Chapter 22: Hide and Seek

451 pages in...

Haha...I just can't get over these videos. They're so funny.

Sassy Gay Friend: Eve
Sassy Gay Friend: The Giving Tree

Sorry for the delay this week. I read this chapter on Monday and was actually eager to comment on it, though I didn't, because I am lame and a procrastinator. Clearly I wasn't THAT eager.

I didn't mind this chapter so much for three reasons:

1. Events are actually taking place.
2. There's some acknowledgment of Stuff That Happened Beyond Bella&Edward
   
3. Bella gets thrown against a wall.

So, yes. In a sequence of events that reminds me of nightmares I've had when I'm fleeing from some pursuer I can't see, Bella manages to escape from her vampire babysitters at the airport via a restroom with two entrances (meanwhile, Jasper stands at the doorway like a chump, "Du-heerrrrr, she sure is taking a long time"). She takes a bus back to her house and gets directions from James via telephone to the ballet studio where he's "keeping her mother" (why not just tell her to go straight there? I don't--oh, whatever). We get some decent paragraphs as Bella accepts her fate with a kind of despondent sadness:

"From the corner of my eye, I could almost see my mother standing in the shade of the big eucalyptus tree where I'd played as a child. Or kneeling by the little plot of dirt around the mailbox, the cemetery of all the flowers she'd tried to grow. The memories were better than any reality I would see today. But I raced away from them, toward the corner, leaving everything behind her." (442)

Not bad, yeah? Bella seems almost likable, though I'm still reminded that this is a tenderness that I NEVER SEE IN BELLA EVER, and suddenly she has it by Mary Sue magic, because Meyer wants us to sympathize with her plight.

And I'm not completely inhuman; I feel myself manipulated and drawn in by Bella's situation. Of course, I'm annoyed by how much the story wants me to see Bella as being a selfless martyr. She's remarkably cool about it when she arrives at the ballet studio and figures out that James tricked her (he used one of her home movies to convey her mother's voice over the phone), and James of course goes on some pretentious monologue about what a special and unusual human Bella is. Though she comes to find out that this whole thing isn't TOTALLY about her, which I appreciated.

I feel neutral about James. He's so fucking POLITE and exhibits a sick kind of voyeuristic pleasure in what he's doing, which I think is well done. He is nonsensically (but also quite creepily) invested in Bella's emotional state at any given moment. But he also has that irritating trait that a lot of comic book villains have, reiterating how he managed to get to this point and monologuing about what he's going to do now and why. Much of it is very dull, with a sensibility of "I heard what you said you were gonna do and felt sure that you were gonna do the opposite, but then I thought that you would think I would think that, so then I thought you're probably gonna do what you said you were gonna do and here I am!"

I don't need to know HOW James got to Phoenix, honestly, and I don't see why he thinks Bella needs to know either. In fact, he would be scarier if he simply appeared, with no real explanation. He's a TRACKER after all. I'm sure he would find a way.

James also reveals another layer to his motive. See, James had this obsession with Alice back while she was still human and in an insane asylum for her prophetic visions. She smelled SO GOOD to him, but he never got to taste her because another vampire stole her away from him and turned her before he could get her. He killed this "other vampire," though Alice somehow ended up in the Cullen clan, and that's why James is going to film himself murdering Bella slowly and show it to Edward later.

I don't know. It actually makes a little more sense in the chapter. Summarized, it feels quite stupid.

Regardless of how silly it all seems, it was refreshing to see Meyer thinking in multiple dimensions. Actually, this situation is LARGER than Bella and Edward, albiet flimsily so. It shows evidence of potential complexity for Meyer's vampire world, which continues to be much more interesting than Bella Swan ever could be.

Then James pitches Bella's head against a mirror and comments on what a "nice effect" the broken glass will be for his film. And I feel a twinge of this long lost feeling called enjoyment.

The chapter ends with Bella going unconscious, because this novel needed more moments in which Bella is incapable of making decisions.

WHAT'S WORKING: I know that I'm being manipulated in this chapter. But I think the reason tricks like this have been used in literature and media for years and years is because they work. As a reader who loathes Bella's character, even I can feel the intensity of what's happening, and I feel compelled to read on. For someone who genuinely feels invested in a character that reminds them very much of themselves, the pull would be of cosmological proportions.

There's also something that I thought would annoy me, but really doesn't, and its Meyer's emotional connection to this scene. At this point, I don't think Meyer is being channeled solely through Bella. I think she's also being channeled through James.

It's not surprising to me that this novel would end up in Phoenix, Meyer's home town, in a setting that is most likely a ballet studio that Meyer herself attended as a girl (I would stake a pretty big bet on it; why else would the climax take place in such a random location, out of all the dramatic locations James could have chosen?). But her relationship to her characters reads as more complicated. This whole event has been set up specifically so that James can fuck Bella up, hurt her, kill her slowly, and comment on the fact that she's a martyr and a victim.

I've said before, "What better way to force people to admire and feel emotion for your character than to put them in a situation in which they get fucked up?" I've found myself doing this before. I've read many amateur stories in which this happens. And it's always really visceral and detailed .Just read the passages describing Bella's injuries:

"He was over me at once, his foot stepping down hard on my leg. I heard the sickening snap before I felt it. But then I did feel it, and I couldn't hold back my scream of agony." (450)

"Over the pain of my leg, I felt the sharp rip across my scalp where the glass cut into it. And then the warm wetness began to spread through my hair with alarming speed. I could feel it soaking the shoulder of my shirt, hear it dripping on the wood below." (450)

"The blood -- spreading crimson across my white shirt, pooling rapidly on the floor -- was driving him mad with thirst." (450)

Bella can HEAR her own blood dripping? Either she's obsessed with her own wounds, or this is clearly Meyer imposing her own voyeurism. And of course our sacrificial lamb is wearing white for the occasion. Anytime you describe your own blood as being "crimson," you're desperately reaching for theatrics.

A writer's relationship to her characters is complicated. You could argue that all characters are in some way a part of an author, unless the author is making characters specifically to hate them and have readers hate them. It's good to be able to emotionally connect to what you're writing, but it can also be a big obstacle to overcome in creating believable human beings. This chapter is not the first time I've felt a disconnect with the way Bella narrates and the way Meyer is trying to force us to see her. Bella is supposed to see herself as plain and yet describes her own skin as "ivory" and "translucent-looking" (all the way back in Ch. 1! Pg 10) and makes a reference to her own hair "swirling around" her (435) when she leaves it down. This makes some people see Bella as secretly vain, but I think it's just that Meyer prefers us to see the character as pretty and delicate. Meyer, after all, KNOWS that Bella is actually beautiful and wonderful, and she makes no attempts to really hide that, even if it contradicts with Bella's "I hate myself; I'm so plain and clumsy" persona.

Despite the obvious adoration with which Meyer treats Bella, I think Meyer's kind enjoying this scene with James.And I don't hate her for enjoying it. I mean, is it sick that I can appreciate a writer's urge to fuck up her characters? Sure, it's not an intellectual urge on any level. It's just a gut kind of...instinctual...it's, um...



Yeah. That's pretty much the best way to put it.

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Chapter 23 for next week. I glanced over next couple pages and oh boy. I have a feeling my enjoyment will be short-lived. I see the word "angel" at least ten times.

Wish me luck,
Jenchilla

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