Chapter 20: Impatience

422 pages in...

Soooo despondent. I go through stages reading this book. Sometimes I'm all excited and furious and fascinated, but more and more, I'm just bored. I'm getting numb to the bad prose, numb to the fact that nobody talks like that, numb to the horrendous pacing, numb to the misogynistic undercurrents. And this chapter was particularly difficult to slog through, because nothing happens. Again. At least in the past two chapters I managed to entertain myself by imagining the Benny Hill theme playing in the background.

Now...well. Now, I can't help but think that none of this shit would have happened if Bella had a sassy gay friend...

WHAT ARE YOU DOING BELLA. WHAT WHAT WHAT ARE YOU DOING.

I guess what makes this chapter all that much lamer though is that Bella isn't actually, um, DOING anything. She wakes up in a hotel room in Phoenix, and Meyer takes pains to describe the blankness of the hotel room, because I'm sure none of us know what hotel rooms look like. The entire chapter, with the exception of a few surprisingly lovely paragraphs that depict the Arizona landscape, takes place in this hotel room. Alice and Jasper sit around (Bella, at one point, refers to them as her "babysitters"[411]), Bella paces, Alice has some visions of a ballet studio, Bella and Edward whisper anxiously to each other over the phone about what James and "the female" (Evil vamp Victoria is never mentioned by name, which pisses me the fuck off) are doing.

Gotta say it, Edward and Bella's conversations are the most FUCKING ANNOYING JESUS. They still get to me after all this time. It's like sitting being stuck between two completely unlikeable people who do nothing but coo about to each other about how special they are.

"'I miss you,' I whispered.
'I know, Bella. Believe me, I know. It's like you've taken half my self away with you.' [LAME]
'Come and get it, then,' I challenged. [LAAAAAAAME]
'Soon, as soon as I possibly can. I will make you safe first.' His voice was hard. [THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID...oh...that doesn't really make sense...]
'I love you,' I reminded him.
'Could you believe that, despite everything I've put you through, I love you, too?' [DO YOU THINK THAT YOU ARE FUNNY]
'Yes, I can, actually.'
'I'm coming for you soon.'" [418]



TELL THEM SOOKIE STACKHOUSE.

Conversations between Bella and Alice in this chapter are much more lively and informative. In this chapter, I found myself no longer actively annoyed by Alice, though I don't necessarily like her either, since she still has that irritating deus ex machina superpower. I see her as acting as two things:

1. The cool, rich, beautiful best girlfriend that Meyer never had
2. A female stand-in for Bella to cling to while Edward isn't there

As far as relationships go, Bella's interplay with Alice seems much more equal and, at times, actually sweet. Alice ASKS Bella if she can come in before she enters a room, and she seems to respect her ability to handle difficult information, as when Bella asks how vampires become vampires, out of the blue and seemingly for no reason.

"'Edward doesn't want me to tell you that,' [Alice] said firmly, but I sensed she didn't agree.
'That's no fair. I think I have a right to know.'
'I know.'
I looked at her, waiting.
She sighed. 'He'll be extremely angry.'
'It's none of his business. This is between you and me...'" [413]

Eventually, Alice does tell Bella, in detail, about how difficult and painful a transformation is, not just because you have to introduce venom into a victim's blood stream, but because it's very hard for vampires to stop feeding once they start. (FORETHADOWING!!! DA-HYUCK!) But I do like how this is one of the few moments in Twilight where a man's judgment is audibly questioned and then defied, and it's demonstrated as being an okay idea. The story affords Alice some much-appreciated authority.

I can't help but see Alice as the femslash alternative to Twilight. If Edward and Bella don't work out and Bella decides to swing the other way, Alice will be there with open arms (because seriously, Jasper just kind of sits around like an accessory without a definitive role at all). But maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part. After all, Alice voices that she is only tender toward Bella because Bella has made Edward happy, because a woman can only like something if a man also likes it.

"It's been almost a century that Edward's been alone. You can't see the changes that we see, we who have been with him for so long. Do you think any of us want to look into his eyes for the next hundred years if he loses you?" (411)

Maybe the undercurrent to this statement is that Edward was a pissant, emo little bitch before Bella came along. (This. This. Edward obsessively scrapbooks away his pain. IT'S LONG BUT ITS SO GOOD)

WHAT'S WORKING: Essentially, this chapter is suspenseful because Meyer tells us there is suspense. People pace and whisper of the phone, and it's not a hundred percent clear what's going on, and though Bella is sitting around in a hotel room, the anxiety of the situation comes from her inability to do anything. Readers who relate to Bella probably also relate to this feeling of powerlessness. They probably also enjoyed her lame phone conversation with Edward.

Unfortunately, this chapter, for me, is another reminder of one of the biggest problems I have in this novel, which is that the narrative frequently forces Bella into situations in which she doesn't know what's going on and can't really do anything about it, all on the pretense that this is what's best for her. The BEST Bella can do to control her own fate is wheedle the people around her to give up information, which they do reluctantly and sparingly. For the most part, Bella is shoved into vehicles and held captive in sunless rooms while the vampires take care of her problems. James is off somewhere; the reader doesn't know where he is; he may or may not be headed in this direction. I suppose that's part of what makes him frightening, but for me, it's just another excuse for Bella to play a fragile damsel, and I'm simply irritated, and would like for James to burst through the window and eat her already.

I know how this turns out though. I know that Bella, in the next few pages, will be forced to make a decision, and I can only wait to see how Meyer represents that decision before I make my judgment of it.

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And also this:


Chapter 21 for next week.

Wish me luck,
Jenchilla

Chapter 18: The Hunt

389 pages in...

My apologies for another late post. No real excuse for it other than laziness, and being super absorbed by the newest episodes of True Blood. Btw, who else saw this awesomeness?

What I find so great about this is that it was most likely Snoop Dogg's idea. I seriously doubt the creators of True Blood APPROACHED him and asked him to make something for the show. Rather, I think he was sitting on his couch Sunday night thinking, "Mm, yeah. Sookie Stackhouse," then went down to the studio like, "Hey, I made this for ya'll. Use it."

So anyway, moving on.

A PLOT HAS ARRIVED IN TWILIGHT!!! And when I say plot, I mean a genuine obstacle that has arrived due to actions of prominent characters, which requires an immediate solution. Sort of anyway. It's the closest we're going to get.

In this chapter:

1. Rival vampires shown up, the first antagonists we have encountered aside from Lauren (remember Lauren? Don't feel too sad if you don't. She was so very obviously somebody that Meyer didn't like in high school.) and maybe Rosalie, who STILL HASN'T HAD A SINGLE LINE OF DIALOGUE
   
2. One of the rival vampires, James, is a "tracker" according to Edward, and he will not stop until he has Bella for a snack
3. Edward freaks the fuck out and throws a tantrum, forcing Bella into the jeep and proceeding to drive her far away from Forks against her will
   
4. Alice does something that briefly makes her adore me a little.

The vampires that show up are Laurent, "the most beautiful" (376), olive-toned and "with the slightest of French accents" (377) (he is the leader, and the only one of the three with dialogue), fiery-haired Victoria, and James, who has "regular features" and is "nondescript" (376). We know these characters are of dubious morality because they are not dressed as sharp as the Cullens and are not quite as attractive, and their eyes are "burgundy" instead of gold, like the vegetarian Cullen clan.

Meyer likes to play up tension rather than have things actually happen. I kind of appreciated Laurent, who is, for the most part, painfully cordial, though his dialogue is punctuated with creepy one-liners like "We just ate outside of Seattle," leaving readers to imagine the worst. When James catches Bella's scent and crouches toward her, Laurent promises that they won't hurt her(378) though he doesn't come off the page as the most trustworthy soul ever. He is surprised and curious, rather than threatened, to see vampires hanging out with a human.

As for the other two villains, they are not particularly developed, but we'll see what Meyer does with James in later chapters.

So after this non-event of a meeting, Edward is suddenly carting Bella back to the jeep, Alice and Emmett with him. They force her in and strap her down without explanation and ignore her when she demands one. We find out later that the pivotal discovery has taken place by Edward reading James' mind and "just knowing" that "Tracking is [James'] passion, his obsession" (382), and there will be no way to stop him until he gets Bella. Because that is exactly what this novel needs. Somebody else who is completely obsessed with Bella.

Whether or not you accept Edward's freak-out, controlling behavior depends entirely on how much you trust his judgment. The book wants us to believe that the situation has suddenly become extremely dangerous, that Edward is 100% correct about James, and that the hissy fit is warranted. This goes back to one of the biggest problems I have with the novel, which is that Bella is barely an active player in any of this. This entire James event came about simply because Bella just happened to be standing in a field smelling good, and while she does get to see some vampires snarling at each other, actual UNDERSTANDING of the situation is a privilege that only Edward has, being able to read mind. Bella reacts solely to what Edward and the Cullens tell her, since she's physically incapable of judging the full situation for herself.

To Meyer's credit, much of this chapter focuses on Bella stepping up and holding her own among vampires that are a great deal stronger and more informed than she is. The entire plan-forming conversation is 8 pgs long, so I can't cite it, but it basically goes something like this:

Alice: Let's calm down and think about this rationally.
Edward: THERE IS NO OTHER FUCKING OPTION!!!11!!11one
Emmett: If they attack us, there's only three of them. We can fend them off easy.
Edward: THERE IS NO OTHER FUCKING OPTION!!!11!!11one
Bella: Take me back to my house! Charlie's gonna lose his shit!
Edward: Ignored.
Emmett: We need to take Bella back to her house.
Edward: THERE IS NO OTHER FUCKING OPTION!!!11!!11one
Bella: But, but I haz a idea!
Edward: Ignored.
Alice: Let's listen to Bella's idea.
Edward: *sighs* FINE.

It's good that Emmett and Alice are acting as voices of reason to the overly-passionate Edward, though Emmett seems most excited about bashing someone's head in. In the end, Bella's plan is only a convoluted version of Edward's plan: he wants to cart her out of town, and she wants to go and see her father before she gets carted out of town. In the end, Bella is going to say something to Charlie so that it doesn't seem like she's being kidnapped, Alice and Jasper are going to drive Bella to Phoenix, for some reason, while the rest of the Cullen clan stays behind to protect Bella's father, because apparently two Cullens in Phoenix can protect Bella better than seven Cullens in Forks.

No one stops to consider actually discussing things with Laurent or James, because apparently Edward already knows that this is an impossibility. Whatever. Nobody ever discusses anything reasonably in this novel anyway.

As Edward is saying goodbye to Bella, he is extra douchy: "If you let anything happen to yourself -- anything at all -- I'm holding you personally responsible. Do you understand?" (388)

What, is that supposed to be cute? Is it supposed to be funny? The book seems to want us to see Edward as being serious here, but...really. What does that say about him? "I put you in this situation by stalking you and being otherwise completely irresistible, and yet it is YOUR fault for smelling good and making other vampires want to eat you"? What a stand-up fellow Edward is.

But the best part of this chapter takes place at the very end, when Edward doubts Alice's abilities.

"'Can you handle this?' he asked.
And graceful little Alice pulled back her lips in a horrific grimace and let loose with a guttural snarl that had me cowering against the seat in terror." (389)

I enjoyed this moment, because I didn't quite expect it, and I've been waiting for a while now for Alice to do something unexpected, since so many fans like her. It is a rare moment for females in this novel to display anything other than mediocre passive-aggression (like our sweet-smelling Pretty Bird), and it shows me that there may be some hope for Meyer's women yet.

WHAT'S WORKING: Bella has long since officially fit the bill as a genuine Mary Sue, but one element was missing: a villain who is unreasonably and insurmountably obsessed with killing her. Meyer seems to like for Bella to be the victim, and victimized in a way that makes her desired, and desired simply for existing, not because she actually, like, DOES anything. I feel like I've talked about this to death, but it's consistent with the fantasy: Bella is a blank slate of a girl, wanted by all, good or evil, and if anyone doesn't want her, it is out of jealousy. We of course see the valiant way in which Rosalie argues the case against Bella Swan, with Meyer not giving her a single line of dialogue so far (I'm PISSED about that, ya'll!).

However, this chapter does mark a moment in which Bella stands up for herself, makes her voice known and, sort of, has her way. Only time will tell if Edward really does hold Bella accountable for getting herself hurt.

I still think that a character like Bella is counteracting the female characters that appear in mainstream media. I found this article, "Why Strong Female Characters Are Bad For Women," which talks about Transformers having Megan Fox play a character that is a super sexy mechanic who ends up the love interest for weasely Shia Lebouf or however you spell his name. It's of course played to a male audience, who identify with weasely Shia Lebouf and would prefer to believe that Megan Fox has no desires of her own beyond fixing your car and sticking her ass out. The article goes into detail about how Hollywood responded to feminists saying "We want more strong female characters, less damsels in distress," and got it completely wrong. Though, what feminists probably SHOULD have said was "We want more DEVELOPED female characters. We want BETTER female characters." For example, in mainstream movies (excluding chick flicks, though most chick flicks avoid this as well) you rarely ever see women who have problems that aren't men, who want things other than men (or babies), or who have genuine inner lives beyond men. To my knowledge, there is NO female counterpart to mopey, male characters with white middle class malaise in cinema, no female version of Zach Braff in Garden State (the closest we get is maybe miserable rich girl Kate Winslet in Titanic).

If you think I'm going off on a feminist rant, I am, but that doesn't make these observations any less factual. If you doubt me, artist Alison Bechdel brought this issue up in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For. A movie only passes the Bechdel test if:

1. It features two female characters
2. The two female characters have a conversation together
3. That isn't about a man or men

You will be ASTONISHED at the percentage of Hollywood movies that pass this test. It is SLIM, my friends. SLIM. And I'm not saying this because I want an army of people working around the clock to make movies that feature only women and exclude men completely. I'm saying it to point out that, in media, the thoughts and desires of men get attended to in a way that the thoughts and desires of women do not. Whether or not your care about that is hardly the issue. But it's still true.

I think Twilight still fails the Bechel test (if there are any featured conversations between girls in which Bella isn't talking or thinking about Edward, I've forgotten about them). But, like I've said before, Twilight is INTERESTED in Bella's inner life. It focuses on her thoughts and desires with a seriousness that most media doesn't. Girls are drinking Bella up 1) because the book has Bella thinking and feeling things that they themselves think and feel, and 2) because the book is pretty much 100% supportive of Bella's feelings. It never judges her, and she gets the man without having to change herself.

That is all for this week.

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Now that things are actually happening in this book, I am a little less despondent! Next thing you know, I will be seeing myself in Bella, and her love will become my love, and I will see and understand the beauty of her relationship with Edward Cullen! And then I will remember that I like my significant others to have heartbeats, and to respect my personal space, and to cook me spinach alfredo pasta. LET'S SEE YOU COOK A MEAL WHEN YOU CAN'T TASTE IT, YOU PASTY ASSHOLE.

Wish me luck,
Jenchilla

Chapter 3: Phenomenon

67 pages in...

Announcements: I have received my first comment concerning the fact that I'm...ahaha...not doing a very good job identifying why Twilight works. Mostly, I've been riffing on it. And that is true. But. I will admit. I enjoy fantasy. I enjoy escapist literature at times. And this is not working for me. Not even on a superficial level. It's important to me that I catalog my initial reading experience, and then I can go back and try to understand what it is I'm missing that's prohibiting me from enjoying what I find in these pages. Why do I not connect with Bella Swan? Well, she's insufferable. Why do other people connect with Bella Swan? Maybe I'll understand that as I go on, but I'm having trouble seeing it. I'm not a sociologist or an expert in cultural phenomena. I'm just a reader, trying to figure something out. And I want to give people an accurate depiction of what it is I'm reading.

I also want to provide special thanks to my friend Neela, who linked me to this article, "What Girls Want" by Caitlin Flanagan. It's a very insightful review, singing Twilight's praises, and while I don't agree with a lot of it (it clearly didn't stem from a close reading of the novel, and some of it actually makes me downright nauseous), it's a very eloquent analysis of the phenomenon. I may address it later as my journey continues.

So. Let's continue.

Bella goes on to have the worst case of SADs in history when she sees that it has snowed outside and "groan[s] in horror." "I had enough trouble not falling down when the ground was dry," she laments. (Did I mention that Bella is clumsy? Bella mentions it. A lot. It's supposed to be one of those self-effacing ploys that makes you feel more sympathetic for her, but to many antifans, this is proof that Bella is a VARY SPESHUL kind of character.)

Anyway. Bella drives to school in the snow without incident and comes to discover, when she gets out at the school parking lot, that Charlie has graciously gotten up early to put snow chains on her tires. As Bella experiences a moment of sincere gratitude, she looks up and sees an out-of-control van skidding in her direction. In a very convoluted action sequence, Edward, whom Bella sees over on the other end of the parking lot, suddenly appears at her side to save her by blocking the van and/or lifting it up over her legs. In the midst of this, Bella knocks her head on the pavement and, subsequently, Edward manhandles her into an ambulance. Edward rides in front LIKE THE MAN HE IS. Tyler, the kid who was driving the van, gets sent to the hospital too with a head injury. (Guess who it is everybody is most concerned about. Just guess.)

Bella meets Dr. Cullen, Edward's father, who is also beautiful and who does doctor things, but Bella is most concerned about how Edward managed to save her. She confronts him directly and he condescends her, natch; she is convinced that she saw Edward lift the van, and he is apparently convinced not to explain it to her, pulling all the usual, "Well, you're a hysterical woman with a head injury, so no one will believe you," stops. Actually, his responses are pretty amusing; I was very much pleased to see him piss Bella off.

Charlie comes to pick up a still-fuming Bella, and she sees, on the way out, the entire school sitting worriedly in the waiting room. (Did they cancel class for this event?) She has to call her mother, who is "in hysterics," hearing about the accident from Charlie. Bella resists her mother's pleas to come home because she is "consumed by the mystery Edward presented," and when she goes to sleep that night, she has her first dream about him.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: Let's play a quiz game. It's called, "Bella Rationalizes Her Way Out of a Wet Paper Bag." Pretend that you are Bella, and answer the following questions:

You move to a new town where the local boys are remarkably friendly toward you. Two of them (We'll call them Mike and Eric) have already started a rivalry for your affections.
a) You consider that you are a "novelty" (p 55) that the people in the bumfuck town where you've moved have never seen a marginally attractive person before, and that's why they're going apeshit.
b) You consider that your "crippling clumsiness" (p 55) must been seen as "endearing," and that most boys would like to date a girl who must always wear a giant, bubble wrap coat.
c) Despite complaining about never fitting in with people your age 40-some pages ago, you are disconcerted by the fact that boys like you, and you would prefer to be ignored.
d) All of the above.

The answer: D. Bella takes pgs 54-55 to theorize about why the boys in Forks seem to like her so much, and her conclusion is that she wishes they didn't like her at all. Readers may interpret this as Bella being vulnerable and shy, but she doesn't cite shyness as the reason why she doesn't want this attention. Really, it just annoys her, and she doesn't seem to respect Mike or Eric for their feelings at all.

I think this is because we are not supposed to see Mike and Eric as important to the story. Meyer hasn't taken the time to explain WHY Bella is so turned off by boys liking her. There may very well be a reason. Maybe Bella is terrified of embarrassing herself. Maybe she's nervous about sex, or making commitments, or the idea of having to impress a boy, things that would make her genuinely shy or vulnerable. But none of that is discussed. We're left with a bitchy girl, thoughtlessly dismissing romantic suitors.
OMG Bella I love you so much I want to be you tell me your secrets

Here's question 2.

True or False. You are a sixteen-year-old high school student who knows more about head injuries than people with medical degrees.

If you answered false you are WRONG, and I passive aggressively grimace at you. Bella is embarrassed and frustrated about being taken to the hospital, which is understandable, even admirable in her hatred of being coddled. But she is also an irritating, indignant little snot about it, sorely convinced that there is nothing wrong with her and that everyone is just inconveniencing her. When they put her in a neck brace, she takes if off when no one is looking and throws it under the hospital bed because it's "stupid-looking" (p 60), and when they X-ray her head she tells the reader, "I told them there was nothing wrong, and I was right. Not even a concussion" (p 61). That's right. Doctors are stupid, and the tests they run to make sure that people aren't bleeding internally are stupid, and the devices they put on people's necks to ensure that they don't have permanent spinal injury are STUPID.

To be honest, there is something to be said here about Bella wanting control over her own body, or even knowing her own body more than trained professionals. Her anger at being overpowered reached me on some level, as I understand what it's like to not feel like you are in control. It's a genuine teenage girl fear that I can somewhat relate to. But really, Meyer? Did you have to try to make her smarter than the doctors?

Last question.

You think it's "stupid, stupid, stupid" (pg 67) to be so suddenly obsessed with Edward because:
a) Obsessions are bad
b) He has been openly hostile toward you
c) You saw him demonstrate immense physical strength by lifting a van, and then he lied to you about it, which makes you nervous around him
d) Being obsessed with Edward makes you NOT want to get the hell out of your small town

The answer? D! "I wasn't eager to escape Forks as I should be, as any normal, sane person would be" (pg 67). Not only is this the ultimate insult to the people of Forks, it overlooks a lot of the more frightening possibilities that NORMAL, SANE PEOPLE would recognize. But then, those aren't things that the story wants us to pay attention to. Edward Cullen: he makes shitty small town life bearable.

And it's true that Edward isn't completely unlikable so far, particularly when he bickers with Bella about what happened at the accident. Here are some little moments that pleased me:

"I saved your life -- I don't owe you anything." (p 64)

"Bella, you hit your head, you don't know what you're talking about." (p 64)

"You think I lifted a van off of you?"..."Nobody will believe that, you know." (p 65)

"Can't you just thank me and get over it?" (p 65)

Yeah Bella, you little twerp. Can't you? I'm sure I should be disconcerted by the way he treats her, but I actually kind of enjoy it. Bella's mindset is so childish that to see someone treat her like a child is rewarding. Eventually, Edward (sort of) wins their argument by staring Bella down, and his beauty makes it difficult for her to stay focused. "It was like trying to stare down a destroying angel" (p 65). A what? A destroying what? The same hair-gel model who just snapped, "Can't you just thank me and get over it?" like a haughty adolescent is what? Haha, Bella Swan, your metaphors are funny.

There is one little thing that concerns me about Edward. On pg 65, they argue about his rescuing Bella and she asks him, "Why did you even bother?" which is kind of a dumb question to ask when you've just gotten rescued by someone. Edward, however, replies, "I don't know." What...you don't know why you saved a person's life? Is he implying that if Tyler's van were to careen toward anybody but Bella, he would have watched them get crushed, even though he had the power to save them? It doesn't speak well for Edward's morality if he only ever feels an impulse to ease human suffering when the suffering human happens to be one fragile, good-smelling girl. This problem, I have a feeling, gets overlooked by casual readers, who most likely assume that Edward saved Bella because he is in love with her, not because he actually values human life.

In the land beyond Edward-Bella World, secondary characters MATTER NOT. Poor Tyler! Bella hears a whole crowd of people shouting her name over the parking lot when the accident happens, but nobody shouts Tyler's name, and he spends most of his time in the hospital in the bed next to Bella, desperately apologizing for nearly crushing her. Bella is frustrated since she has already told him she's fine and he won't let the subject go. She eventually "close[s] [her] eyes to ignore him," oblivious that Tyler's anxiety about almost killing a person might, I don't know, HAVE TO DO WITH SOMETHING A LITTLE BIGGER THAN JUST BELLA SWAN!

But, as I've come to find out, nothing in the Twilight universe is bigger than Bella Swan.

PLOT DEVELOPMENT: This is the first time an event has taken place in Twilight, and again, the car accident is circumstantial, totally outside of Bella's control, and therefore irrelevant to her character or her decisions, and lacking causality. I mean, it's more exciting than smirks and grimaces over a biology lab, so I'll bite. But I think I kind of understand why Meyer might want to keep action sequences out of the equation as often as possible. There are...PROBLEMS, mostly inconsistencies and a lack of clarity in the language, so...

LANGUAGE:...I'll deal with it in this section. This marks the first chapter where Meyer's language hindered my ability to understand literally what was happening. Maybe someone else can have a go at it. Here's the paragraph where the van almost hits Bella.

"Just before I heard the shattering crunch of the van folding around the truck bed, something hit me, hard, but not from the direction I was expecting. My head cracked against the icy blacktop, and I felt something solid and cold pinning me to the ground. I was lying on the pavement behind the tan car I'd parked next to. But I didn't have a chance to notice anything else, because the van was still coming. It had curled gratingly around the end of truck and, still spinning and sliding, was about to collide with me again." (p 56)

...What? Setting aside the image of a van "folding around" the truck (like a taco?) it curls around the end of the truck a second time, spins and slides some more (how does it do this if it's up against the truck?) at comes at Bella a second time, as though it's making another attempt. Oh, van. I admire your attempt, I surely do. It is a brave and honest endeavor but...it's impossible to picture what's happening in this paragraph.

When Edward rushes onto the scene, a "low oath" makes Bella aware of him. (You get it? Edward is swearing.) There also some confusion as to what Edward does to the van, whether he stops it with his hand, catches it in the air (?) to keep it from "landing" on Bella's legs, or lifts it up off of her (if this last one were the case, wouldn't she have been crushed anyway?). The consensus on p 64 seems to be that he both stops the van with his hands AND lifts it to keep it from crushing her, but if it's already stopped before it crushes Bella, why would he need to lift it...? These are language problems typical of amateur writers, who have little experience choreographing scenes, and who orchestrate action in a really confusing way. Meyer wants us to know every tiny movement that happens when the van comes at Bella, but we're bogged down with so many details that its hard to decipher them. A more mature writer would have focused more on the sensory elements of almost getting hit by a car: sounds, the smell of burning rubber maybe, the sight of a car door swinging toward your face. Instead, we get Bella attempting to give us a blow-by-blow account of the literal events.

But It doesn't really matter. The only thing you're supposed to take away from this scene is EDWARD MAN SAVE BELLA WOO-MAN!!!. The logistics are irrelevant.

SUBTEXT: Meyer's forbidden fruit and outsider subtexts have been set aside in lieu of the plot; what's at the forefront in the chapter is Bella's life-in-peril moment, and her curiosity/frustration with Edward. I have a feeling it's going to become a pervasive idea that Bella is frail and in need of protection, and that Edward, the strong, silent guardian, will protect her without question, and without explanation. However, even though I don't like Bella at all, I do appreciate her stubbornness, her dogged quest for answers, and her distaste for being coddled (even if her frustrations are petty, misplaced and annoying). These are qualities that, one hopes, will evolve into something more interesting as the story progresses.

WHAT'S WORKING? Plausibility aside, convoluted language aside, Bella's incessant snottiness aside...there is one question to be asked. Who doesn't want to get rescued from an out-of-control van by the hottest guy in school?

The event is escapist fantasy to the extreme. What makes it even more radically fantastic is that Edward implies that Bella is the ONLY person he would have done such a thing for. All Bella has to do is exist, and she magically becomes the center of people's universes. By now, if Meyer has successfully convinced readers that Bella is selfless, mature, intelligent, and misunderstood by the rest of the world, she's probably also convinced them that they share Bella's qualities. "Of course Bella is deserving of Edward's special attention, and I am too, because Bella is me!"

The only way this could ever work is if the reader hasn't thought deeply about any of the things Bella has said, and if the reader is able to ignore, or doesn't recognize, a lot of the other problems with the prose, which range from distracting to infuriating.

With that said, I can still understand the teenage attraction to Edward so far, with all his smirking and arrogance, and his predominant quality being that he is really, really, really, ridiculously good-looking. I will be paying attention to him in the next chapter, if not just to see him be an asshole to Bella some more.

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Geeeez. Someone tell me Bella takes some Prozac in Chapter 4. Or at least downs a giant handle of vodka.

Wish me luck,
Jenchilla