Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader(18)

At no point do any of our characters, even Clary—the newcomer who could be expected to poke holes in the establishment—bother to question the fundamental tenets of Shadowhunter life. No one, for example, questions Luke’s expulsion from the Shadowhunter ranks or suggests that he be readmitted (in whatever capacity he could fight at their side), even if he is a werewolf. No one (until the end of the first three books) questions the sharp divisions and political imbalance between Shadowhunters and Downworlders; no one questions the wisdom of keeping all this secret from the mundanes; no one questions the rules of who’s in charge and what the penalties are for disobeying. These are the kinds of questions that Valentine liked to ask. Also known as: unthinkable. As it’s unthinkable for Isabelle to imagine challenging the Clave’s (and her parents’) stance on homosexuality: If they discovered that Alec was gay, she says, they’d disown him, because that’s just the way it works—of course, as we discover, the Lightwoods aren’t so ready as their daughter believes to toss away their son based on an outmoded tradition. But Isabelle assumes they will be, and that “there’s nothing I can do” (City of Bones).





The Tyranny of Choice


“My oath to the Covenant binds me.”

—Jace Wayland, City of Bones

There’s nothing I can do. It’s a constant Shadowhunter refrain.

It’s also a comforting lie, and the biggest reason of all why someone might be tempted to cling to a system of Laws and absolutes—a system that narrows your choices down to one.

In The Paradox of Choice, a book about why the proliferation of choice has made modern Americans increasingly unhappy, psychologist Barry Schwartz argues that the more choices we have, the more opportunity there is for confusion, paralysis, and regret: “As the number of choices keep growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.”

In other words: Choosing for yourself is hard, especially when none of the choices is particularly appealing. Submitting to something like the Clave, an institution that makes your decisions for you, means abdicating the responsibility of choice and so escaping its consequences.

In City of Bones, Clary wants to know: Does Jace really believe it’s right to kill someone in revenge? Jace replies by citing the Law—“A Shadowhunter who kills another of his brothers is worse than a demon and should be put down like one”—and offers this reply “sounding as if he were reciting the words from a textbook.” Faced with a thorny moral predicament, he doesn’t even have to think; the Clave does his thinking for him.

It’s not just the consequences of action that the Law saves you from—it’s the consequence of being yourself. It’s no surprise that of all the characters, Alec is the one with the most knee-jerk fealty to Shadowhunter Law and tradition—even though he is the one with the most to lose. Alec clings to the Law as a shield to hide behind. He can’t be himself, he can’t accept his true feelings, he can’t pursue the one he loves, not because he’s afraid (or so he tells himself), but because the Law forbids it. (Funny, then, that when he’s inscribed with the Fearless rune, he’s suddenly ready to shout the truth to the world.) Clary, hewing for once to a higher law, complains that she can’t be held responsible for her feelings or her actions because all that is inconsequential in the face of love: “When you love someone, you don’t have a choice…Love takes your choices away” (City of Ashes).

They may be using the concept of law for opposite purposes, but Clary and Alec are both taking refuge in the same fantasy of compulsion. They can’t be held responsible for themselves; they have no choice. For Clary, it’s love that decides for her, so she can’t be held accountable for her feelings; for Alec, it’s the Law that forces him to deny his feelings. But in both cases, they’re driven by the same fear: What might happen if they decided for themselves?

“[T]his is how the Clave works,” Alec reminds Jace in City of Glass, when the new Inquisitor lays claim to Simon, supposedly for the purpose of getting him safely back home. “We don’t get to control everything that happens. But you have to trust them, because otherwise everything turns into chaos.” Things in Idris have gotten scary, they’ve gotten real, and there are real lives at stake—including Simon’s. Yes, over the course of two books, Alec and the others have proven their courage and their willingness to take the initiative in a crisis and save the day. But they’ve done so through necessity, stepping up in case of emergency because there was no one else. Now, Alec implies, they can go back to what they were supposed to be doing: playing the obedient, pliable children, letting the grown-ups take over and fix things. Letting the grown-ups make the hard decisions (and then take the blame if and when everything goes to hell).

Alec says we don’t get to control everything that happens—but he means we don’t have to control everything that happens.

It’s a child’s strategy; it’s a coward’s excuse. And so it takes a coward to point out that it’s time to grow up. In the face of Clary’s despair over the probable loss of everything that matters to her, Amatis Herondale tells her exactly what she’s doing wrong and sets the stage for the first trilogy’s triumphant climax: “Oh, Clary. Don’t you see? There’s always something you can do. It’s just people like me who always tell themselves otherwise” (City of Glass). It’s a pivotal moment for the book, and for Clary. She’s been inching toward this realization herself—all those minor rebellions and impertinent questions and treasonous authorities and “inevitable” injustices surely adding up to something—but it’s Amatis who pushes her over the brink. It’s Amatis who aims a spotlight at the terrifying truth Clary hasn’t wanted to see. It’s terrifying because fatalism is easy. Surrender is easy. Taking charge of your own life and your choices, no matter how ugly things get? That can be hard enough to seem impossible.