A week ago, I finished Twilight. I did not intend to stay up until 2 in the morning finishing the last 200 pages of a book I swore I would never read, but that's what happened. Anyone who has read the book knows why I did. The last 200 pages are filled with a lot more action than the first 200+ pages. The storey suddenly turns from an intense description of daily life to an action story of Bella becoming hunted by a crazy vampire intent on killing her, and then on killing Edward.
I struggled in the middle of the book to convince myself to even finish reading it for 2 reasons, one of which is really shallow.
Edward sparkles.
Yes, for those of you who haven't read the book, you read that right. Edward is a vampire, and he sparkles. Someone find me some sort of historical or mythical proof that somewhere other than in Stephanie Meyer's bizarre and twisted reality Vampires aren't just unaffected by the sun, but sparkle in it. SERIOUSLY! That just bothered me slightly.
Now to the thing that bugs me most. And it bugs me because it romanticizes a very serious problem in the modern world.
Edward stalks Bella. Not just following her around and knowing her every movement, although he does that too. He actually goes into her room and watches her sleep basically every night for a month (at least). I was horrified! Not only that Meyers would write something like that, but that Bella suggests that she not only doesn't share my horror, but is flattered by it!
To me that seems like a slap in the face to every victim of stalking. The idea is that this is Edward's way of protecting her. If he never leaves her, he never has to fight to stay in control around her and he never has to be at the point of not being able to control his lust for her blood. He is, in effect, her protector, watching her and watching out for her. Which would be kind of romantic if he wasn't protecting her from himself.
But here's the problem. Every girl who has ever read Twilight seems to find this romantic. This idea that he dedicates his every moment to Bella and never leaves her is the new chivalry. But I would like them all to consider what they would think if some guy, even a guy that they were in love with, followed them around all the time.
He always knows what the people around you are thinking, and therefore knows everything you do, say and feel.
He sits in your room and watches you sleep, listening to the things you might subconsciously say in your sleep.
He gets insanely jealous every time some other guy talks to you, and then cryptically tells you that you shouldn't be together because he's dangerous.
He shows up at your house at all hours, "taking care of you", and he knows the floor plan of your house without you ever having let him in to it.
I'm suddenly missing the vampires of the Buffy and Angel days that couldn't enter your house unless you told them they could. The ones that went 'poof' in the sunlight and you knew they were super evil when they followed you around without your permission.
Do you still think it's romantic? The sheer dedication might be, but the stalking I could definitely do without.
Moving on.
The last couple hundred pages have the beautiful descriptions of the the Cullens playing baseball in a thunderstorm. Meyers brilliantly describes their lightning quick movements, the sound of their collisions, and the intensity of the moments leading up to the arrivals of the other vampires. The animal like reactions of Edward and the Cullens as Bella is in danger, and the urgency of the entire situation is so vivid that you feel like you're there and you are genuinely afraid for Bella.
You hurt along with her father as she screams that she doesn't want to be trapped in Forks, and you worry about her mother when James calls Bella in the hotel. The plan seems so brilliant.
And again the only flaw is found in the fact that it is entirely narrated from Bella's point of view and so you miss the most exciting action scene ever, although you still know all her thoughts of how amazing Edward is. I would have loved to read the way in which Meyers could have described Edward bursting in and ripping James away from the woman he loves, and the way Emmet would have absolutely destroyed the other vampire. This would have made the whole thing worthwhile. But alas, Bella is unconscious, so she cannot narrate it, and we don't get to hear it.
My last complaint and final words on the book comes from Bella's desire to be a vampire, which in effect led to a cult of teenage and preteen girls wanting to be Vampires as well. Ignore the fact that these girls decided that vampires were the new prince charming and focus on this for a second. Bella has known Edward for one full school year at the time that she decides that she wants to throw away her life and join his. As alluring as immortality is all I have to say is "THINK!"
Yes, Edward is supposedly the most amazing, gorgeous, caring, dedicated, and protective man a girl could ask for, and if you chose to ignore the hundred year age gap, he seems perfect. But so do most guys when you start dating. You can be so blinded by love that you don't see the flaws, and you think that you want to spend your life with this person. But they've only known each other for a matter of months and she wants to give everything for him. And I do mean everything! She wants to die for this man.
I will suggest that it is her admitted lack of dating experience that leads her to not know what it means to fall out of love, but her parents are divorced, and her mother left for the sole reason of not wanting to live in Forks anymore. She blatantly disregards the idea that that could happen to her. That there is the slight possibility that she might regret this rash decision in ten or twenty or a hundred years. Maybe someday she'll look back and say "I wish I could have done all these things but I wanted so bad to spend eternity with Edward that I gave it all up".
Grrrr.
Its possible that I'm just not the kind of person who understands giving everything up for someone else. Having moved around as much as I did, and grown up in the environment I did, and have the amount of ex-boyfriends I do, it just doesn't make sense to me to abandon any goals you might have, any dreams you might want, for a life completely devoted to another person. And the fact that Edward doesn't want to turn her, suggests he doesn't exactly feel the same for her. And the life she wants is devoid of dreams, because she will never sleep, or eat, or be able to stand in the sunlight again (refer to the comments on sparkling. Sunlight is what causes that). She lived in Pheonix for years! She likes the sun. But she will give up absolutely everything for one guy that she's known for 'x' amount of months.
It is a brilliant book. I'm glad that I read it. I have obtained a copy of the second one from a friend and will likely start reading it with in the week. Maybe even tonight. But there are certain things that make me think that this entire series isn't worth the hype that it has been given. It doesn't deserve the kind of reputation it has received, because there are very drastic flaws in the story, and things about it that bother me a lot! The thing that bothers me the most is that everything I hate about the book, millions of young women love because they love Edward. They love his stalkerish tendencies and his sparkling and they all think that vampires are the new prince charming.
This bothers me! This is the boyfriend role model that Meyers has given an entire generation of women. And they age from the very young to the young adult. These girls who suddenly want their boyfriends to sparkle and be entirely devoted to them and who think that they should throw their lives away for a guy the barely know.
Maybe I'm blowing the whole thing out of proportion, and please don't kill me if I am, but it worries me that Edward is being heralded as the sexiest man in the world, and the perfect guy. He isn't. In fact, he is probably a very dangerous model to find in real life. My experience suggests that in real life the end scene wouldn't have been Edward saving Bella from someone else, but Bella in desperate need of saving because she tried to do something Edward didn't approve of, and he did something that is definitely not romantic.
The End
