Psychological Theory Analysis in Half Bad

Half Bad is about a young witch called Nathan Byrn. Born of a white witch mother, and a black witch father, Nathan is branded (quite literally) as a Half Black Witch, or Half Code. It would’ve been bad enough to be recognized as a Half Code, but his father Marcus is a murderous black witch hunted throughout all of England. From the very beginning, Nathan has always been suffering from some form of racism. He’s been mistreated, ostracized outside of his family, and later on separated completely from society. Now he’s being trained to hunt and kill his father against his will, and must fight to survive past his 17th birthday.

In this book, you see as Nathan struggles to cope with all the restrictions the Council of White Witches is slowly pilling onto him. You see the change from the quiet, short fused kid who’s adapted to be a loner, to a hardened young teen who wants nothing but to escape his cage and survive another day, no matter who he has to kill. It’s actually quite sad reading as he goes from a sarcastic, quick to start a fight kid, to a scared, scarred and teen trained to kill, but with a strong desire to be left alone and finally escape persecution. Even more so when you compare THIS change to the change that occurs in the second book.

Nathan has many coping mechanisms. Among them are : a) fighting b) training his body, c) being sarcastic and d) giving you a blank look until you either move on or drop the subject, e)”not minding” as in ignoring the pain, f) focusing on little details, and g) keeping positive. Most seem like sensible things right? Especially c; we all do it, or b,f, and g. Except there’s also the ones like a, that sometimes cause more trouble for him, he’s already got a short fuse, lashing out easily does not help his case and only makes more people fear him. But this is just another survival tactic he’s developed after years of being hunted. He wants to live in peace and thinks if he can avoid everyone, keep them at a distance, he can get that peace he’s yearned for. Later on, he’s adapted so much to the idea of being hunted one could argue he’s started developing PTSD. Although it would be repressed because it’s not over yet, its only in quiet times that you would actually be able to tell.