63 pages • 2 hours read
Cassandra ClareCity of Ashes
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 8-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “The Gates of Hell”
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary: “The Seelie Court”
Back at Luke’s place, an exhausted Clary falls asleep. She has a dream in which she is a child again. She sees her mother Jocelyn on a beach. Jocelyn draws a protective rune on Clary’s arm. Behind Jocelyn, Clary can see the waves rise, and in them, monstrous demonic shapes. Clary awakens in a panic. She and Simon head to Magnus’s to check up on Jace, where Alec joins them. It is clear that Alec may be secretly dating Magnus, since he has a key to Magnus’s apartment. However, Alec is not ready to share this information with anyone.
Jace is recovering, thanks to Magnus’s magical powers. Magnus tells the group he has been dreaming of blood lately, and he feels this is an omen. He also believes that Valentine is using a demon to kill and exsanguinate certain creatures, since he needs their blood to perform a ceremony known as the Ritual of Infernal Conversion. If the Soul-Sword is heated and cooled four times in the blood of a Downworld child, its allegiance can be reversed from angelic to demonic. Once the Sword switches, Valentine can use it to command all the demons he wants, without a summoning ritual. Valentine has already collected the blood of a Fey and a warlock child. He will go after a vampire and a werewolf next (the werewolf boy Joseph was a failed draining, as it was interrupted). The teenagers are horrified by Valentine’s nefarious plans.
Alec gets a call from Isabelle that the Queen of the Seelie Court—the Faerie Queen—wants an audience with the teenage Shadowhunters. The group feel Jace should stay back as he is still recuperating. However, Jace insists on going if Clary does, because of Clary’s inexperience. Jace says faeries are tricksters who are always looking to play games and cannot be trusted. Finally, it is decided that Alec will stay with Magnus, while Clary, Simon, Jace, and Isabelle visit the Seelie Court.
Isabelle meets them at Turtle Pond, where she bids them to wade in the water with her. The Shadowhunters are barely hip-deep when they fall backward into the water and land in a dirt corridor. A young Fey called Meliorn—whom Isabelle is dating—leads them to the Queen’s chambers. Jace whispers to Clary and Simon that they must not eat or drink anything at the court, since Faerie food binds humans to the Fey.
The Queen offers the Shadowhunters drinks. Clary spills her drink from her full goblet and does not let it touch her lips. A tiny fairy sprite nips Clary’s finger, and Clary licks her finger to soothe the wound, unknowingly ingesting a drop of the spilled drink. Meanwhile, the Queen asks the Shadowhunters about the murder of the Fey child. Jace is careful to speak to the Queen with courtesy. He tells her Valentine Morgenstern is behind the murders, and they need her help to stop him. The Queen says she will help Jace if Jace asks his father about the blood in his veins. Jace agrees to do the Queen’s bidding and the Shadowhunters prepare to leave.
However, the Queen stops Clary from leaving, since Clary has tasted the Faerie drink and now belongs to the Queen. The Queen thinks Clary is a precious acquisition, since Clary has the gift for unspoken words. The only condition on which Clary can be released is if she gets the kiss her heart desires. Simon thinks this refers to him, but the Queen says that Clary wants someone else, indicating Jace. Jace kisses a mortified Clary. The two get lost in the kiss. The spell is broken, and the Shadowhunters depart. A hurt Simon walks away from Clary.
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary: “And Death Shall Have No Dominion”
Jace, Clary, and the others return to a near-empty Institute. All of the adult Shadowhunters are out investigating the recent string of murders. Clary changes out of her wet clothes in Jace’s room, noting that the room is as spare and neat as that of a monk. She asks Jace why the Queen made them kiss each other. Jace tells her that the Queen could see the way he and Clary looked at each other, and she wanted to torment them and Simon.
Clary is angry at Jace for kissing her passionately. He is her brother and should know better. Jace tells Clary he cannot help his feelings. Valentine raised him to believe love weakens and destroys a person, but being with Clary cured him of that notion. When Jace suggests he and Clary elope and live a secret life, Clary says she could never do that to her mother, Simon, and her friends, and a romantic relationship between Jace and Clary would be “sickening” (171). Shocked that Clary would call their love sickening, Jace assures her he will never kiss her again and walks out.
Clary has another nightmare. She is walking on water when the sky begins to rain fire. One of the embers turns into Jace with white-gold wings. Jace points behind Clary; she turns and sees Simon with black blood-soaked wings. When Clary wakes up, it is three in the morning. Someone is ringing the bell to the Institute. Clary suspects this may be Simon. She, Jace, and Isabelle take the elevator downstairs.
When they open the doors, they find Raphael the vampire holding Simon’s body in his arms. Raphael tells Jace that Simon broke into the lair of the vampires and was attacked; Raphael saved him, but Simon has already been bitten. He will soon die and rise as a vampire. A distraught Clary tells Simon that she loves him, and Simon stops breathing. Raphael says they must now hurry. Simon must be buried before dawn so that he can claw his way out of the grave.
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary: “A Fine and Private Place”
The group heads to a cemetery on the outskirts of Queens. Clary sits on a boulder as Jace and Raphael dig a grave for Simon and then bury him. Clary laments that Simon would never have died had she and Jace not kissed in the faerie court. Meanwhile, Alec and Magnus join the group, carrying bags of kosher lamb blood (Simon is Jewish). Jace tells Clary that when Simon rises as a fledgling vampire, his blood-thirst will be very high. The lamb’s blood will help him manage it safely without attacking the others. Soon, Clary can hear a pounding from Simon’s grave. A figure claws its way out of the ground.
Clary rushes to greet Simon. A blood-crazed Simon forces Clary back into the ground, his new fangs gleaming. Raphael plucks him off Clary, scolds Clary for coming too close to Simon, and hands Simon the plastic packets of blood. Clary’s stomach turns when she sees Simon tear open the packets and gulp at the blood messily. She runs away from the clearing and vomits, thinking for the first time “that maybe the dead weren’t so unlucky after all” (191).
Part 2, Chapters 8-10 Analysis
Chapters 8-10 are particularly significant in illustrating the text’s important theme of The Struggle for Identity. While finding an identity can be challenging for some teenagers, the process is even more fraught in the text’s hierarchical, fragmented society. In this society, Shadowhunters—part-angel and part-human—are at the top of the social pyramid. The names the Shadowhunters use for mortals and other creatures are revelatory about their prejudice against these groups: Mortals are “mundanes,” while vampires, werewolves, warlocks, and the like are “Downworlders”. Even heroic Shadowhunters, like Jace, are highly biased against other species: Jace often calls vampires “bloodsuckers” and uses slurs for werewolves.
These prejudices are an analogy for the race, gender, and other biases that exist in the real world. When prejudice is overlaid with a young adult’s quest to find their identity, the struggle becomes even more intense, as in the case of characters like Maia and Simon. While Maia struggles to find a group that fully accepts her, Simon is caught between his humanity and his pull toward vampires. Simon’s eventual, bloodied transformation is a symbolic representation of the struggle for an identity.
Simon’s transformation, described in vivid, graphic terms, is an example of how the text makes the supernatural palpable, while Clary’s remark that death is not the worst fate imaginable highlights her coming-of-age process. Raised away from Shadowhunter society in a loving, protective environment, Clary was a sheltered child. Now, as she lands into increasingly perilous situations, Clary is forced to grow up.
Another perilous, challenging situation is the dramatic sequence at the Seelie Court. To navigate this world, Jace, Clary, and the others must use their adult wits. Isabelle notes that the peril at the faerie courts is not one that can be fought with weapons: “It’s not that kind of danger” (142). Thus, Jace uses a very careful, neutral tone with the Seelie Queen, measuring every word. When the danger presents itself, it is of an altogether different nature than Valentine’s demons, but no less uncomfortable. The Queen plays mind games with Jace and Clary, making their most private, forbidden attraction public knowledge. Jace and Clary must make a difficult, impossible decision to circumvent this danger, much like adults in the real world.
While the kiss between Jace and Clary is the pent-up explosion of their forbidden love, the narrative also begins to foreshadow that their love may not be taboo after all. The Queen calls Jace “Valentine’s little experiment” and bids him to ask Valentine what blood runs through his veins (157). This ostensibly refers to the powerful blood Valentine may have infused in Jace while in his mother’s womb, but it suggests that the blood in Jace’s veins may not have been inherited from Valentine after all, which in turn invokes the theme of The Dynamics of Family Loyalty and Betrayal.
Though events in this section are tense, Clare relieves the tension with humor and irony. Characters like Jace, Isabelle, Simon, and Clary speak with the irreverent cadence of teenagers, which contrasts with the formal, trickery-laced speech of the Seelie Court. For instance, when the Queen suggests a kiss can release Clary, Jace deliberately misunderstands that she wants him to kiss Simon and quips: “I guess it’s true what they say […] there are no straight men in the trenches” (160).
Further, in keeping with the conventions of the urban fantasy genre, the real-world setting of New York City is juxtaposed against the hidden magical world it hosts. Fantastical settings are tucked away in every corner, such as the Seelie Court at the bottom of Turtle Pond. The fact that one can fall backward in the pond and land in a whole new setting adds whimsy to what at first appears part of an everyday reality. Urban and contemporary fantasy narratives derive much of their emotional power from infusing new possibilities in an otherwise solid world: If a mortal can be a Shadowhunter, then it is possible to find magic in the mundane.
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