Irrational (pg. 22-29)

The Stoic Philosopher/Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (whom most of you are more familiar with from the beginning of the movie Gladiator) commented that the source of anger is dashed expectations. Take myself for example, I look outside and it is snowing. Then I get in the car to drive somewhere and get angry that no one seems to remember how to drive in the mysterious white stuff that seems to be falling from the sky. I am angry because people should remember given the fact that they live in the snowbelt but they don’t and this happens every first snow. If I could just remember that this would happen then I should not be angry according to the Emperor.

This brings us to the end of chapter 1. Bella in the preceding chapter has sought to remind us that she is an outcast, that no one will like her, and how especially different she is than the rest of the typical high school crowd. She has convinced the audience that she is going to be an outcast, feared and reviled from the rest of the population for merely existing. We understand that she isn’t the bubbly cheerleader type with blond hair, a nice tan, and an outgoing personality.

The difficult thing about this is that while we accept it clearly the character, herself does not. She has so far gone out of her way to avoid one person, become arrogant and self-important with the group she is sitting with at lunch, and look down her nose at the “typical teenager.” I have said it earlier, she wants attention for not being accepted, for people to talk about her as being the mysterious loner that shoves people away. For proof of this we look no further than her first actual meeting with Edward Cullen.

Edward so far has merely cast a glance in her direction at lunch. Now, they have to sit next to each other in Biology class.* We know from the hype around the book that they will get together later and this is the first reaction: “He stared at me again, meeting my eyes with the strangest expression on his face–it was hostile furious.“

Once she sits down at the lab table next to him: “He was leaning away from me, sitting on the extreme edge of his chair and averting his face like he smelled something bad…I peaked up at him one more time and regretted it. He was glaring down at me again, his black eyes full of revulsion.“

Class ends (a subject that Bella has already covered, she notes) and Edward gets out of his chair racing to the door. This, apparently not the usual behavior for a high school students in the planet that Bella lives on, causes her to reflect, “I sat frozen in my seat staring blankly after him. He was so mean. It wasn’t fair.”

This guy, instead of paying attention to her pays attention to class and this isn’t fair? I don’t know but Edward’s reaction doesn’t seem odd to me. I feel that never being a teenage girl I should cut her some slack, it’s obvious from these few pages that she has already developed a crush on Edward, who somehow never read her mind and returned even an atom of that to her. However, Bella isn’t the usual teenage girl, she has reminded us of that fact many times already in the book. So I won’t cut her the slack she seems to be begging for, I will cut her some because it’s not that Edward ignored her he seemed to be angry with her existence. That always puzzles me too, I have met some people that right off the bat hate me. I never get it, and my insistence on finding out why usually makes it worse. We haven’t really gotten the inquisitive nature of Bella yet, all we have is a sense of superiority and her desire to be treated as an outsider.

Yet it gets more puzzling when the school day is over and she returns her forms to the office only to find Edward attempting to switch out of the Biology class they share, “It was impossible that this stranger could take such a sudden, intense dislike to me.”

Is it? The very manner in which Edward has treated her has been the attitude she has been telling us that she is used to, now somehow when that expectation has been met this upsets her. Bella isn’t a snob, she’s what I term the “lonely loner.” Using the idea of the mysterious loner, in order to attract friends so that they don’t have to be the loner anymore.** According to her in the beginning of chapter 1 this sudden, intense dislike is not only possible but has been expected!

Of course this all operates under my expectation that a girl, especially a teenage girl is going to be rational and consistent. However all that is thrown out the window because she’s been hit with the thunderbolt, according to the Godfather. All of the other people in the school can treat her however they want and none of that will matter because Edward is going to be occupying all of her thoughts. Her true expectations of finding friends has been met, despite her lies to the reader. Now something else has entered the equation that she never anticipated and that is why the Emperor can smugly stroke his beard, he’s still right and Bella’s reaction is just as he predicted.

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*We’re going to get to one of the biggest questions of the book later, but as a teaser the question is: “Why is he in high school to begin with?”

**And according to 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant this makes Isabella Swan an immoral person for breaking the first Categorical Imperative.