City of Bones

“‘No. I mean, if there were other people around, but you were the only one who could see something. As if it were invisible to everyone but you.’

He hesitated, still kneeling, the dented tape gun gripped in his hand.

‘I know it sounds crazy,’ Clary ventured nervously, ‘but . . .’

He turned around. His eyes, very blue behind the glasses, rested on her with a look of firm affection. ‘Clary, you’re an artist, like your mother. That means you see the world in ways that other people don’t. It’s your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn’t make you crazy—just different. There’s nothing wrong with being different.’”

This conversation between Luke and Clary comes after Clary is able to see the Shadowhunters but Simon was not, and it calls to the theme Being Different Doesn’t Make Someone Better. Being different is sometimes associated with being wrong or with the mind not functioning as it is “supposed” to. Luke’s answer to Clary’s question supports the idea that there is no one way the mind is supposed to function. Different ways of viewing the world are normal and valid, even if those ways deviate greatly from a perceived norm. In terms of the storyline, this is one of the first times we see Luke avoiding the truth. It’s possible he knows Clary refers to the Shadow world here, and his answer is a hint that she is capable of seeing things most people don’t see.

“‘I’m dangerous?’ Clary echoed in astonishment. ‘I saw you kill someone last night. I saw you drive a knife up under his ribs, and—’ And I saw him slash at you with fingers like razor blades. I saw you cut and bleeding, and now you look as if nothing ever touched you.

‘I may be a killer,’ Jace said, ‘but I know what I am. Can you say the same?’”

Here, Clary confronts Jace outside the coffee shop where the poetry reading takes place. This is the first time Clary is forced to confront what she saw at Pandemonium and accept that there might be more to the world than she previously thought. Jace’s admission he’s a killer shows his confidence as well as his ironclad belief in who he is. His feelings for Clary haven’t penetrated his image of himself yet, and as a result he sees himself as only one thing—a Shadowhunter who kills demons. He doesn’t believe he needs or can be anything else, and compared to Clary, who is just starting to figure out the many pieces of herself, he appears completely self-assured. Since Jace later falls apart when he’s confronted with the idea that his growth as a person isn’t complete, his confidence here suggests that unwavering belief in who we are may be a mask to hide uncertainty.

“The dreams held her, one after the other, a river of images that bore her along like a leaf tossed in a current. She saw her mother lying in a hospital bed, eyes like bruises in her white face. She saw Luke, standing atop a pile of bones. Jace with white feathered wings sprouting out of his back, Isabelle sitting naked with her whip curled around her like a net of gold rings, Simon with crosses burned into the palms of his hands. Angels, falling and burning. Falling out of the sky.”

These lines come while Clary sleeps off the effects of the ravener poison. This dream shows her things that happen later in City of Bones, snippets of the past, and images that align with events from later in the series. Her mother’s sleep foreshadows the actual slumber her mother is in and how she isn’t woken by the end of the book. Luke atop the bones may be a memory that Magnus’s spell took from Clary because it outed Luke as a werewolf. Clary doesn’t yet know about the Shadow world yet, so the image of Jace foreshadows her learning about the connection between Shadowhunters and angels. Isabelle shows her as vulnerable, when she seemed completely confident at Pandemonium, and the crosses in Simon’s hands allude to how he later becomes a vampire. The falling angels foreshadow the division amidst the Shadowhunters and the great war later in the series. The origin of these images is never made clear, but it may be that Shadowhunter blood makes a Shadowhunter’s dreams into prophetic images. It may also be that the demon poison somehow lets Clary’s mind see across the past and future.

“The red ink looked like blood against the white paper. Frowning, Hodge Starkweather rolled the letter, carefully and meticulously, into the shape of a tube, and whistled for Hugo. The bird, cawing softly, settled on his wrist. Hodge winced. Years ago, in the Uprising, he had sustained a wound to that shoulder, and even as light a weight as Hugo’s—or the turn of a season, a change in temperature or humidity, too sudden a movement of his arm—awakened old twinges and the memories of pains better forgotten.

There were some memories, though, that never faded. Images burst like flashbulbs behind his lids when he closed his eyes. Blood and bodies, trampled earth, a white podium stained with red. The cries of the dying. The green and rolling fields of Idris and its endless blue sky, pierced by the towers of the Glass City. The pain of loss surged up inside him like a wave; he tightened his fist, and Hugo, wings fluttering, pecked angrily at his fingers, drawing blood. Opening his hand, Hodge released the bird, who circled his head as he flew up to the skylight and then vanished.

Shaking off his sense of foreboding, Hodge reached for another piece of paper, not noticing the scarlet drops that smeared the paper as he wrote.”

This passage of Hodge’s thoughts comes after he agrees Clary can return home to look for clues about her mother as long as she takes Jace. This is the only time we see Hodge’s thoughts, and the vagueness of his memories is intentional on Clare’s part. Hodge later reveals he fought on Valentine’s side at the uprising against the Clave, and these lines are meant to hint that all may not be as it appears where Hodge is concerned. Hugo is later revealed to be Valentine’s bird, and the bird’s violent tendencies here foreshadow that Hodge works for Valentine still. It is likely the message Hodge sends here is to Valentine, and it may be that Hodge decided to help Valentine at this point because he recognized Clary and knew she could lead him to the Mortal Cup, which Hodge later trades for his freedom.

“He scowled furiously, silencing her. ‘I do not do magic,’ he said. ‘Get it through your head: Human beings are not magic users. It’s part of what makes them human. Warlocks can only use magic because they have demon blood.’

Clary took a moment to process this. ‘But I’ve seen you use magic. You use enchanted weapons—’

‘I use tools that are magical. And just to be able to do that, I have to undergo rigorous training. The rune tattoos on my skin protect me too. If you tried to use one of the seraph blades, for instance, it’d probably burn your skin, maybe kill you.’”

This conversation between Jace and Clary takes place while they are in Madam Dorothea’s apartment the first time. Jace is disgusted with the books Madam Dorothea has in her study, and he interrupts Clary in the middle of lecturing him about how he isn’t better than humans because the magic he uses is different. Jace’s response is a key difference between Shadowhunters and Down-worlders. While Shadowhunters use magical instruments, they cannot themselves wield any type of magic, whereas Down-worlders, particularly warlocks, are born of demonic magic and thus can either wield it or innately use abilities it offers. As a whole, the discussion speaks to how a single thing may be used in many different ways. Down-worlders use magic in a purer form, but even among them, the way magic affects them is different. As the antithesis of demons, Shadowhunters require protections to even touch objects of magic, and those objects are not the same as using magic itself.

“‘No, thank God. Most of the time the Lightwoods are here and Maryse—that’s Isabelle’s mother—she cooks for us. She’s an amazing cook.’ He looked dreamy, the way Simon had looked gazing at Isabelle over the soup.

‘Then how come she never taught Isabelle?’ They were passing through the music room now, where she’d found Jace playing the piano that morning. Shadows had gathered thickly in the corners.

‘Isabelle never wanted to learn. She’s always been first and foremost interested in being a fighter. She comes from a long line of women warriors,’ he said, and there was a tinge of pride in his voice. ‘Not Isabelle. She’s one of the best Shadowhunters I’ve ever known.’”

Here, Clary and Jace have just left the kitchen where Isabelle was making soup with questionable ingredients. City of Bones was published in 2007, and this conversation reflects ideas about gender and gender stereotypes that were dominant at the time. Isabelle’s mother is an amazing cook but also a warrior, showing how she could both be a Shadowhunter and a homesteader. Clary’s assumption that Isabelle’s mom would teach Isabelle to cook shows the idea that girls were expected to learn how to keep house from their mothers. Isabelle not wanting to learn was viewed as a bucking of female gender stereotypes, even though there is nothing wrong with girls preferring to be fighters over homesteaders. Jace’s observation that Isabelle is one of the best Shadowhunters he knows also suggests that girls have to choose between stereotypical female roles and going against what society says girls are supposed to do. It also suggests that Isabelle feared that learning to keep house would mean she couldn’t or wouldn’t be viewed as a real Shadowhunter.

“‘Because if I did,’ he said, ‘he’d know I wanted to kill Valentine myself. And he’d never let me try.’

‘You mean you want to kill him for revenge?’

‘For justice,’ said Jace. ‘I never knew who killed my father. Now I do. This is my chance to make it right.’

Clary didn’t see how killing one person could make right the death of another, but she sensed there was no point saying that.”

This conversation between Clary and Jace comes while they travel to the City of Bones, and it offers both foreshadowing and irony. It foreshadows Jace discovering that the man he thinks is his father is still alive and also that that man is Valentine, not Michael Wayland. It is ironic because Jace wants to kill Valentine to avenge his father, but later Jace does not want to kill Valentine because he thinks Valentine is his father after all. Clary’s final observation calls to the futility of revenge. Jace says he wants justice, but if he truly wanted justice rather than revenge, it wouldn’t matter how Valentine paid for his crimes, so long as he paid. Jace has a personal interest in delivering that justice, which makes it revenge. Killing Valentine wouldn’t bring back Jace’s father or make Jace feel better about what happened, but he believes it will because he wants to feel like something will make a difference.

“His eyes gleamed in the darkness. ‘I don’t understand why mundanes always apologize for things that aren’t their fault.’

‘I’m not apologizing. It’s a way of—empathizing. Of saying that I’m sorry you’re unhappy.’

‘I’m not unhappy,’ he said. ‘Only people with no purpose are unhappy. I’ve got a purpose.’”

Here, Jace has just told Clary about the day his father was killed, and then Jace falls into a long silence. Clary apologizes for what happened, and Jace’s response shows one of the many differences between Shadowhunters and humans. Clary believes her empathetic apology is a way to express how she feels about Jace’s situation, but Jace finds it to be an annoying habit of humans. Having grown up away from the battles and deaths of Shadowhunters, Clary believes losing loved ones is something that makes people unhappy. While this is true, the amount of loss Shadowhunters are exposed to on a consistent basis makes loss something they are more used to than humans. As a result, Jace doesn’t feel his loss needs to be empathized with or apologized for. It gives him a purpose—to avenge his father—and that purpose is enough for him.

“Clary turned her gaze away. ‘I still don’t understand why my mother would join something like that.’

‘You must understand—’

‘You keep saying that,’ Clary said crossly. ‘I don’t see why I must understand anything. You tell me the truth, and I’ll either understand it or I won’t.’”

This passage is a conversation between Clary and Hodge before Clary and the others go to Magnus’s party. Clary is still searching for a reason behind her mother’s decisions, and her words here make it clear she doesn’t have a frame of reference with which to understand the world her mom grew up in. The conversation itself also calls to a peculiarity of how people talk. Hodge tells Clary she must understand, but really, there is no such requirement. People don’t have to understand or not understand something, no matter how many times or ways they are told. An explanation may make perfect sense to one person and be completely nonsensical to another. We don’t have to understand how other people think, but we can still accept that others have a different understanding than we do.

“Alec looked harder at Magnus. ‘Were you at the Uprising?’

Magnus’s eyes locked with Alec’s. ‘I was. I killed a number of your folk.’

‘Circle members,’ said Jace quickly. ‘Not ours—’

‘If you insist on disavowing that which is ugly about what you do,’ said Magnus, still looking at Alec, ‘you will never learn from your mistakes.’”

Here, Clary, Alec, and Jace meet with Magnus about the block in Clary’s mind. After dealing with the block, they discuss Valentine’s uprising against the Clave, and Magnus’s answer to Alec’s question shows that Magnus does not shy away from violence or doing what needs to be done. Jace’s hurried distinction between Valentine’s supporters and the Clave shows he is uncomfortable with the potential darkness within himself. Though he doesn’t agree with Valentine’s hatred of Down-worlders, he understands how Valentine could cause so much destruction in the name of that hatred, and he distances himself from Valentine because he isn’t able or willing to admit the similarities. Magnus’s final point speaks to taking responsibility and admitting the truth to ourselves. Shadowhunters are violent, and though many don’t believe Down-worlders should be eliminated, they all share the thought that Down-worlders are inferior. By denying the similarities between himself and Valentine, Jace does not let himself see the problems that exist within Shadowhunter/Down-worlder relations, and he won’t as long as he refuses to admit the truth about Shadowhunters to himself.

“‘Jace,’ she whispered. ‘What are you doing?’

He had placed his hands on the stone floor and was moving them back and forth rapidly, as if searching for something, his fingertips stirring up dust. ‘Looking for weapons.’

‘Here?’

‘They’d be hidden, usually around the altar. Kept for our use in case of emergencies.’

‘And this is what, some kind of deal you have with the Catholic Church?’

‘Not specifically. Demons have been on Earth as long as we have. They’re all over the world, in their different forms—Greek daemons, Persian daevas, Hindu asuras, Japanese oni. Most belief systems have some method of incorporating both their existence and the fight against them. Shadowhunters cleave to no single religion, and in turn all religions assist us in our battle. I could as easily have gone for help to a Jewish synagogue or a Shinto temple.” 

This passage comes while Jace and Clary prepare to rescue Simon from the vampires, and it offers additional context to how Shadowhunters work. As Jace says throughout the story, many of the myths and stories are true in one form or other, and the reliance of all world religions on the Shadowhunters reflects this idea. The belief systems Jace lists here are a small fraction of all the religious ideas among humans, meaning that demons and Shadowhunters are needed everywhere on Earth. As a result, the Shadowhunters serve all religions equally, and as repayment for their services, places of worship keep tools to aid them. Jace chose this church because it was the most readily available, not because it has any particular advantages to offer.

“Raphael glanced at him almost absently. ‘I know what they look like. They are paler, thinner than human beings, but very strong. They walk like cats and spring with the swiftness of serpents. They are beautiful and terrible. Like this hotel.’

‘You think it’s beautiful?’ Clary asked, surprised.

‘You can see where it was, years ago. Like an old woman who was once beautiful, but time has taken her beauty away. You must imagine this staircase the way it was once, with the gas lamps burning all up and down the steps, like fireflies in the dark, and the balconies full of people.”

Here, Jace, Clary, and Raphael are inside the Hotel Dumort, and Raphael points out how the broken-down building symbolizes what the place used to be. Raphael’s definition of beauty calls to the expression that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Clary struggles to see the decrepit staircases and dusty floors as beautiful, but Raphael can picture the hotel as it once was, possibly because he is old enough to remember it before it was destroyed. Raphael also refers to vampires as beautiful, which suggests a relationship between beauty and power. Vampires are creatures of death who feed on human blood. Despite this, they are youthful in appearance, and they move with agility and grace. There is something dangerously beautiful about the power in their bodies and in the strength they use to hunt.

“‘No,’ Clary said. ‘I’m not. I’m Nephilim—just like you.’

His lip curled up at the corner. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But with no training, no nothing, you’re still not much use, are you? Your mother brought you up in the mundane world, and that’s where you belong. Not here, making Jace act like—like he isn’t one of us. Making him break his oath to the Clave, making him break the Law—’

‘News flash,’ Clary snapped. ‘I don’t make Jace do anything. He does what he wants. You ought to know that.’” 

This passage comes after Clary and Jace rescue Simon and return to the Institute. Jace is wounded after the bike crash, and Alec confronts Clary in the hallway to push her away because of how she’s changed Jace. Truthfully, Alec is upset because he feels like Clary has taken his place, but he can’t yet admit this because it’s tied up in his feelings for Jace. Instead, Alec levels accusations about Clary forcing Jace to make choices he wouldn’t otherwise because he wants to blame her rather than accept Jace might be attracted to her. Clary sees through Alec’s bluster by pointing out that she hasn’t made Jace make any decisions, and her response calls to how we are all responsible for what we do. Jace may be making decisions that are out of character where Clary is concerned, but that doesn’t mean Clary is responsible for those choices.

“‘Well, when I was five, I wanted to take a bath in spaghetti.’

‘But he didn’t let you, right?’

‘No, that’s the thing. He did. He said it wasn’t expensive, and why not if that was what I wanted? He had the servants fill a bath with boiling water and pasta, and when it cooled down . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I took a bath in it.’”

These lines come during Jace and Clary’s picnic in the greenhouse. Jace opens up about his childhood, and this is one of the few glimpses offered of Valentine as something other than a villain. At this point, Jace and Clary don’t know that Valentine was masquerading as Michael Wayland, but when this passage is applied to Valentine, it suggests he is capable of love and that he may have truly cared for Jace in some way. Jace’s request is silly, but Valentine grants it because it is within his power. There is no tactical advantage to letting Jace take a bath in spaghetti, so it may be concluded that Valentine allows it because he wanted Jace to enjoy his birthday.

“She’d forgotten Simon. And she’d been happy. That was the worst part, that she’d been happy.

Maybe this, she thought, losing Simon, maybe this is my punishment for the selfishness of being happy, even for just a moment, when my mother is still missing.”

This passage of Clary’s thoughts is after her kiss with Jace and the following fight with Simon. She feels upset that she hurt Simon and Jace, and the logic of her thoughts shows how emotions cloud our judgment, specifically how guilt makes us punish ourselves when we haven’t done anything wrong. Losing Simon is painful, and Clary feels bad that she forgot about him while she was enjoying herself with Jace. Because of this, she equates losing her mom with losing Simon, thinking that one is punishment for the other when the two events are not actually related. Clary also believes she has no right to be happy while her mom is missing, which is a logical fallacy. Emotions are complicated, and it is possible to feel positive emotions while negative things are happening. 

“‘Where there is feeling that is not requited,’ said Hodge, ‘there is an imbalance of power. It is an imbalance that is easy to exploit, but it is not a wise course. Where there is love, there is often also hate. They can exist side by side.’

‘Simon doesn’t hate me.’

‘He might grow to, over time, if he felt you were using him.’ Hodge held up a hand. ‘I know you do not intend to, and in some cases necessity trumps nicety of feeling.’”

Here, Clary speaks with Hodge while she waits for Simon to pick up her and the others to go to Madam Dorothea’s house. Hodge speaks of Simon and Clary here, but his logic may also be related to Clary’s mom and Luke. Luke loved Clary’s mom, but Clary’s mom didn’t feel the same way. Luke worked out his emotions by deciding that being near Clary’s mom was enough, and Hodge’s explanation here is a warning that Clary and Simon could grow apart if Clary isn’t careful with Simon’s feelings. While love is often viewed as a positive emotion, it can turn people bitter and resentful when it isn’t reciprocated, especially if someone feels that their love is being exploited. Hodge’s final words here are a concession that some things trump love. Clary is using Simon in a way because she needs him to drive, and while she shouldn’t make this a habit, doing it when her need is great enough is acceptable because we all have situations where emotions must be put aside to deal with something more important.

“She looked at him. Looked at the dark eyes, flecked with lighter color toward the outside edge of the iris, at the familiar, slightly uneven eyebrows, the long lashes, the dark hair and hesitating smile and graceful musical hands that were all part of Simon, who was part of her. If she had to tell the truth, would she really say that she’d never known that he loved her? Or just that she’d never known what she would do about it if he did?

She sighed. ‘Seeing through glamour is easy. It’s people that are hard.’”

Clary’s thoughts here come while she and the group go to Madam Dorothea’s. Clary is dealing with lots of new emotions, as well as the new emotions of others that are directed at her. As a result, she looks into her heart in an effort to understand what she knows. Earlier, she was surprised to learn that Simon was in love with her, but here, she wonders if she knew the entire time and just pushed the knowledge away because she didn’t know how to deal with it. This explanation suggests that we lie to ourselves when we are unsure about how to feel. Her closing line means that , despite the new challenges she faces from her Shadowhunter blood, people are still the most complicated thing to understand.

“Simon didn’t seem fazed by praise from such an unexpected quarter; his eyes were on the road. ‘You mean shooting out the skylight? It hit me after you guys went inside. I was thinking about the skylight and how you’d said demons couldn’t stand direct sun. So, actually, it took me a while to act on it. Don’t feel bad,’ he added, ‘you can’t even see that skylight unless you know it’s there.’

I knew it was there, Clary thought. I should have acted on it. Even if I didn’t have a bow and arrow like Simon, I could have thrown something at it or told Jace about it. She felt stupid and useless and thick, as though her head were full of cotton. The truth was that she’d been frightened. Too frightened to think straight. She felt a bright surge of shame that burst behind her eyelids like a small sun.”

During this passage, Simon and the Shadowhunters race back to the Institute to treat Alec after the encounter with Abbadon. Isabelle and Jace have just complimented Simon for his quick-thinking, and while such praise would have meant much to him a few chapters ago, it’s less important in the face of Alec’s condition. Simon is mature enough to understand that impressing the Shadowhunters isn’t what matters now. Clary’s feelings following Simon’s words show her guilt, both about Alec’s injury and about being afraid. There is no shame in fear, but Clary feels there should be because her fear led to someone getting hurt. Unlike Simon, she wanted to be useful and impressive, and she is hard on herself because she didn’t think as quickly as Simon did or Jace might have.

“‘You will not speak of Jace.’ For the first time Valentine sounded angry. He glanced at the still figure on the floor. ‘He is bleeding,’ he observed. ‘Why?’

Hodge held the Cup against his heart. His knuckles were white. ‘It’s not his blood. He’s unconscious, but not injured.’

Valentine raised his head with a pleasant smile. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘what he will think of you when he wakes. Betrayal is never pretty, but to betray a child—that’s a double betrayal, don’t you think?’”

Here, Hodge has knocked Jace unconscious, imprisoned Clary, and betrayed the kids by summoning Valentine to hand over the Mortal Cup. Valentine’s concern for Jace and his anger at Hodge discussing him suggests that Valentine might care about Jace after all. Valentine’s final words speak to the nature of betrayal. Betraying an adult is different from betraying a child because adults do not rely on others to protect them. Children, even older ones like Jace, trust the adults in their life to be honest with them. Hodge’s betrayal of Jace betrays both the trust Jace chose to put in him, as well as the implicit trust of a child to an adult.

“A sob broke free from Clary’s chest. ‘I don’t believe you! All you do is tell lies! Everything you’ve ever said was a lie!’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the moral absolutism of the young, which allows for no concessions. Can’t you see, Clary, that in my own way I’m trying to be a good man?’

She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t work that way. The good things you do don’t cancel out the bad ones.’”

Here, Clary yells at Hodge after Valentine takes Jace and disappears through the portal. Clary says everything Hodge has said was a lie, which is not true. Many of the things Hodge said were truthful or at least a truth he believed, and Clary feels like this now because Hodge lied about something so important and integral to her entire quest to save her mom. Hodge calls Clary out on her statement by presenting the idea that truth and lies are not so black-and-white, which supports the books theme of Different Perspectives Cloud the Truth. Hodge lied about his alignment with Valentine, but he never lied about caring about Jace, Alec, and Isabelle, and the advice he gave Clary about her relationships was honest. Clary’s final observation has truth to it—good things do not automatically balance out bad things. However, her argument comes from a place of absolutism. Hodge betrayed the kids, which was bad, but he acted to free himself, which he views as good, even if the actions he took were harmful to others.

“‘If we catch Valentine,’ she asked abruptly, ‘can we kill him?’

Luke nearly dropped the bandages. ‘What?’

She fiddled with a stray thread poking out of the pocket of her jeans. ‘He killed my older brother. He killed my grandparents. Didn’t he?’

Luke set the bandages on the table and pulled his shirt down. “And you think killing him will what? Erase those things?’”

This conversation between Clary and Luke comes after Luke tells the story of his past and while they prepare to storm Renwick’s to rescue Jace. Earlier, Clary didn’t understand Jace’s desire to kill the person who murdered his father or his belief that doing so would bring justice to his father’s murder. Here, Clary uses the same logic Jace did, and she doesn’t see how she’s changed since the earlier conversation. She wants to kill Valentine because he killed people she never even met because she thinks doing so will somehow lessen Valentine’s impact on her life. Killing Valentine will change nothing, much like how killing his father’s murderer would have changed nothing for Jace. This passage symbolizes how Clary has fully entered the Shadow world and that she cannot go back to the life she knew before. Clary has lost people she loves and lost the possibility of a family due to Valentine’s actions, and she reacts to this knowledge as a Shadowhunter, rather than a human.

“The were-wolves walking behind him looked like completely ordinary people, Clary thought. If she’d seen them all together in a group somewhere, she might have thought they knew each other somehow—there was a certain nonphysical resemblance, a bluntness to their gazes, a forcefulness to their expressions. She might have thought they were farmers, since they looked more sunburned, lean, and rawboned than your average city-dweller, or maybe she would have taken them for a biker gang. But they looked nothing like monsters.”

This passage comes outside Renwick’s. Clary observes the werewolf pack as she and Luke ready to storm the building, and the likeness among the werewolves speaks to their traits as a species. It may also explain how Valentine grew to hate Down-worlders. While Shadowhunters may also exhibit similarities as a species, Valentine doesn’t see it because he is a Shadowhunter and, thus, of the belief that Shadowhunters are individuals. By contrast, he thinks of werewolves as something other, and he may have seen the same similarities Clary did. Rather than a simple likeness due to a united view of the world, Valentine may have attributed this likeness to the idea that all Down-worlders are the same, which allowed him to view them as expendable, rather than individuals. Clary notes that the werewolves don’t look like monsters, which speaks to how we can’t judge others by their appearance.

“And I guess I resented you at first, but I realize now that was stupid. Just because I’ve never had a friend who was a girl doesn’t mean I couldn’t learn how to have one.”

Isabelle says this to Clary when Clary goes to the Institute following the final battle against Valentine. Clary and Isabelle confess both struggled to like one another at first because they felt threatened by the other. Isabelle’s words here speak to the insecurity new experiences bring. Isabelle is used to being the only girl among boys, and she believes herself special because of this. Clary’s arrival disrupted everything Isabelle depended on to make herself feel special, so Isabelle acted cold toward Clary even as the girls tried to be nice. Isabelle’s revelation means that our past experiences don’t have to define our future. Having a female friend is new and will take getting used to, but Isabelle realizes now that she doesn’t have to fear it.