Chapter 23: The Angel

457 pages in...

Uuuuggggghhhhhhh....

It's not by coincidence that whenever Edward shows up, I start to feel ill. Thankfully, this sad excuse for a climax is only six pages long, and in it, Meyer hams up the epic melodramatics and the saccharine language, enough to make a person diabetic. This is Meyer's attempt to portray the dreamy, half-aware consciousness of someone who is dying. Because it's so short, I will take everyone through it. You really need the full effect.

"Where I floated, under the dark water..."

Cliche count: 1

"...I heard the happiest sound my mind could conjure up -- as beautiful, as uplifting, as it was ghastly. It was another snarl; a deeper, wilder roar that rang with fury." (452)

So, Bella's drifting in a place between awareness and unconsciousness and Edward ::POOF:: is there. Instead of being constructive in helping Bella, he is raging and roaring about what's happened to her, because that is what men do when their true loves are in peril.

"...through the heavy water, I heard the sound of an angel calling my name, calling me to the only heaven I wanted."

Cliche count: 2

For the first two pages of the chapter, Edward is referred to only as "the angel," because Meyer thought that the depiction of GlitterMan-as-Savior was too subtle. We get more of Meyer's weird voyeuristic obsession with Bella's martyrdom when Carlisle, who is there also, announces all of Bella's injuries aloud.

"She's lost some blood, but the head wound isn't deep...Watch out for her leg, it's broken."
"Some ribs, too, I think." (453)

This was clearly one of Meyer's favorite chapters to write, with Bella, bleeding and broken after having sacrificed herself, with a slew of heroes crouched around her, admiring her selflessness and obsessing over her injuries, desperately trying to think of a way to save her. Bella herself does very little in the chapter aside from feel pain and whine.

"'Edward.' I tried to tell him, but my voice was so heavy and slow. I couldn't understand myself.
'Bella, you're going to be fine. Can you hear me, Bella? I love you.' [Cliche count: 4]
'Edward,' I tried again. My voice was a little clearer.
'Yes, I'm here.'
'It hurts,' I whimpered." (454)

Oh, and Alice is there too btw. Bella begins to feel a particularly sharp, burning pain in her hand, and her big heroic moment in the chapter is when she makes this known to the others. We're meant to understand this pain as that of vampire venom.

"'He [James] bit her.' Carlisle's voice was no longer calm, it was appalled. [Jesus H., that is an overt run-on sentence. Where the fuck is your editor?]
I heard Edward catch his breath in horror.
'Edward, you have to do it.' It was Alice's voice, close to my head. Cool fingers brushed at the wetness in my eyes." (454-5)

The "wetness." WETNESS. Just...where, where, WHERE IS YOUR EDITOR?? Who told you this was decent prose?

At first, I thought that Alice was referring to letting Bella become a vampire, though then Carlisle tells Edward that he's going to have to suck the venom out, because apparently you can do that. After the lengths the book has gone to describing Edward's thirst for Bella's blood, this is meant to be his greatest challenge. (It doesn't matter that Alice could do it, or better yet, Carlisle, who has trained himself to be immune to the temptation of human blood -- Edward HAS to do it, because Meyer demands it, because we MUST have this contrived conundrum.)

"I felt my consciousness slipping as the pain subsided. I was afraid to fall into the black waters again, afraid I would lose him in the darkness.
'Edward,' I tried to say, but I couldn't hear my voice. They could hear me.
'He's right here, Bella.'
'Stay, Edward, stay with me....'
'I will.' His voice was strained, but somehow triumphant."

In an instant, Edward's moment of temptation is over. He has succeeded, Bella is pain-free, and he is carrying her off as she falls asleep from exhaustion.

WHAT'S WORKING: I can feel how much the story is pushing me to admire and yearn for Edward's love and devotion. I am almost impressed. The desperate tone, the obvious manipulations, the clear self-indulgence of the whole event...I mean, I would be embarrassed, but Meyer is shameless in the way she writes about these characters. She loves them to the point of destroying them.

Case in point: Edward suffers from the same character problems as Bella, which are that his characteristics change to suit whatever situation Meyer places him in. The climactic chapter demonstrates this most clearly, as Meyer wants us to see Edward as a hero, because he so effortlessly stops drinking Bella's blood. Remember how he went on and on about how it's his own personal brand of heroine? And yet he averted the problem so easily? Well, he must be a swell guy, right? To be able to do everything easily makes someone perfect, isn't that true?

In Meyer's eyes, and in the eyes of many of her readers, this makes Edward that much more desirable, though I think this is also attributed to a one-dimensional understanding of people. In the same vein of self-hatred=humility and martyrdom=automatic good person, in Twiland, doing something effortlessly means that you naturally deserve praise for it.

Please. Show me an instance in which Edward is actively sacrificing something, in which I can see and believe the pain and effort that he undergoes to fulfill some act (this doesn't mean just seeing him mope and complain about it after the fact). THEN maybe I'll consider him a valiant character. Until then, these moments merely scream to me that he is a lifeless, half-baked idea, which Meyer manipulates to suit her fantasy.

I don't think I'm the only one who felt let down by the climax. The movie version of this scene acknowledges and sort of tries to remedy the problem Meyer creates, with Edward contributing to Bella's unconsciousness, due to his drinking more than what is required, and with Carlisle saying things like, "Okay, stop now. You're killing her." These things actively DEMONSTRATE the difficulty of the act, and could have been observed from Bella's ailing viewpoint, if only Meyer wasn't so blinded by lust for her angel-man creation.

There's another problem, however, that the movie doesn't address, and this is a problem that I think is more influential in whether people love or hate this book. Never, never have I read a young adult book in which the NARRATOR AND PROTAGONIST does SO LITTLE at the novel's climax.

In fact, it's very rare to find novels of any genre, on any reading level, with protagonists that lay on their back while the major crisis falls into the hands of someone else. I found myself wondering: why is this Bella's story and not Edward's? Bella has spent the entire novel taking no consequential actions, and when she finally does, it is an action that places her in danger, which somebody else is required to fix? She does not get to decide whether or not she becomes a vampire. She does not get to decide whether or not Edward stops drinking her blood. She doesn't even get to decide what happens to James, which takes place out of scene, involving characters that we barely know. In a writing workshop, narrators that do nothing and are moved around like chess pieces are generally the kiss of death for stories.

Not in the case of Twilight! Young fans lap up Bella's predicament, everything, from her spoiled princess attitude to her passivity to her completely out-of-character martyrdom. I think it's more than just girls selfishly wanting everything to revolve around them, or that they want to do nothing in order to get everything. Really, it's about being desired, and the belief you would be worthy enough to be seen as a martyr, to have everyone crowd around, desperately trying to save your life, to even -- EVEN! -- have someone as powerful and magnificent as Edward see you as so important, and to make decisions for you, while you yourself wither pitifully from your most recent bout of self-sacrifice.

This is, of course, an opinion. I haven't really researched it. I think that a deeper analysis of fan reactions to Bella's doormat behavior would be in order, but I might save that for next week.

As a disclaimer, I want to add that some stories do work with a narrator who is not the protagonist. The most famous of these is probably The Great Gatsby, with Jay Gatsby as the protagonist and Nick Carraway "observing." Similarly, the narrator of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine is not the Time Traveller himself, but rather a visitor listening to to Time Traveller's story. Novels like these are often using the observer as a microscope to study a particular society or environment. Gatsby's story is a tragic one; Nick is there to relay it, and to make a larger observation about class relations in the 20s. Bella is not filling any such functional purpose like that for Edward. Bella and Edward are only present to be in love with each other, and the story doesn't tell us anything bigger than that.

And here is some vaguely-related literary humor:(C) This woman, whom I heart: Hark! A Vagrant

-
-
-

Next week is another Bella-in-the-hospital chapter, where we will get the full run-down of what happened and probably hear more about the horrific injuries Bella sustained, because she is a selfless person who is worthy of praise. And if you do not think so, you are a jealous whore. JEALOUS WHORE.

Wish me luck,
Jenchilla

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.

-
-
-

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 21: Phone Call

432 pages in...

In this chapter, James calls the hotel room. Bella hears her mother's voice on the other end of the line, and so James, saying that he has her mother and will hurt her, convinces her to escape Alice and Jasper and come to meet him so that he can eat her. His very polite about it, in the way that creepy, Eurotrash villains always are. Bella makes a really speedy decision to go through with it, despite more sensible options. She writes a letter to Edward apologizing for her need to be a heroic asshole, asking him not to come after her, and then Meyer (or possibly Meyer's lame-ass editor) literally uses curly-cue text to depict Bella's handwriting.

Bella ends the chapter on the winning line. "And then I carefully sealed away my heart" (432). Because get it, she's writing a letter to Edward and her heart's in it and she's sealing it up in an envelope? You don't get it? YOU ARE A HEARTLESS CYNIC AND YOU SHOULD GO AWAY AND DIE!!!1!!1!1one

Is there any point in my dissecting the stupidity of this situation? Firstly, it's clear that Alice already senses that something's going on (don't vampires have super hearing, and wouldn't Alice be able to hear James on the other end of the line if she was in the same room as Bella?), the story desperately wants us to believe that that Bella's an awful liar (actually, it's kind of inconsistent about this; there are several moments in the story, like this one, in which Bella manages to lie very effectively), and while she does hear her mother's voice over the phone, she never once considers that James might be tricking her, which he very obviously is.

There are other questions I have about this chapter (like, "If James is so super obsessed with the challenge of hunting Bella down like a the magical doe she is, why does he utilize such an easy, lame-ass method to get her?" and "Why is Bella so worried about her new vampire friends getting hurt when they are all very clearly invincible?") but searching for answers to these questions would be pointless. The event in this chapter serves one purpose and one purpose only:

TIE BELLA SWAN TO THE FUCKING TRAIN TRACK.

And what better way to do that than to make the girl an idiotic martyr? In fact, Meyer is so quick to switch Bella into martyr mode that she throttles logic with a piano wire in the process.


WHAT'S WORKING: This will mostly be about Bella Swan.

Bella has not grown on me. In fact, the more I read from her point of view, the less I like her and the less human she seems. I've heard that she only gets worse in later books and eventually undergoes a completely undeserved, unrealistic transformation at the end of Breaking Dawn, which I will never read, ever, not even out of morbid curiosity. I mean, FANS thought it was bad. FANS.

I hate this character for a number of reasons, and I can't help but wonder if Twilight would be a more enjoyable book for me if the character of Bella were more reasonable, if she responded to Edward glittering in the sunlight with, "Wow. That is lame," as most world-weary teens would. Or if she was more appreciative of the fact that everything seems to magically go well for her or if she wasn't, um, FLATTERED to have her own personal stalker.

The problem though, contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, isn't that Bella is an atrocious person. She's not a person, first of all. She's a character. And a bad one at that. What it seems to come down to is that Meyer just sucks big time at character development, as Bella's main problems seem to be, not just that she is unlikable, but that she is inconsistent.

I made a chart for this occasion. No really, I did.
In this chapter particularly, we are supposed to read Bella's decision as a reckless and heroic one. Bella exhibits other brief moments of compassion for other people, though they are few and far between and tend to come across as pretty outrageous and nonsensical. One, which always bothered me, was back in the glittery meadow scene, when Edward describes a moment at school when Bella came into the office behind him, and he almost killed her AND another person who happened to be in the room.

"I shivered in the warm sun, seeing my memories anew through his eyes, only now grasping hte danger. Poor Ms. Cope; I shivered again at how close I'd come to being inadvertently responsible for her death." (270)

You see? ACTUALLY, she is quite selfless. She blames herself for the faults of others and she doesn't value herself as much as she values other people. This is how Twilight fans argue that Bella is a strong character worthy of Edward's love, even when others point out that the MAJORITY of the time, we see a very negative side to her. It's interesting to me that whenever Bella complains and mopes and behaves in a completely shallow manner, her fans jump the gun to give excuses for her. And yet they see these brief moments of self-sacrifice and compassion as proof that she's a saint, rather than what they really are: jarring character inconsistencies meant to cloy sympathy from reader and (in the case of Bella's decision to meet James' demand) plot contrivances.

So why are some susceptible to this ploy and others (namely, the people who don't like Twilight) not? Well, I think it depends on a couple of factors:

1. The level at which a reader identifies with Bella
2. The level of insight a reader has about people in general

It helps to be able to see yourself in the person you're reading about. Readers can identify themselves in Bella, her personality and behavior, without even really knowing that they're doing it. And if you identify with a character and also have absolutely no capacity for self-reflection (as some people don't) then, most likely, someone's going to get her feelings hurt. This is why so many fans will tear your head off and call you a jealous whore if you criticize Bella. In essence, you are criticizing THEM.

Secondly, I think that readers with some level of insight can see through the fantasy fog that Bella's character creates. For one, most people with insight know that hating on yourself all the time and blaming yourself for other people's faults IS NOT THE SAME THING AS HUMILITY. In fact, it's really just another form of self-absorption to think that everything has to do with you. (A lot of teenagers don't realize this until they become adults, and some never realize it.)

Insightful people would also be able to recognize that someone as self-absorbed as Bella is probably not going to be running off to sacrifice herself anytime soon, for anybody. That's not to say that people can't be sometimes self-absorbed and also be selfless; in fact, the best characters in literature are well-rounded. But the problem with Bella is that she doesn't evolve into her selflessness. She doesn't mull over the decisions she has to make. She never applies what she learns. She doesn't grow or change. The story just kind of hands her to us and tell us she's perfect as is, which is bullshit. The character as a whole is bullshit.

I don't know if people who identify with Bella think that they also would be selfless in her situation. I seriously doubt that most readers ever would, but they can fantasize that they would through Bella. After all, what other position allows for complete respect and adoration more than martyrdom?


-
-
-

Read ahead a little in the next chapter. I have 66 pages left in this novel. It is officially of the devil.

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.

-
-
-

And also this:


Chapter 21 for next week.

Wish me luck,
Jenchilla

Chapter 19: Goodbyes

404 pages in...

Well, we've passed the 400 mark and Meyer is ratcheting up the tension by making things far more complicated than they need to be. We have now launched headlong into The Most Convoluted Escape Plan Ever, Part II.
Basically, Bella must be incredibly mean to her dad in order to make him think that she can't stand to be in Forks with him for another second. That way, she can take off with Alice and Jasper, and Edward will stay in town, so Charlie Swan will know he isn't involved and won't be suspicious. (If all of this sounds a little silly, don't worry; it's not you.)

This could have been an interesting situation in which Meyer opens up the more painful corners of Bella's relationship with her dad, delving maybe into her feelings of abandonment, or her anxiety about how the divorce forced her into an early adulthood. But no. That would be something to expect for more nuanced and intuitive writers. Meyer keeps everything in the shallow end:

"I can't do this anymore! I can't put down any more roots here! I don't want to end up trapped in this stupid, boring town like Mom! I'm not going to make teh same dumb mistakes she did. I hate it -- I can't stand here another minute!" (393)

And this:

'"Just let me go, Charlie.' I repeated my mother's last words as she'd walked out this same door so many years ago. I said them as angrily as I could manage, and I threw the door open. 'It didn't work out, okay? I really, really hate Forks!'" (394)

Chief Swan is, of course, devastated, because he adores Bella as much as everybody in this novel. And thankfully, Bella takes a moment to be upset about her cruel solution to the problem. But still, Edward's all like, "Oh, whatever. He'll get over it," and it infuriates me how dumb this book wants me to think Charlie Swan is, that he needs to be constantly duped and shoved around. There's even a weird kind of self-righteousness to this scene, as though, deep down, Meyer believes that Bella's speech was something that her father needed to hear.

But you know, what the hell ever. This book barely gives a shit about Charlie Swan, so why should I? Now we are running desperately back to the Cullen's place and Laurent is there to confirm what Edward perceived about James. He is after Bella and will not stop until he gets her. So the Cullens decide to try to "confuse Bella's scent" to get James going off in a different direction when she leaves town. Around here is where we get our very first line of dialogue from Rosalie, who says, after Edward orders her to trade clothes with Bella:

"Why should I?"..."What is she to me? Except a menace -- a danger you've chosen to inflict on all of us." (401)


Wait, is it...?

IS IT!?

YES! YES IT IS!


YES YES YES YES! SOMEONE IS THE VOICE OF REASON AGAINST EVERYBODY INEXPLICABLY LOVING THIS DETESTABLE TWAT -- oh, wait. Everybody just ignored her....

Neeevermind.

As though Meyer is afraid that some readers might actually take Rosalie seriously (completely silencing her and having the blond bitch pretty much shunned by everyone in the family isn't enough), we take another moment to have another character (Jasper this time) remind Bella that she actually is quite special, and that she is totally worth all this trouble, even though Jasper has known our heroine for less than two days. Cullens just Know Things about people.

"Jasper and I looked at each other. He stood across the length of the entryway from me...being careful.
'You're wrong, you know,' he said quietly.
'What?' I gasped.
'I can feel what you're feeling now -- and you are worth it.'
'I'm not,' I mumbled. 'If anything happens to them, it will be for nothing.'
'You're wrong,' he repeated, smiling kindly at me.'" (404)

It's SUPER IMPORTANT to remember that Bella's tragic flaw is a lack of self-knowledge. That is, she doesn't know how awesome she is, and therefore constantly needs to be reminded of it by Edward and a plethora of other characters, whom she generally rebuffs.

Off she goes to Phoenix, where this book's climax will take place, if it indeed has a climax.

WHAT'S WORKING: At this point, I feel like there's no need for me to point out the appeal of a self-insert character who does nothing, and yet stands at the center of a great, masculine ruckus. A whole clan of supernatural beings have rallied together to protect Bella simply because she happens to be there. She's unhappy about this, of course, feeling guilty about putting them in danger (though they seem rather invincible, so I'm not 100% convinced they're actually IN any danger; Bella seems more worried that they will have to relocate on her account). Nonetheless, I can totally feel Stephanie Meyer's glee as she writes this stuff. The only character who even questions protecting Bella with her life gets instantly shut down and disrespected. For girls reading this novel who connect with Bella, it is a further manifestation of a supreme desire: yes, they ARE the center of the universe. Other people, like Charlie Swan, don't matter one wink. And Bella's human friends haven't been mentioned for hundreds of pages.

I don't see much else I can add to this chapter than I didn't say about the last one, which was rather similar. I do have something else to add in regards to what Twilight may be counteracting in media. Movies that feature a male character, like Zach Braff in Garden State, often have a female counterpart, like Natalie Portman, who has no real concerns of her own aside from "fixing" the dude's depression and getting him to, like, embrace life or something. (See: manic pixie dream girl) Edward Cullen is no less like an Objectified Relationship Toolbox, designed to protect, serve, adore, make decisions for, and forever inflate the ego of his One True Love. But audiences are more accepting of the fanciful depiction of the relationship in Garden State, which did very well to my knowledge, and which I myself liked the first time I saw it. (Granted, it did have a little more going on in it.)

I know I compare Twilight to popular movies a lot, which maybe isn't fair. I guess I just see it as being on that same brain-popcorn wavelength. But just so that everybody in the world knows, these complaints I have about a lack of attention to the female psyche extend their tentacles into contemporary fiction as well. I mean the big boys. I mean Pulitzer prizewinning big boys.

This article. Read it. Granted, the kind of people reading Cormac McCarthy probably are NOT going to be reading Twilight. Just a guess. But there are interesting points to be made.

I don't want people to misunderstand and get mad, though. It's not my desire that people stop reading books by men or about men, and I don't intend to say, nor do I think this article intends to say, that a story is worthless if it doesn't have a female character in it. The reason people write articles like these is not to say that men are worthless. It's to point out that the scales are tilted in a particular direction, because you have overly-lauded writers like Cormac McCarthy who throw up their hands and say that women are simply "too difficult" to write in a way that makes them seem like genuine human beings. We're just too mysterious. We're like a mythical creature whose inner workings can never be fully understood. As someone in the comment section of this article pointed out, McCarthy has no problem writing about cannibals or murderers, and yet women, whom I'm going to assume he comes into contact with pretty much every day, are simply too scary to deal with.

To any dudes out there, imagine what it might feel like to watch a movie or read a book and realize to yourself, "Heeeeey. Wait a minute. There are absolutely NO men in this story."

The more I broaden my scope, the more I start to wonder if blaming Stephanie Meyer and her hoards of fans for indulging in something is the wrong way to go about it. After all, if story-writers treated their female characters with more complexity, I have a feeling Twilight would not even exist, or if it did, its fans wouldn't defend it to such a violent degree. But Twilight stands as a bastion of light against stories that constantly ask of women to be these quirky, sexy, witty, ass-kicking, mysterious creatures. This is why fans of Bella Swan say they like her because she is "real," they like her because she is "weak." She is those things, and she is still the glorious focal point of it all.

-
-
-
Chapter 20: Impatience for next week. ...That title does not bode well for me. Impatience, like I will be more impatient in this coming chapter than in previous chapters? Bad omens, everyone. Bad, bad bad.

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.

-
-
-

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

This is just an observation...

I don't know how relevant this is, but it's something that has me in a perpetual state of astonishment. Twilight may have launched into the mainstream, but there are some REALLY SPECTACULAR SONGS on the soundtracks to those movies. I mean, there's some super trashy stuff on there too, but holy Jesus god! Beck?? BATS FOR LASHES!? Oh Christ, and Florence + the Machine. Wow. I do love a good epic, thunderous love song. EDWARD AND BELLA DO NOT DESERVE MUSIC OF THIS CALIBER. NO.

http://www.box.net/shared/static/1lsayxgh4c.mp3

Of course, you have to buy the whole damn album to get the good stuff, unless you download it illegally of course. And I would never do anything like that. Never. Nope. ::sidles off to Google::

Jenchilla