Chapter 7: Nightmares

151 pages in...

Oh boy.

There were moments in the previous chapter that I kind of enjoyed. This one...um...this was more challenging.

I assume this takes place directly after Bella returns from La Push. She goes up to her room and listens to a CD (Meyer cites on her website that the music described is Linkin Park, though she didn't include the name because she wasn't sure how long Linkin Park would be popular and was worried it would be embarrassing if it took ten years to get the book published. Interesting logic from someone who claims to have written Twilight solely for own personal enjoyment. Btw, it's still embarrassing, and it never would not have been embarrassing). So in listening to her angsty teen crapfest CD, Bella falls asleep and has a dream in which Jacob turns into a wolf and attacks Edward, who has fangs. Subtle, Meyer. Subtle.

This dream disturbs Bella to the point where she gets up and looks up "vampire" on the interwebs, finding a variety of myths and trying to reconcile them with what Jacob has told her and what she has observed about the Cullens. She goes out into the woods to think things over and considers the idea that Edward "maybe" is a vampire and makes the decision (which isn't really a decision; we'll get to this) to do nothing and allow Edward to pursue her.

The next day, it's sunny. Edward and fam aren't at school. Depressed Bella is depressed. She reads Jane Austen for fun. Jessica and Angela convince her to go on a shopping trip with them to Port Angeles city. End chapter.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: I really do hate being alone with Bella. Her life is boring, for one. For two, she rarely has any moments of genuine insight. For three, the story continues asking me to care about her problems, and I continue to not.

I have to wonder what Twilight fans think when they get to this chapter, in which nothing of consequence actually happens and Edward, the glittering star of this novel, is completely absent. Do they skim it in frustration, desperate to get back to Edward? Or do they absorb every second of Bella's convoluted thought process, spinning around "in answerless circles," (Bella's own words, 139)? Do they share Meyer's obvious opinion that every trivial moment of Bella's life is of tantamount importance?

I will say, there's one moment that struck me as a genuinely interesting one. Bella goes out into the woods to think about what she's learned from her internet search and acknowledges that the change in environment makes it "easier to believe the absurdities that embarrassed" her in her "clear-cut" bedroom (137). "Nothing had changed in this forest for thousands of years," she muses, "and all the myths and legends of a hundred different lands seemed much more likely in this green haze." It's nice to see Meyer use Washington's rich environment to affect her character's perceptions of the world. It's a fleeting moment, but it shows me that Meyer is capable of such writerly insight, but isn't interested in exploring it.

PLOT DEVELOPMENT: This chapter is 23 pages. It's 23 pages. Nine of those pages are devoted to Bella looking shit up on the internet and then contemplating whether or not Edward is a vampire. I mean, I really don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that nothing happens in this chapter, nothing that couldn't have been said in a paragraph anyway. And I really do think that fans must skim this part of the book, clenching their teeth in search of the next page featuring Edward.

Also, a note to young writers: avoid prophetic dream sequences like the plague. It's a lazy, overused device and a transparent ploy to make your otherwise-average character that much more of a special snowflake. This device got on my nerves even in Harry Potter, despite the fact that there was a logical reason for it in the context of the series.

LANGUAGE: "dust moats" (142).

This makes me want to cry. Stephanie Meyer is a published novelist, and she does not know the difference between the little things that float around in the air and the water-filled trenches used to protect castles. And neither does her editor, apparently.

Also, any literary merit Meyer gained in Ch. 6 language-wise has been ABSOLUTELY DECIMATED here, as this chapter features some of the dullest prose I've ever read in a published work. Meyer is painfully obsessed with Bella's daily activities, and sentences read with a relentlessly repetitive structure: "I verb direct object. Then I verb direct object. Maybe I would verb direct object." I mean, the only way to really understand the drabness of it is to show you. So read this passage where Bella gets online. Just...read it:

"I hated using the Internet here. My modem was sadly outdated, my free service substandard; just dialing up took so long that I decided to get myself a bowl of cereal while I waited.
I ate slowly, chewing each bite with care. When I was done, I washed the bowl and spoon, dried them, and put them away. My feet dragged as I climbed the stairs. I went to my CD player first, picking it up off the floor and placing it precisely in the center of the table. I pulled out the headphones, and put them away in the desk drawer. Then I turned the same CD on, turning it down to the point where it was background noise. With another sigh, I turned to my computer. Naturally, the screen was covered in pop-up ads. I sat in my hard folding chair and began closing all the little windows. Eventually I made it to my favorite search engine. I shot down a few more pop-ups and then typed in one word."

I just...I can't even...it's just...WHY!?? Why the fuck do we need to know any of this!? It is really necessary for us to know the precise manner in which Bella eats her cereal, or the fact that she visits her favorite search engine, as opposed to her second favorite? (Which would be what, Lycos? ::scoff:: Is it 1998 still?) What would we be missing if she simply told us, "That weekend, I looked for information about vampires online. Here's what I found"? I could maybe buy that this authorial foot-dragging is supposed to build suspense, but there's no tension in it at all! It's not remotely interesting! And the reader already knows that Edward is a vampire anyway!! IT SAYS SO IN THE GODDAMN BLURB!!! I'm sorry. I'm about to go into an exclamation point coma.

SUBTEXT: Caitlin Flanagan (who I've mention before; she wrote this article, What Girls Want, a glowing review of Twilight) cites how "interesting" it is "how deeply fascinated young girls, some of them extremely bright and ambitious, are by the questions the book [Twilight] poses, and by the solutions their heroine [Bella] chooses." Right.

I've talked before about how annoyed I am that Bella hasn't made very many active choices so far. Bella claims to make a choice in this chapter; she repeatedly calls it a choice, and she does some reflecting on her decision-making process in general, which is interesting:

"Making decisions was the painful part for me, the part I agonized over. But once the decision was made, I simply followed through -- usually with relief that the choice was made." (140)

So Bella actively dislikes making decisions, and she prefers to feel relief whenever she makes a decision because it is better than "wrestling with the alternatives" (140), i.e., reflecting on whether or not the decision she's just made is a good one. I'm sure that this manner of thinking reaches many young women, especially those who would rather not make decisions, who would prefer to have decisions made for them.

But lets take a closer look at the "decision" Bella makes in this chapter, which takes place when she considers what to do if Edward happens to be a vampire. She brings up two options, one that requires action, and one that doesn't. The first, "to avoid [Edward] as much as possible. To cancel our plans...To tell him to leave me alone" (138), is almost unthinkable. It "grip[s]" her in "a sudden agony of despair." "My mind rejected the pain," she says, "quickly skipping on to the next option" (139). The next option is that she should "do nothing different," which is what she chooses to do, not surprisingly the decision that requires the least amount action on her part, and the one that most leaves the outcome of the situation up to Edward.

Setting aside the fact that there is no reason for Bella to feel "agony" at the idea of not talking to Edward since they've had maybe four complete conversations and she didn't seem to enjoy herself during any of them, this is not a genuine decision. This is Meyer reaching down and punching Bella in the head for considering, even for a second, that being with Edward is maybe not a good idea. Bella even REALIZES this: "I didn't know if there ever was a choice, really. I was already in too deep...when I thought of him, of his voice, his hypnotic eyes, the magnetic force of his personality, I wanted nothing more than to be with him right now" (139). Read what the text says, Caitlin Flanagan, please. Bella is powerless; she doesn't make choices. Meyer wants us to understand that her pitiful human protagonist wouldn't be able to refuse Edward's advances even if he openly confessed to being a serial murderer.

In this chapter, there's also this unintentionally hilarious moment where Mike and Bella are discussing their English papers on MacBeth and Bella quips that hers is about "Whether Shakespeare's treatment of the female characters is misogynistic" (143), funny in its irony and also in the fact that the story tries to make it seem as though Bella is the only person in Forks who knows what misogynistic means. Readers have cited this as a moment where Meyer is trying to make Bella a feminist character, though in the context of what I've read so far, Bella's exploration into this subject is supposed to be seen as one of her "negative" qualities, as any time she expresses an independent thought or tries to exist without a male crutch, the Twilight Universe shocks her with a lightning bolt and tells her to get back in the kitchen.

WHAT'S WORKING: This is a toughie. Not gonna lie. I wish I could discern better what Meyer's doing right here, but I'm having a hard time understanding why any young female reader would want to subject herself to such dullness. Are fans so enamored already that they don't mind the lag in the plot? Do they interpret it as suspense? Do they identify with Bella's dull musings because their own lives are similarly dull?

I suppose the meat of this chapter is the "decision" that Bella makes to let Edward pursue her, which, as I read it, isn't a decision. But what I perceive to be literary problems (Bella's passivity and relentless dullness) in fact seem to reinforce the idea that this protagonist has no control over the situation she's in, which may be an actual comfort to readers who would prefer a relationship that doesn't require them to make decisions, and which sustains itself by magic. Many young women seem to believe that this is how ideal relationships are supposed to be, and they see their desires reinforced by this hyper-contrived romance.

I should mention also that Bella expresses a range of emotions here. That is, we get Happy Bella, qualifying her upbeat mood with the temporarily sunny weather. If there's one thing you learn about Bella, it's that outside factors are always strongly influencing her state of mind, to the point where she is pitched violently into despair (I don't remember the exact phrasing and I don't have the book with me right now, so I can't quote it) when she gets to the cafeteria at school on Monday and finds Edward and his fam absent. Bella lets things affect her to a ridiculous degree (granted, I struggle with this too sometimes), and she sometimes even seems to prefer wallowing in her emotions as opposed to making an effort to moderate or analyze them. (Oh my god. Is this anybody you know?) It's the highest form of encouragement for any reader that is equally emotional or histrionic. "Everything that you feel is appropriate and good. So feel. Just feel, feel, feel. Don't think."

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I had heard about this chapter before I read it, the one in which Meyer describes, in detail, her protagonist using the internet. I've survived it, and when I recover from my brainwounds, I think I'll be ready for Chapter 8 next week.

Wish me luck,
Jenchilla