Clockwork Angel

Cassandra Clare illustrates the nuanced effects of addiction through Nate Gray’s untreated gambling addiction and Jem Carstairs’s dependency on demonic poison. Clare sets Nate’s and Jem’s addictions against the historical context of England’s opium business in China to show the way racism changes how addicts are viewed by society. 

Nate squandered his family’s money on his gambling addiction. Tessa recognizes later in the novel that she and her Aunt Harriet enabled Nate’s addiction for much of his life, hiding his “weaknesses from him, the consequences of his own flaws and failings [...] to keep him from being hurt” (352). Out of control, and deeply in debt, Nate was looking for a family heirloom to pawn when he found the diary pages that explained Tessa’s abilities and Axel Mortmain’s connections to the occult. Nate claims that he needed the money to pay off his gambling debts to the Pandemonium Club, but the novel does not clarify whether that was true or part of his ruse. Either way, Nate’s gambling addiction puts Tessa directly in harm’s way. Through Nate, the novel demonstrates how untreated addiction can impact families financially and relationally. Nate does not demonstrate remorse over his gambling addiction, nor does he try to control it. Jessamine, who hopes to marry Nate to escape her life as a Shadowhunter, encourages him to continue to play cards until his deception is revealed. Jessamine and Nate’s lack of concern over his addiction, and even Tessa and Aunt Harriet’s decision to not confront Nate earlier in life, represents how addiction can persist when it goes unchallenged. The novel illustrates how a variety of motivations lead people to enable a loved one’s addiction: Tessa and Aunt Harriet fear that confrontation will hurt Nate’s feelings, while Jessamine does not believe the effects of Nate’s gambling are all that bad. Nate himself is in deep denial, believing that his risk-taking behavior leads to important opportunities, like working with Mortmain. 

By contrast, Jem Carstairs developed a dependency on the demonic poison Yanluo used to torture him. He must continue taking controlled doses of it for the rest of his life, or he will die. The drug itself is still killing him, but Jem has chosen to live a longer life with the drug’s side effects rather than die a quick death from withdrawals. Jem compares his experience with Yanluo’s poison to opium, the drug that is tearing apart his native China: 

The British bring opium into China by the ton. They have made a nation of addicts out of us. In Chinese we call it ‘foreign mud’ [...] The city is full of dens where hollow-eyed men starve to death because all they want is the drug [...] I used to despise men like that (340). 

For Jem, his addiction is analogous to the addictions suffered by other people in China. Just as the British deliberately created a crisis of opium dependence in China, Yanluo forced Jem into a situation where he must rely on a taboo substance to survive, even while the drug slowly kills him.

Unlike Nate, however, Jem receives little sympathy or support for his addiction. Most Shadowhunters see him as weak or lazy or otherwise compromised by his proximity to a substance that they have learned to view as evil. The Shadowhunters’ negative view of Jem represents society’s negative view of opium users. Through Jem’s perspective, the author invites the reader to consider how larger social forces—like the British Empire—play a role in addiction and stigma against people with addictions. The author also highlights how racism influences the perception of addiction: Nate is a white American, and the characters around him see his gambling addiction as an unfortunate but common problem among gentlemen in society. Meanwhile, Jem, a Chinese man, is labeled as less capable, lazy, and pitiful by those outside of his inner circle because of his dependency, even though it is well-managed. When Jem tells Tessa his story, even Will worries that Tessa will misjudge Jem and his decision to live on the drug. Jem’s demonic poison management system reflects modern-day harm reduction treatments for opioid addiction and the stigma attached to long-term pain medication treatment despite its proven effectiveness.