Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader(31)

ASKING FOR A FRIEND

So much of life as a teenager is spent trying to find that special person. Maybe you know the one I mean.

The person who always seems to get you, the one you can call at any time day or night for reassurance or bail money, the one you talk to for hours sharing your darkest secrets without ever worrying they’ll tell, the one who always, always has your back no matter what idiot thing you just did. The one you have inside jokes with, and ice cream binges, and bad movie marathons. The one whose betrayal would break your heart and smash your soul into teeny-tiny pieces with the pure shock of it.

Who doesn’t remember this yearning? And if you think I’m talking about love, well, you’d be wrong—at least in part. Sure, we all want to meet a gorgeous being who longs to make out with us and whom we long to make out with in return. But when I think back to my teen years, to the people I dated, it’s usually with half-affectionate, half-mortified laughter. We were so young, so inept and ill-suited for each other. We were actively bad at making out. The dissection of everything that happened on a date afterward with friends was usually way more fun than the date itself.

So, no, the relationship nostalgia I’m talking about is a different kind entirely, and I’d bet I’m not alone. And this need sticks with you into adulthood, perhaps evolving, but still there (and if you’re lucky, met). It’s something that can be just as important as romantic love but is rarely treated that way in stories: friendship.

But the Mortal Instruments series is an exception. The phenomenon of undervaluing friendships—or at the very least taking them for granted—can sometimes be a side effect of the understandable focus many readers have on the series’ great epic loves—Clary and Jace, Alec and Magnus, Isabelle and Simon (a girl can hope). But Cassandra Clare never forgets how important friendships are in her characters’ lives. The novels never give short shrift to the other epic love stories being told too, the ones that involve old friends, new friends, and, most important of all, best friends.





Beyond the One True Pairing


The lack of attention given to just-friendship when love is also in the air has been noted before. No less than C. S. Lewis—himself one half of a famous literary bromance with J.R.R. Tolkien—wrote in Four Loves, “To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.” Of course, a few paragraphs later, he also nails one of the reasons why that’s so, pointing out that there’s “nothing throaty about it, nothing that quickens the pulse or turns you red and pale.” Romantic love is more dramatic, more edge of the seat. Hearts pound, palms sweat, cheeks burn, breath quickens. Friendship has different, subtler effects. It brings other rewards, and other costs.

I’m not disputing the importance of connections centered on romantic love, because that would be insane. Clary + Jace = forever. What I’m suggesting is that the connections of friendship in the series are just as real, strong, and important as the smooch-inclined ones. But it’s also not as if those types of relationships and friendship are mutually exclusive, so some further definition is in order to make clear where friendship fits into the mix.

Acknowledging areas of overlap is important partially because the overarching story of the series, in which Team Good battles Team Evil (or, at times, Team Less Good) to protect the world, is played out primarily through relationships. The Mortal Instruments is all about the ever-evolving connections between people, whether they’re human or supernatural beings. Clare explores a wide variety of relationships over the course of the series, all with their own specific depth and complexity: fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, Shadowhunters in a parabatai bond, siblings (including those who turn out not to be siblings after all, whew), to tick off just a few examples. Throw the bad history between Downworlders and Shadowhunters or the natural dislike between vampires and werewolves into the mix and things get even more interesting. But since we’re talking here about one specific variety of relationship—friendship—what is it that makes a friend a friend?

The answer isn’t entirely straightforward. Without a doubt, friendship can be a facet of another type of relationship, such as a romance or a sibling bond. But it’s just as telling that it isn’t always present. We all know people whose familial relationships definitely don’t come with the kind of easy closeness and unstated trust that characterizes the best friendships. The phrase “close as sisters” may be used to describe friends, but we all know sisters who aren’t close at all. Can friendship be separated from a romance in the same way? Of course it can. Anyone who’s ever broken up with someone only to never see or speak to them again can vouch for that. For the purposes of this essay, I’m defining friendship as a specific form of closeness that may be the sole basis of a relationship—as with Clary and Simon—or may be an additional element of a relationship—as with Alec and Jace. Friendships aren’t forced into existence by bonds of blood or sexual history and chemistry. On some level, a friendship always requires a choice. And, as the Mortal Instruments clearly demonstrates, that choice can be one of the most important ones we ever make.

Notably, in City of Bones, the first relationship we’re introduced to is one that will be among the most significant of the series. When we meet Clary and Simon heading into Pandemonium, everything about the way they are with each other signals that they have a long-established friendship. The ease with which they banter and the way they so clearly know each other’s preferences (Clary informing Simon that he hates trance music) shows off their common friend shorthand. Simon immediately trusts what Clary says and goes for help when she reveals she’s seen two strange boys with knives, even if he didn’t see them. All of this lets us know that this isn’t going to be one of those books where the protagonist’s so-called best friend disappears the moment the sexier members of the “other” world make an appearance. Simon is important. And Clary and Simon’s friendship will be tested, as much as any other relationship in the series.