy is so scared for his mother and brother, the victims of violent abuse, that [[spoiler: he ends up killing his own father.]]
30* CoolAndUnusualPunishment: 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.)
31** 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.
32* DaddyHadAGoodReasonForAbandoningYou: Jessa's dad [[spoiler: Fitz/the Hermit leaves her because he thinks he's bad luck. He keeps to the periphery of her life until he kills himself.]]
33* DisappearedDad: [[spoiler: Fitz, to Jessa, because he thought he was bad luck, and Webb, to Taylor, because Webb died.]]
34* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler: The Hermit and in a slower version Tate]] both commit suicide; [[spoiler: Jonah and maybe Hannah]] were [[InterruptedSuicide stopped before they did]].
35* EarnYourHappyEnding: More like earn your BittersweetEnding.
36* EnemyMine: Taylor, Raffy, Griggs and Santangelo are constantly making deals with each other against each other when they're not fighting.
37* EveryCarIsAPinto: The cars in the crash at the beginning end up blowing up.
38* EvilUncle: Jessa. She also has an Evil Aunt.
39* FaceDeathWithDignity: [[spoiler: Tate, Taylor's mom]] chooses to die this way.
40* {{Fingore}}: Ben is sent to deliver a message. He gets beaten up and his fingers stomped on. Griggs later subverts it, saying that if he'd known how good a violinist Ben is, he'd have picked a different body part.
41* {{Foreshadowing}}: "Someday, I'll be Mrs Dubose and you'll read to me."
42** 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. [[spoiler: In the end it's an electrical fire, and everybody survives, but it still counts as foreshadowing.]]
43** Fitz sticks around the other kids because he feels like they give him meaning. [[spoiler: Decades later, his daughter sticks around the daughter of Tate and Webb because she idolises her.]]
44* FriendshipMoment: Jude with the flower seeds.
45* GenerationXerox: Three Jellicoe kids (Hannah, Webb, and Tate) befriend a Townie (Fitz) and a Cadet (Jude) and become good friends. Decades later, three Jellicoe kids (Taylor ([[spoiler: the daughter of Tate and Webb]]), Ben, and Raffy) befriend, after much arguing, a Townie (Santangelo) and a Cadet (Griggs) and become good friends. In addition, [[spoiler: in both generations, one of the Jellicoe kids gets together with the Cadet- Hannah with Jude, and Taylor with Griggs.]]
46* GenreMashup: The 'band' put together by the three groups consists of two guitarists, a DJ and a violinist. It works. Somehow.
47* GilliganCut: Before breaking into [[spoiler: the Brigadier's tent]].
48--> "I'm going home," [Santangelo] says, ignoring my question. "Count me out."
49--> Raffy dismisses him with a shrug. "We'll do it on our own, Taylor. Joe Salvatore said he was hopeless under pressure, anyway."
50--> ----
51--> It doesn't take Santangelo long to get the lock open.
52* HarmfulToMinors:
53** Taylor saw [[spoiler: Fitz kill himself]] and had to deal with her mother's drug addiction for years.
54** Two young children are left with a child molester to care for them. [[spoiler: Taylor was the lucky one. Her friend wasn't.]]
55* TheHeart: Webb was to the original group. It's combined with WeWereYourTeam and BreakingTheFellowship in that [[spoiler: once he dies, the group breaks up, unable to handle the trauma.]]
56* HopeSpot: Taylor ends up hoping that Fitz is still alive. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, she witnessed him blowing his brains out years before. She didn't know who he was at the time, though.]]
57* IDieFree: [[spoiler: Tate]] makes an effort to get off drugs while terminally ill.
58* InNameOnly: [[spoiler: The tunnel. It's basically a few metres of tiny, cramped hole that's so dark it gives people nightmares.]]
59* InterruptedSuicide: Though Taylor didn't realize it at the time, [[spoiler: she was this to Jonah]]. She was also the reason [[spoiler: Tate's slow suicide took seventeen years]] instead of happening immediately. Subverted with [[spoiler: Fitz, aka the Hermit]], who Taylor had to witness die. [[spoiler: Tate]] and the rest of the group also may have interrupted [[spoiler: Hannah's]] attempt.
60* IronicEcho: The territory wars started as [[spoiler: a game, for fun, played by three groups of friends]] and ended as serious rivalry.
61* LivingEmotionalCrutch: Taylor to Jonah and [[spoiler: Tate]]; Webb to his entire team, especially Fitz; and Hannah for Taylor.
62* LukeIAmYourFather: It's played straight with Taylor, who finds out who her dad is [[spoiler: the boy in the picture]] and her aunt is [[spoiler: Hannah]]. This is played with for Jessa; Taylor (a third party) finds out her father is [[spoiler: the Hermit]] late in the story, but its unclear if Jessa connects her dad to [[spoiler: the person who killed himself]].
63* MamaBear: Tate for Hannah.
64** Trini, a side character, feels this way.
65---> If those cadets come near my Year Sevens again, I will maim them.
66** Tate, when she finds out [[spoiler: her neighbor left her daughter and a friend with a child molester]], goes berserk.
67* MeaningfulEcho: A number of them throughout the story. One also combines with BookEnds:
68--> The book starts with the line "My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted."
69--> The last chapter has Taylor thinking [[spoiler: "My mother took seventeen years to die. I counted."]]
70* MeasuringTheMarigolds: When Webb and Jude look at a beautiful landscape, Webb sees a beautiful landscape and Jude sees a prospective fighting ground.
71* MilitarySchool: It's assumed that's where the Cadets go to school.
72* MissingMom: Taylor's mother abandoned her years before the story started.
73* MoodWhiplash: Taylor references this when she says that she feels like an abusive father, one second a monster, and the next human.
74** 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 [[spoiler: killed an innocent man]].
75* MotorMouth: Jessa never, ever shuts up.
76* NowIKnowWhatToNameHim: [[spoiler: Webb had a dream that he met Taylor, who told him her name.]]
77* ParentsInDistress: To protect his mom (and brother) Jonah [[spoiler: kills his dad]].
78* PlotParallel: Taylor and co spend a lot of the book trying to find out what happened to her parents. [[spoiler: Hannah's story tells us exactly what happened, so by the time we realise exactly who they all are, the pieces start falling into place.]]
79* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Chaz's dad, who is a decent guy and a good cop.
80* TheReveal: [[spoiler: The real identities of the five kids in Hannah's story: Narnie is Hannah, Jude is the Brigadier, Webb is Taylor's dead father, Tate is Taylor's absent mother, and Fitz is the Hermit and Jessa's father.]]
81* RuleOfDrama: The two cars containing [[spoiler:Webb's and Narnie's parents, and Tate's parents and sister]] survive more than two hours after the collision and wait patiently for [[spoiler:Fitz]] to pull all the survivors and the bodies out of both cars ... and then [[EveryCarIsAPinto explode spectacularly]] a mere minute after the last person gets clear.
82* SanitySlippage: Taylor goes slowly insane over the first half of the book. She gets better, though.
83* [[spoiler: SelfMadeOrphan: Played half-straight. Jonah killed his father, but his mother's still alive. The bastard deserved it, though.]]
84* ShesNotMyGirlfriend: Taylor denies that she's Jonah's girlfriend at one point. She's not, but [[ShipperOnDeck Raffy and Ben]] still make sure the girls who were trying to flirt with him know he's unavailable.
85* ShootTheMessenger: Ben gets his fingers stomped on for being the messenger.
86* SocialServicesDoesNotExist: Apparently nobody noticed that [[spoiler: Jonah's father was abusing his family to the point that his son ended up killing him because there was no way out.]]
87* StayWithMeUntilIDie: [[spoiler: Tate asks Hannah to be her Mrs Dubose. Hannah's agreement kicks off the main plot.]]
88* TagalongKid: Jessa for Taylor. Taylor hates it.
89* TalkingInYourDreams: [[spoiler: Webb dreamed of Taylor, which is where he got her name, and Taylor dreams of Webb, but she only knows him as 'the boy in the tree'.]]
90* TeamMom: Raffy.
91* ThereAreNoTherapists: Taylor didn't seem to get any after her childhood, or witnessing [[spoiler: the Hermit]] kill himself in front of her. Averted in that it's mentioned several times Jonah went to therapy.
92* TheseHandsHaveKilled: Jonah does look at his hands and talk about regret.
93* TheTopicOfCancer: [[spoiler: Tate dies, because ThePowerOfLove and a reunited family aren't going to stop cancer. Nobody ends up magically getting along well, but with time and effort, they make a reasonable start.]]
94* TrueCompanions: There are two circles of close friends, tied by blood. The first is Narnie, Tate, Fitz, Webb and Jude, also known as [[spoiler: Hannah [Taylor's aunt], Taylor's mom, the Hermit, Taylor's dad and the Brigadier]]. The second one is Taylor, Jonah, Raffy, Ben and Chaz.
95-->'''Chaz''': What are you so sad about? We're going to know him for the rest of our lives.
96* TwoLinesNoWaiting: The main plot runs alongside the story of the original friends.
97* UrbanWarfare: Inverted.
98--> 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.
99* VitriolicBestBuds: Raffy and Chaz go way back, and while they squabble constantly, they clearly care deeply about each other.
100* WhamLine: "And then he told me to close my eyes. And I think I've been afraid to do just that, ever since." [[spoiler: Taylor, after the Hermit killed himself in front of her.]]
101** "And I thought I must have killed a fucker of a bird." [[spoiler: He shot Webb.]]
102** "He was a prick, but even pricks don't deserve to get smashed over the head with a baseball bat." [[spoiler: Griggs about his father, taking away any question of whether or not he actually did kill his father.]]
103** "Taylor. Jude isn't just a Cadet. [[spoiler: He's the Brigadier.]]"
104** "I wasn't there to get on the three forty-seven to Yass. [[spoiler: I was there to throw myself in front of it." Jonah, to Taylor.]]
105* WithFriendsLikeThese: Chaz and Jonah.
106* TheWorldTree: The Prayer Tree, an ancient, huge tree that gives anyone at the top a view of the countryside for miles.
107* YourMom: Played straight and then [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]]
108-->'''Townie''': No. That's the beauty of it. They don't actually have to insult. The words ''Your mother'' are enough.

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