Not Important (Pg. 104-117)

Last week I was a bit hard on Edward, but from what some people are telling me, it gets much worse. I haven’t gotten to those points yet, so I have to let the proof stand as it is. This week it’s back to making Bella seem worse, which is unusually easy because I don’t have Edward for comparison. These two are sort of made for each other in a morbid train wreck sort of way.

Bella has made it home from school, her truck so far has not. She’s sitting in her room, “…trying to concentrate on the third act of Macbeth…” which is odd for a variety of reasons. First off, she’s already claimed to have read everything. I dealt with this early on as she glanced over the English reading list and commented that she had already read everything on it which included Shakespeare. Let me help out Bella, it’s the third act of a tragedy, the plan begins to unfurl. The second odd thing is that she’s doing something for English, not intrinsically odd, but odd because nothing has happened in English class. All of the action in the school thus far has taken place in the cafeteria and in Biology, so why bring us a setting and plot point that thus far hasn’t been important? This is like the horrible movie “The Fast and the Furious” where the Asian gang is only introduced to distract the audience.

Thirdly, why Macbeth? To be fair, if she had been reading Dracula I would have rolled my eyes so hard it would have made a noise, but a well placed allusion would have been nice here. Why not read Lord Byron or Polidore, the lesser known Vampire writers and well placed in the Literature canon? However this sort of thing isn’t important to the plot, which is the theme of this section.

I’m also confused about “Trig class,” that thus far also hasn’t played any significant role. People still take Trigonometry? In my experience Trig was lumped in with mathematical logic, but since this is the case I just feel bad for the students. A whole year of right triangles? No wonder people hate math. Again if Meyer is trying to beat us over the head that this is a normal high school, it’s redundant because not only do we get it we also don’t care.

Then there’s the infusion of new characters, Bella having deemed the plebians worthy of her presence at the beach party is dreading the experience, she’s also worried because Edward has said that he and his family are skipping this day to go camping true to form his brood is absent. This is friday, and we are still at school. The whole day is in preparation for Mike’s, the ringleader of this clique, trip. All is going well until Bella perceives something, “I intercepted a few unfriendly glances from Lauren during lunch…” and then she overhears, “Don’t know why Bella‘–she sneered my name–’doesn’t just sit with the Cullens from now on,’ I heard her muttering to Mike. I’d never noticed what an unpleasant nasal voice she had, and I was surprised by the Malice in it.“

Two things are important here: first off, who the fuck is Lauren!? Meyer again introduces a character we know nothing about, have never met before, but is apparently jealous of Bella. I’ve checked my notes (yes I take notes for this) and there isn’t a Lauren until now. She could have been one of the girls that Bella was introduced to but then quickly forgot about but we don’t know this. Meyer never gave a description of them, all we know about Lauren is that she dislikes Bella and has blond hair. Unless the entire school, save the Cullens and the nerds, sit at this table it would make more sense if this girl was part of the cheerleader/jock clique that would not only be jealous but full of hate for the sudden social promotion of Bella up the scale.

The second important feature of this scene with Lauren is that it again shows the inconsistency in Bella. A person hates her and she is surprised, which she shouldn’t be considering all of the ink that was wasted in her telling us that this was to be expected. People have to hate her on her terms, not when there is even the remotest reason for that feeling. I really don’t like this girl.

Saturday rolls around and it’s time for the Beach trip. Her father seems to be more than happy that she is getting along in the town, since she doesn’t pay any real attention to him neither can I. She does notice the sun and this part is just weird, “It was in the wrong place in the sky, too low, and it didn’t seem to be as close as it should be, but it was definitely the sun.”

I ask, “why even bother with it?” There’s a television trope, called Chekov’s gun, which comes from Russian writer Anton Chekov and it is summed up as: if you put a gun on the stage then it must be fired.

It’s the principle of the conservation of plot resources, which I think I learned in Fiction writing in Grad school, don’t be unnecessary. If the sun is odd, there better be a reason for it. It should either be that the sun is odd, or that Bella’s perception of it is either really wrong or really right. This perception of the Sun does nothing, it’s not like Tolkien who related the travels of Gandalf to the South, “where the stars are strange” as a way of describing exactly how far South he traveled. The sun is dropped as quickly as it is introduced, which probably means that an editor screwed up.

Since we are on Chekov’s gun, we are also reminded of Bella’s clumsiness…twice. Once when one of Lauren’s bitchy friends makes a snide comment, because Bella fell over her in Gym and again when an expedition to the Tidal pools at the beach because some of the boys are jumping from rock to rock. She reminds us again that she is prone to falling over, even at the age of seven with her father. At some point Meyer is going to have to pull the trigger on the clumsiness, or else it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to constantly bring it up.

Finally, Bella’s self-importance becomes forefront in her dealing with the underlings that she calls “friends.” To be fair, Mike obviously has the hots for her and Jessica for him, Bella believes that it is her role to make sure that they get together. Which is awfully pretentious of her, she “arranges” that the two sit near each other repeatedly and avoids any chance to be alone with Mike. Normally this would be the mark of a decent friend, staying away from a person that your friend has a crush on. However this line in reference to it says enough, “I hid my chagrin.” She feels that her station is being offended by having to lower herself to these actions. She’s not a queen, she’s just a person who doesn’t feel the intrinsic worth of others. We’ll see more of this in her interactions with Jacob next week, because it gets much worse as this time it’s deliberate.