Half-Blood Blues - THEME #1 - BEING FULLY HUMAN:

WHAT IS HALF-BLOOD BLUES ABOUT?

THEME #1 - BEING FULLY HUMAN:

Although the evil Boots and the feeling of impending doom are ever present, at the same time, the musicians themselves are not perfect. They are fraught with pettiness amongst themselves, and jealousies over sexual adventures and musical talents. As a microcosm, their personal failures parallel the larger failures of the Jim Crow laws at home, or of the Nazi regime. The plot and character development suggest that part of the human condition is this sense of competition and this “I'm okay, but these over here are not okay.” Or, as Hiero puts it when showing Sid the human beings in the Hamburg zoo, "A jack always reckon his own customs is the best in the world."

How can humanity address this failure, this ethnocentrism? Human rights legislation is the answer only as long as it is respected and enforced. Think Putin. Think Canada where, these last few years, we see governments disrespecting laws, denying treaty rights. The novel seems to suggest that all solutions are individual, and that the changes must all happen within each individual. Honesty, the ability to confess, to face the truth, to accept the failures of self and others, to say sorry, to offer forgiveness. So that the first theme of the novel seems to be this idea of what it means to be fully human, to embrace imperfection, to integrate the positive and the negative which create every whole, to become emotionally mature.