Blood Isn't Love

""Blood isn't love," said Magnus, and his voice was bitter. "Just ask Clary"". This is a constant idea portrayed in "The City of Ashes". That blood doesn't strengthen love, nor does it create love, shown in many parts of the book and through characters.

In the book, "The City of Ashes" by Cassandra Clare, the protagonist of this series, 16-year-old Clary Fray, discovers she is secretly part of the shadow-hunter community; a race of underground demon hunters. Throughout the series, Clary struggles to define who she is and where and who she fits in with in her new life, and who her family is in the literal and metaphoric way. She learns she has a father and a brother in this new life that her mother left behind in order to safely raise Clary as a mundane/human, free of violence and death. But Clary feels no blood relation to either of them, and is actually disgusted by her family situation, not wanting to share blood with either of them.

Throughout the series Clary learns that blood and your relation to someone isn't love, but your actual feelings and that person internally is what makes it real.

In this book, Clary learns her biological father, Valentine Morgernstern, is trying to undermine the shadow-hunter authorities, the Clave at what ever means necessary, even murder. In "The City of Ashes", when Clary alone is first confronted by her father, he says to her: "But isn't that what love is Clarissa?...Ownership?” meaning that love comes with connection, blood connection. When someone is your mother, your father or your child, and to love is to own, in his eyes that's what love is. Ownership. Clarys' response is "No...I don't think you get it...it's not just that someone belongs to you, it's that you give yourself to someone...". Clary sees and understands that just because someone is yours, does not necessarily mean you own, or love them. It's a matter of if you gave yourself to them and they gave themself to you. What made Clary able to fight Valentine was her strong belief that what he was doing was wrong, so biological father or not, she had no inclination or reason to be attached to someone who had never before been in her life. This is an important message for teens to be exposed to because it teaches readers that love isn't something that is chosen or defined for you, but is something you choose and define for yourself, whether you love your blood or not, but also teaches readers that not loving your blood is okay, because love is something that you earn not something that is given to you by association.

In addition, when Clary first met Jace Wayland, a closed off and traumatized shadow-hunter boy, they fell head over heels in love. Jace who had been raised to think that loving was a weakness, something that would mean destroying or to be destroyed, had met someone who taught him love made you stronger and not weaker. But there was one small problem with their happy ending. Clary and Jace were actually biological siblings. Although Clary knew they no longer had any potential future or relationship together, her feelings did not waver, nor did they switch to one of sibling affection. She could not share or act upon her feelings but she never actually tried to diffuse her feelings, only satisfied herself by being in his presence and life, even as a sister. As said in the book, "...desire is not always lessened by disgust...". Clary knows her family and friends would be disgusted if she and Jace were together, but she never tries to stop the way she feels because she know her love for Jace isn't disgusting. She can't see Jace as a brother the way she could never see Valentine as her father. Clary teaches us that regardless of whom you love, you should never dismiss how you really feel about someone.

Lastly, the way Clary chose to love Luke as a father figure teaches readers that blood isn't love. Although Luke was just an old friend from Clarys' mothers' past shadow-hunter life, he was the man who Clary loved and was loved by and admired. As said in the book, it was Luke who was snapping away with picture at her graduation, and pushing her on the swings and teaching her how to swim. Clary, was brought up thinking her biological mundane, father had died, felt no real emotional attachment to her father because she never knew him and never deluded herself into feeling the loss of a stranger when she had always had a dad -Luke- so why should she cry over a stranger she just calls dad?

With this book Cassandra Clare efficiently uses Clary to teach young adult readers that blood and family do not define love, but how you really feel about someone. Love is not something that should be stopped or limited but something that is limitless with no real definition, that is honest and real. This is something important for adolescents to be exposed to because it teaches them to not waste their time or affection on someone that isn't worth it just because their your dad or mom or your sibling, but to only give your affection to someone worthy of you and your feelings. Love shouldn't be given to someone just because their there but because your actual feelings for them.