52 pages • 1 hour read
Sally GreenHalf Bad
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Identity and Identification
Half Bad is obsessed with the question of identity. Because Nathan is half Fairborn and half Blood Witch, he doesn’t know who he is. Worse still, neither of his parents is present during his formative years to help him decide. His mother’s suicide and his father’s absence force Nathan to rely on his stepfamily for definition. What complicates his struggle is the loaded moral judgments attached to being Fairborn or Blood. When he is only four, Nathan’s sadistic sibling Jessica happily points out his failings and labels him evil because his father is perceived that way by Fairborns.
For his part, Nathan functions much like a blank slate. He has no innate sense of who he is to counter the judgments being forced on him by others. Because Fairborns raised him, he initially thinks this group is better than Blood Witches. He radically changes that opinion after repeated abuse by Fairborns and their Council. Just as the Fairborns maintain a singular focus on eliminating all the Blood Witches in the British Isles, the Bloods adapt by submerging their own identities so they can move among the Fairborns. While Nathan struggles to find his true identity, he must also work to determine the real identities of potential friends among the Blood faction.
Many of the central characters change identification at the drop of a hat. Nathan’s first encounter with this tactic is when Jessica shapeshifts to trap him into making an incriminating statement about Marcus. While he can easily see through her disguise, he has greater difficulty penetrating the veil surrounding Mercury. She may be the only Blood Witch who can help him, but she must be approached through a series of intermediaries, all of whom have secret identities of their own. Bob is a painter. Nikita is the half-witch, Ellen. Jim forges fake identification papers and sells them on the witch equivalent of the black market. Trev and Jim both avail themselves of new identities to leave the country. Gabriel is a shapeshifter who gets stuck in fain form. Rose can dissolve completely into a cloud of mist. She is also a Fairborn who has defected to the Blood Witches. Even Mercury, who presents herself as benign, proves dangerous and manipulative. Nathan was given enough of an identity crisis at birth without the additional challenge of figuring out who is on his side and who is working against him. Worst of all, he isn’t sure he will be able to identify with either faction.
Separating Good from Evil
The Council of Fairborn Witches has one central purpose—to eliminate all remaining Blood Witches in the British Isles. This might seem like a politically motivated agenda to remove a powerful faction that represents competition. However, the mandate to eradicate Bloods stems from a moral position. Fairborns see themselves as good, while they view Bloods as evil. Further, Marcus is seen as evil incarnate. Thus, the Council assumes the mantle of moral superiority and conducts its purification crusade with the same zeal as the Spanish Inquisition or the witch persecutions in central Europe.
In the effort to separate good from evil, the Fairborn authorities resort to hideous tactics. They not only kill Blood Witches but torture them for a month before execution in something called Retribution. Presumably, their actions are motivated by revenge for some past atrocity of the Bloods, but the source of this animosity is never explained fully in the novel.
Instead, the Fairborns justify their magical genocide by referring to an origin myth. They believe witches were initially divided into good and bad factions based on the behavior of two ancient ancestors. Of course, all good is arrogated to the Fairborns, and all evil is dumped onto the Blood Witches. This tactic of mythical justification for real-world atrocities is certainly a veiled allusion to the ethnic cleansing and religious genocide that humans have perpetrated since the earliest days of civilization. The Fairborn quest for ultimate purity in their bloodline also echoes Hitler’s eugenic experiments and the desire to create a master race.
No one in the Fairborn hierarchy seems to question the feasibility of exterminating an entire faction of witches. No matter how many are arrested or executed, others hide in plain sight. Bob lives right down the street from the Council headquarters. Mercury is able to create cuts, or rifts, that allow passage in and out of areas surveilled by Hunters. The dominant faction also fails to consider the vagaries of the heart. A Fairborn and a Blood Witch fall in love and conceive Nathan. He, in turn, falls in love with a Fairborn Witch, further muddying the water or contaminating the DNA as the Fairborns might view the situation. While the Blood Witches seem more willing to accept violence and darkness as part of the continuum of mortal experience, the Fairborns do not. They have scapegoated the Bloods precisely because they want to believe that moral perfection is possible. However, their definition of what is good and morally perfect could bear closer scrutiny.
Wild Versus Tame
A large part of the Fairborn animosity toward the Blood Witches stems from lifestyle choices that each faction has made. The Fairborns have chosen to assimilate themselves into fain society. Their children attend fain schools, and they live in fain communities. In contrast, the Bloods prefer to live apart. They aren’t fond of rules or order and sometimes lapse into episodes of violence, which causes the Fairborns to judge them as savages and barbarians. For their part, the Blood Witches think that Fairborn magic has been weakened from close contact with fains.
Nathan personally plays out the struggle between the wild and tame sides of his nature. When forced to go to a fain secondary school, he has difficulty learning to read or write. He also reacts badly to the buzzing sounds emitted by electronic devices. This becomes so problematic that he trashes the principal’s office rather than being forced to reenter the computer lab. At the same time, Nathan shows skill as an artist. In other words, he responds to life on a visual and visceral level. He isn’t interested in the written word, that preeminent mark of civilization, because writing dictates rules and order. The Fairborns love rules, order, and control. Blood Witches do not.
Nathan finds it easier to think outdoors. He makes frequent trips to Wales to clear his head. He is especially happy when away from all forms of technology. Nothing is a greater indicator of tame civilization than electricity, and Nathan dislikes cell phones, televisions, and all other electrical devices. Most telling of all is his need to sleep outdoors. He becomes physically sick if forced to sleep indoors, and his symptoms become the most painful during a full moon. While this need for being outdoors at night is a Blood Witch trait, it isn’t shared by all Blood Witches. Gabriel has no problem sleeping inside, but he needs to provide a roof terrace space for Nathan to sleep in.
These tendencies don’t appear until Nathan is a teenager. Presumably, they indicate that his basic nature leans toward being a Blood Witch. The tendency toward wildness or tameness might have been modified if Nathan were to receive ancestral blood from his Fairborn grandmother or even the deputy head of the Council, who offers to conduct Nathan’s Giving if he joins the Fairborn faction. The point is rendered moot when Marcus gives Nathan his own blood. However, Nathan’s behavior throughout the novel suggests that his wild traits asserted themselves long before he drank his father’s blood.
