Free Shadowhunters and Downworlders by Cassandra Clare Page B

kinds of questions that
Valentine
liked to ask. Also knownas: 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
    â€œMy oath to the Covenant binds me.”
    â€”
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 hisfeelings. But in both cases, they’re driven by the same fear: What might happen if they decided for themselves?
    â€œ[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