City of Bones Essay

The novel City Of Bones by Cassandra Clare follows the main character 15 year-old Clary Fray in her journey to find her missing mother. Clare takes the typical Fairy Tail and turns it upside down. The main ideas that stick out to me in this film is Love, Jealousy and prejudice. An important idea for me in the novel City Of Bones is the idea of love. In the book Clary falls the handsome Shadowhunter (half angel, half human) Jace Wayland. In the middle of all the chaos and fight they find time to fall for each other and form a powerful bond. I found it interesting how Clare wrote about love. She perceived it to be very powerful and absolute. Which i don’t disagree with, but for teenagers its very different. When she wrote of their love with such power it confused me, it also made the writing more captivating as the story unraveled and left me wanting to know what happened next. This idea made me think of societies view on young love, how society thinks young relationships don’t last and aren’t serious. It also challenged my view on the subject and made me think that it’s possible to find the one you love when you are young. â€Å"The most terrible things men do, they do in the name of love. – I think this quote shows the power that love has in this novel. I found the idea of love important because it is a clear motivator throughout the novel. An aspect I found intriguing in this novel was the requiring theme of jealously. As Clary and Jace are falling for each other Clary’s childhood best friend, Simon, gets extremely jealous. â€Å"I was trying to make you jealous! † Simon screamed at one point when he couldn’t hold it in any longer. â€Å"You’re so stupid, Clary. You’re so stupid, can’t you see anything? † Clary is oblivious to Simon’s feeling towards her. This theme made me reconsider famous love stories that also had themes of jealously, for example Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, Darcy was jealous of Mr Wickham. Also in Jane Eyre where Jane was Jealous of Rochester’s wife. It made me think of the writing and how jealously contributes to the love in the story. I found this requiring theme intriguing because it showed the unrequited love between Clary and Simon which I found really contributed to the novel and gave it that extra plot twist. Another aspect in the novel that I found important was the idea of prejudice. In the novel prejudice is shown against Downworlders (half demon, half human for example vampires, werewolves, warlocks etc), women and gay people. The Shadowhunters see Downworlders as scum because they are half demon, which are their natural enemy, but not all of them are bad. Prejudice is seen against women because it was only recently that women were aloud to fight against demons and even now they are seen not to be as good as the men. Being gay in the shadow world is also frowned because Shadowhunters are very proud of family and the family name so being gay won’t carry on the bloodline. So they’re good enough to let live, good enough to make your food for you, good enough to flirt with—but not really good enough? I mean, not as good as people? † – This quote is referring to Downworlders and how they are only good for somethings. I think this idea links to our society today and also parts in history because women use to not be aloud to vote and were seen as housewives just like in City of Bones. Also in the novel Downworlders are kind of treated like coloured people were in the early 18-century, expect not to the extend that the coloured people were treated. The idea of prejudice against gay people links to our society because our society is prejudice against gays. I found this idea important because it helped me see the links between the novel and real-life situations. The novel City of Bones by Cassandra Clare challenged my thinking about love, jealously and prejudice and helped me understand more about them and how they like to other novels and our society. I would definitely recommend this novel to other people so they can enjoy it as much as i did.