This chapter is conspicuously long, I think that the editor of the book dropped the ball here because the tone and ‘plot’ of the chapter abruptly switch around pg. 142, I would have broken it off there but maybe the next chapter would have been too short? In either case all it means for us is that this entry may take longer than usual, I don’t know because as this is the first paragraph I haven’t written it yet.
“Making decisions was the painful part for me, the part I agonized over,” isn’t this is the case for everyone? To remind the reader Bella has just had her faith struggle with whether or not Edward is a creature not human. She’s decided that no matter what he turns out to be she’s going to stick with him…obviously. Thomas Harris wrote in the book Hannibal that decisions aren’t made in momentus sequences. They are made almost instantly from the point where the decision is first pondered. Everything else is just posturing or fictional.
The whole reason Bella ducks into the forest to make a decision is for dramatic device. She knew all along whether or not she cared what Edward turned out to be. The only reason that anyone needs to indulge themselves in such activities is to back up the decision that they have already made. They need to convince themselves to do what they want to do, that isn’t making a decision that’s working up nerve. Harris’ detective in Florence at least confronted the idea of taking a bribe honestly.
That’s why Bella finishes her sojourn into the woods with this, “This decision was ridiculously easy to live with. Dangerously easy.”
“Dangerously”? I’m still trying to work around the progression of the story. When the last section ended Bella wasn’t positive what it was that Edward happens to be, so what is so dangerous about the decision? If you put yourself into her shoes, at this point the only thing you have decided is that you are going to stick with this guy (if he’ll have you, he is still ambivalent about that) even if he is possibly something other than human. Which, for Bella, is a hope shrouded in a fear.
So, living with her-hard-to-make-but-easy-to-deal-with-decision (wow just like Heidegger) she goes back to sketching out her Shakespeare paper for the English class we know nothing about. I mentioned before, and this will be the last time, but since English class isn’t the crux of the relationship between Bella and Edward it’s not important for us to know about it. The plot Meyer has established so far means that as far as the reader is concerned Forks HS, should contain a cafeteria, Biology, and Gym. Even gym is a stretch, but Bella’s clumsiness must pay off later since she’s stressed it so much. Bella’s homework should be Bio, and it should be about blood typing since that was the last time she was in class. Like the doomed fat guy pilot at the end of A New Hope, we need to stay on target.
The only point to mentioning English class is to show once again that Bella is smarter than anyone else in the school. This does become the running theme of the end of the chapter though, while emotionally she’s completely out of touch Bella is going to over compensate by lording her intellect over us the reader. She however must think we’re idiots. First off she’s at the school, early, by herself obviously trying to catch the Cullens coming in.
“My homework was done—the product of a slow social life—…” This is just a flat lie. What more does she want in her social life? She’s the newest kid in the school, been invited to the dance by three different people, went to the beach party, and has a good deal of friends,* and sits at a reasonably popular table in the lunch hall. In prison terms, she’s part of a decent gang. She sits down to work on her trig and Mike comes to flirt with her.
No matter how much I try, I just can’t hate Mike. He’s wearing shorts and a rugby shirt because the temperature has spiked to 60, we call that early summer in the North. He speaks to her a little bit, they talk about English class. Even though it comes up again, and is now part of the super trite side plot involving Mike and Bella, it still should have been about, again Biology. Since Bella fainted and Mike carried her out of the room, it makes it seem like there is a legitimate connection between them even if Bella doesn’t think so. Plus it gives Mike a great opener, “here’s the notes/assignment you missed when you fainted…”She’s finished the Macbeth paper, Mike hasn’t started so he asks her the topic. Which, is groan inducing but here it is, “Whether Shakespeare’s treatment of female characters is misogynistic.”
Based on Macbeth!? Not get all Assistant Professorly on her but the only conclusion that she can really draw is “no.” The only female characters in Macbeth are the murderous then remorseful wife, the witches, and then Hecate. All of them pull the strings for the title character, I guess they’re the ultimate villains but the only point for Bella to be writing that paper is for the author to make the character a feminist. Which would be oddly contradictory for her since she spends all of her time pining over Edward and never once really asserting herself. Currently, she only defines her life by the guy she wants to date, I’ve known many feminists and I think they would consider her not among them. Though, if I were to be honest I would like to read that paper.
Bella turns Mike down, but instead of asserting herself she deflects, “Really Mike are you blind?” She tells Mike to go out with Jessica, and Mike seems perplexed. Apparently he hadn’t read the guide to women yet (it’s on my list), or he had, noticed that Jessica liked him but wanted Bella more. Never mind, that minor plot detail is now settled. Mike is with Jessica and Bella who is alpha ascendant in their group can go back to having no social life.
This is a two pronged section which has nothing to do with Bella’s confrontation with herself in the forest. The first is to deal with Mike once again showing that Bella is supremely intelligent. That, however, didn’t need to happen on its own. It could/should have taken place at the beach where it wouldn’t seem so out of place. Take it out and nothing changes. The second is to set up the trip to Port Angeles to buy dresses for the dance that she isn’t going to with the girls that aren’t her friends further establishing the utter lack of social life that she experiences.**
There’s an odd couple scenes with Charlie that I’m skipping discussion about now, but reserve the right to bring up later. It concerns their interaction as Bella acts like mother to him and it begins to progress beyond her advanced maturity.
She grabs a book, which is of course “The Collected Works of Jane Austen.” I tend to pick on English majors just because I’m in Philosophy but the women tend to fall into a stereotype that I just love to exploit. The biggest one is that they love love love Jane Austen, and it’s such a clichéd stereotype that I’m guessing that Bella has a collection of Buckowski right next to it.
Ultimately she decides after her second incursion into nature to go along with the girls to get the dresses. The motivating factor behind this is that she sees the Cullens aren’t back from their camping trip and she needs to get out of town to keep from looking for Edward all of the time. Feminist indeed.
*Not to her, because she must maintain the loner persona, but everyone else would think she was rather popular.
**Your sarcasm detectors should be in the red right now.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Doubt (Pg. 135-139)
I wasn't always an Atheist, my religiousness (religiosity?) could be considered Orthodox at one point, I was probably never so far that I could be considered fundamentalist, but since this is subjective memory ten years after the fact it's really hard to tell. I do remember one day sitting in my parent's house and a thought hit me, it hit me so hard I literally had to leave the house to work it out in my head.* Which brings me to today's section which I feel is the most honest selection from the book so far, it's also an example of the great writing that Meyer is capable of which makes me lament that it's only four pages and inconsistent within as well. I mentioned in the first post that I would give credit where it's due, that I wasn't one of those people opposed to the book on some misguided principle. This is a good section in concept with some flaws in execution but so far it is easily my favorite.
Bella has finished doing her vampire research and has apparently come to the conclusion that Edward is a vampire. Frustrated (or something) she turns off the computer to sort out her thoughts and flees into the forest of Washington. Why? Because she's angry and what she's doing, "Through my irritation, I felt overwhelming embarrassment. It was all so stupid I was sitting in my room, researching vampires."
This is the most honest she's been so far. She's told us how smart she is then proceeded to act entirely contrary to that assertion. Yes, this is stupid. A kid, whom she knew from back when, told her a vampire story, she completely bought it and now she realizes that maybe this isn't the most rational response. The best part of this is that she's embarrassed for herself without any other prying eyes or social atmosphere. All alone she begins to come to the realization that Edward could just be a normal person because certainly vampires do not really exist.
She retreats into the forest along a trail because, "my sense of direction was hopeless."
Sigh, yet another example of her telling us how useless and helpless she really is. It's frustrating to read sentences like this especially now when she is actually asserting that intelligence we've been expecting but never experiencing. Meyer, does a good job describing the setting. She's either been in the Northwest forest or really done her research here because for a person who has spent some time among the trees her words really put me there. Anyone who has followed foot paths through the woods knows that Meyer has it pefectly. An example, "The trail wound deeper and deeper into the forest, mostly East as far as I could tell. It snaked around the Sitka spruces and the hemlocks, the yews and the maples."
All that's really missing is Bella stumbling over fallen branches and tree roots.
Sitting down on a fallen timber, careful to keep her raincoat to cover her butt from the wet wood she contemplates the recent knowledge, "I forced myself to focus on the two most vital-questions I had to answer, but I did so unwillingly. First, I had to decide if it was possible that what Jacob had said about the Cullens could be true."
As an atheist I criticize religion and religious people for many things. One thing that I don't dare touch are passages like this, the struggle with doubt. Reading those visceral confrontations that are entirely internal are fascinating because they try to communicate that "a ha" moment by describing the incredible doubt as it clashes with a wholly new realization. The personal reflections of C.S. Lewis or Augustine and their conversions are amazing. The struggle between the worldview that once was versus what it is going to be is what Bella is going through right now. I can't think of one example of secular writing that comes close to those two men.
Bella explains that Jacob's story is completely absurd and silly. This is all true, the idea that the kid she has a crush is much much older than he appears, and that their father whom she saw at the hospital is centuries old...that's simply foolish. She almost gets there too, I would have liked it more if she questioned whether she was following the evidence or merely indulging in wishful thinking but that's nit picky. I don't know how this scene could be filmed as internal struggles are the hardest to make known on celluloid.
As she struggles with faith versus reason, reason almost wins but then she comes to a completely erroneous conclusion, "There was no rational explanation for how I was alive at the moment."
Well, Bella, the fact is that there is a completely rational explanation. It's tough to make this criticism because we know that in the long run she is right. Her perception of the accident was factual, but the important thing is that she can't know that. The simple explanation is that she was wrong about where Edward was standing. The evidence for this is that no one else in the parking lot, who witnessed the whole thing, noticed the incredible speed that she posits must have occurred for her to be alive. It's unreasonable for her to hold on to her theory with the grip of a zealot in light of this fact. Especially in this scene where she's supposedly going through her own personal Cartesian doubt experiment.
She takes a breath and then lists the properties of Edward so far: the speed, strength, shifting eye color. All purely subjective to her and perhaps that is the whole point of her feigned superior intelligence in the beginning of the book. Although I feel that it is wrong because no one else notices any of this, maybe her intelligence is the reason that only she does. It's a stretch but I'm trying to help out the author here because I like the section so much. Also with the deftness of a Creationist trying to shoehorn science into supporting their view she brings up other evidence that also supports the "Vampire hypothesis."
One by one here they are:
1: "Along with never eating," this is mentioned several times. It is odd, especially for the Cullens. Why don't they bring empty plastic bins. In my high school you could have skipped the lunch room for the library or claim some odd religious/health dietary restriction that compel them to not eat at school. The Cullens are just stupid for this, which does bring us to the question of why they are in high school to begin with.
2: "the disturbing grace with which they moved." Other than the stark attractiveness of the group this isn't really mentioned, and nothing in the vampire literature/cinema portrays this, I don't think it proves anything.
3: "And the way he sometimes spoke, with unfamiliar cadences and phrases that better fit the style of a turn-of-the-century novel that that of a twenty-first-century classroom." My biggest problem here is that there has been no evidence of this, this is the fault of the writer. Meyer hasn't given us any of this 19th century dialogue to bring it up is just cheating the audience.
4: "He skipped class the day we'd done blood typing." So? He skipped class, and said that it was good to do so once in awhile. This is hindsight evidence and wouldn't hold up in court at all.
5: "He hadn't said no to the beach trip till he heard where we were going..." Actually, no this isn't the case at all. He said that he wasn't invited and Mike certainly hadn't done so. Bella invited him, but Edward explained that he probably wouldn't be welcome because Mike didn't like him. False evidence.
------------
Therefore: "Whether it be Jacob's cold ones or my own super hero theory, Edward Cullen was not...human." The conclusion falls apart, she can't know this and her theory isn't worth entertaining. It only enlightens us that the book was written during the influx of superhero movies in the early millennium.
Accepting the conclusion she now has to realize what to do with it. Leaving Edward crosses her mind but she decides against it. Because she loves him? No. But because even if he is a monster, "he'd done nothing to hurt me so far." Good idea, and the words of every potential victim. It's true with a caveat, he'd done nothing to hurt her physically although he has threatened her and forced his will on her, but it's not physical so I guess we're ok.
"Now that I knew--if I knew--I could do nothing about my frightening secret. Because when I thought of him, of his voice, his hypnotic eyes, the magnetic force of his personality, I wanted nothing more than to be with him right now." It should probably read "right then" but this is again the most honest we've seen Bella. It's not about the excuse of him not hurting her, she's willing to overlook all of her objections because of her infatuation. It's honest, and at least in honesty she's sympathetic. To bad given who Edward is, that delusion is going to be trouble.
*The thought (which I know I have to mention) was what one does to stay interested during infinity. I reasoned that life is tolerable in a way, because we know it ends, but afterlife does not. It still shakes me once in awhile.
Bella has finished doing her vampire research and has apparently come to the conclusion that Edward is a vampire. Frustrated (or something) she turns off the computer to sort out her thoughts and flees into the forest of Washington. Why? Because she's angry and what she's doing, "Through my irritation, I felt overwhelming embarrassment. It was all so stupid I was sitting in my room, researching vampires."
This is the most honest she's been so far. She's told us how smart she is then proceeded to act entirely contrary to that assertion. Yes, this is stupid. A kid, whom she knew from back when, told her a vampire story, she completely bought it and now she realizes that maybe this isn't the most rational response. The best part of this is that she's embarrassed for herself without any other prying eyes or social atmosphere. All alone she begins to come to the realization that Edward could just be a normal person because certainly vampires do not really exist.
She retreats into the forest along a trail because, "my sense of direction was hopeless."
Sigh, yet another example of her telling us how useless and helpless she really is. It's frustrating to read sentences like this especially now when she is actually asserting that intelligence we've been expecting but never experiencing. Meyer, does a good job describing the setting. She's either been in the Northwest forest or really done her research here because for a person who has spent some time among the trees her words really put me there. Anyone who has followed foot paths through the woods knows that Meyer has it pefectly. An example, "The trail wound deeper and deeper into the forest, mostly East as far as I could tell. It snaked around the Sitka spruces and the hemlocks, the yews and the maples."
All that's really missing is Bella stumbling over fallen branches and tree roots.
Sitting down on a fallen timber, careful to keep her raincoat to cover her butt from the wet wood she contemplates the recent knowledge, "I forced myself to focus on the two most vital-questions I had to answer, but I did so unwillingly. First, I had to decide if it was possible that what Jacob had said about the Cullens could be true."
As an atheist I criticize religion and religious people for many things. One thing that I don't dare touch are passages like this, the struggle with doubt. Reading those visceral confrontations that are entirely internal are fascinating because they try to communicate that "a ha" moment by describing the incredible doubt as it clashes with a wholly new realization. The personal reflections of C.S. Lewis or Augustine and their conversions are amazing. The struggle between the worldview that once was versus what it is going to be is what Bella is going through right now. I can't think of one example of secular writing that comes close to those two men.
Bella explains that Jacob's story is completely absurd and silly. This is all true, the idea that the kid she has a crush is much much older than he appears, and that their father whom she saw at the hospital is centuries old...that's simply foolish. She almost gets there too, I would have liked it more if she questioned whether she was following the evidence or merely indulging in wishful thinking but that's nit picky. I don't know how this scene could be filmed as internal struggles are the hardest to make known on celluloid.
As she struggles with faith versus reason, reason almost wins but then she comes to a completely erroneous conclusion, "There was no rational explanation for how I was alive at the moment."
Well, Bella, the fact is that there is a completely rational explanation. It's tough to make this criticism because we know that in the long run she is right. Her perception of the accident was factual, but the important thing is that she can't know that. The simple explanation is that she was wrong about where Edward was standing. The evidence for this is that no one else in the parking lot, who witnessed the whole thing, noticed the incredible speed that she posits must have occurred for her to be alive. It's unreasonable for her to hold on to her theory with the grip of a zealot in light of this fact. Especially in this scene where she's supposedly going through her own personal Cartesian doubt experiment.
She takes a breath and then lists the properties of Edward so far: the speed, strength, shifting eye color. All purely subjective to her and perhaps that is the whole point of her feigned superior intelligence in the beginning of the book. Although I feel that it is wrong because no one else notices any of this, maybe her intelligence is the reason that only she does. It's a stretch but I'm trying to help out the author here because I like the section so much. Also with the deftness of a Creationist trying to shoehorn science into supporting their view she brings up other evidence that also supports the "Vampire hypothesis."
One by one here they are:
1: "Along with never eating," this is mentioned several times. It is odd, especially for the Cullens. Why don't they bring empty plastic bins. In my high school you could have skipped the lunch room for the library or claim some odd religious/health dietary restriction that compel them to not eat at school. The Cullens are just stupid for this, which does bring us to the question of why they are in high school to begin with.
2: "the disturbing grace with which they moved." Other than the stark attractiveness of the group this isn't really mentioned, and nothing in the vampire literature/cinema portrays this, I don't think it proves anything.
3: "And the way he sometimes spoke, with unfamiliar cadences and phrases that better fit the style of a turn-of-the-century novel that that of a twenty-first-century classroom." My biggest problem here is that there has been no evidence of this, this is the fault of the writer. Meyer hasn't given us any of this 19th century dialogue to bring it up is just cheating the audience.
4: "He skipped class the day we'd done blood typing." So? He skipped class, and said that it was good to do so once in awhile. This is hindsight evidence and wouldn't hold up in court at all.
5: "He hadn't said no to the beach trip till he heard where we were going..." Actually, no this isn't the case at all. He said that he wasn't invited and Mike certainly hadn't done so. Bella invited him, but Edward explained that he probably wouldn't be welcome because Mike didn't like him. False evidence.
------------
Therefore: "Whether it be Jacob's cold ones or my own super hero theory, Edward Cullen was not...human." The conclusion falls apart, she can't know this and her theory isn't worth entertaining. It only enlightens us that the book was written during the influx of superhero movies in the early millennium.
Accepting the conclusion she now has to realize what to do with it. Leaving Edward crosses her mind but she decides against it. Because she loves him? No. But because even if he is a monster, "he'd done nothing to hurt me so far." Good idea, and the words of every potential victim. It's true with a caveat, he'd done nothing to hurt her physically although he has threatened her and forced his will on her, but it's not physical so I guess we're ok.
"Now that I knew--if I knew--I could do nothing about my frightening secret. Because when I thought of him, of his voice, his hypnotic eyes, the magnetic force of his personality, I wanted nothing more than to be with him right now." It should probably read "right then" but this is again the most honest we've seen Bella. It's not about the excuse of him not hurting her, she's willing to overlook all of her objections because of her infatuation. It's honest, and at least in honesty she's sympathetic. To bad given who Edward is, that delusion is going to be trouble.
*The thought (which I know I have to mention) was what one does to stay interested during infinity. I reasoned that life is tolerable in a way, because we know it ends, but afterlife does not. It still shakes me once in awhile.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Research (Pg. 128-135)
First, we need to place our setting. Bella is home from the beach trip after receiving an odd story from the poor young man she manipulated about ancient Vampires at war with his tribe of Indians who may or may not be descended from wolves. In no way does she view this with skepticism, after all no 15 year old boy would make up a story just to impress a girl. He's already got that mysterious exotic ethnic thing going for him, so he wouldn't just run with it. Not to mention that he's not supposed to be talking about such things either. So far Jacob is the best character we've met so far, and I don't mean for anyone to think that I'm attacking him (yet), it's just that I've had the unpleasant experience of being a 15 year old boy and no matter what the background they will embellish a bit when a cute girl is flirting with them. She wants solace from her thoughts, the thoughts that she so desperately tried to not think about on the ride home.
Her first solution is to play a CD to her given by her step-father. When that doesn't work, she takes a shower, then she decides that she is going to look up some things on the internet. This is obviously easier than going to the library, and who knows what kind of information that the small library in Forks is going to have. It also shows that Meyer does have a finger on the pulse of her audience, the internet is the first place anyone goes to now. An older writer would definitely have used the library or some mysterious book or something like that.
"My modem was sadly outdated, my free service substandard; just dialing up took so long that I decided to go get myself a bowl of cereal while I waited." She doesn't just get that bowl of cereal, she fixes it up, eats it, then cleans up the dishes and finally gets back to the computer. You people that are the intended age group for this book, will never know what it was like but it sucked. Clicking on the wrong link meant waiting and waiting and waiting to find out that it was the wrong link, then clicking back, then starting over. Dial up sucked, but once you got that 28.8 modem it was faster than light. Meyer is very accurate here.
Once loaded, "naturally the screen was covered in pop-up ads" 2005 was a tough year for internet use. Pop-ups had hit their stride, it just seems that if her computer is so outdated it's surprising that it didn't crash under the weight of the ads. It's a bit pedantic for me to make this gripe but it seems as if the author is making this complaint and not Bella as narrator.
Searching for Vampires on the internet is like trying to eat at a mall, sure the food court is there but do you really want to eat at any of those places? Here's an experiment, go to Google/Bing and type in the word "Vampire." Ok, now that you've done that skip over the wikipedia entry (as we are supposed to be in 2005 and it wouldn't have been number 1 then) and how many of those entries look like they would be worth checking out?
Skip the forums where people pretend they are vampires, the gothic clothing sites, and you are still left with tons and tons of garbage. At least in our simile we've decided not to eat at Sbarro, but we're left with Manchu Wok and Burger King. Finally she finds something that has an academic look to it and is first greeted with two quotes. One of these quotes is from French Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and among the vampire community is pretty popular the quote runs as follows "If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates: the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?"
What the websites, forums, and communities won't mention is that the quote comes from Rousseau as he was defending his work "Emile" from the fires of censorship because he had the gall to criticize religion. The quote above is offered not as proof that vampires exist but that authority figures (either religious or political) will make appeals to the supernatural in order to instill fear in the populace. It's been argued by Phillip Cole that the "vampire craze" of the 17th and 18th centuries is no different than the witch hunts of the 15th and 16th. Answer Rousseau's question for yourself, who really believes in Vampires? No one, all of those people on the internet know that they are posers and are merely indulging in wishful thinking.
The thing is that the vampire web page that Bella finds, is real. I don't know if the book preceded the page or vice versa, but it's there if you want to take a look at it. She clicks away and becomes rather insightful, "It seemed that most Vampire myths centered around beautiful women as demons and children as victims; they also seemed like constructs created to explain away the high mortality rates for young children, and to give men an excuse for infidelity."
It seems as though Rousseau was probably right all along. The only people that really believe in Vampires are the people that have a reason for doing so. Calling upon the myth of the Succubus, not actually a Vampire, makes as much sense as all of those ancient Greek women knocked up by Zeus. The myth is ready made for the excuse, who can really resist the demonic powers of the succubus? Here, Bella is really intelligent here she looks at all of the myths and begins seeing a pattern. That however isn't good enough.
The odd thing about Bella at this point is that she has completely bought into the story. If she's so smart, she needs to rationalize more that's what smart people do when they don't understand something. The first explanation she comes up with is superhero, then Jake gives her the Vampire story that isn't necessarily about Edward but she shoehorns him right into it. This whole list of Vampires is nice, but she needs something that works with Edward, "Speed, strength, beauty, pale skin, eyes that shift color; and then Jacob's criteria: blood drinkers, enemies of the werewolf, cold-skinned, and immortal."
"Pale skin?" just like Bella was so fond of reminding us that she has in the beginning of this book. They live in Washington state, everyone should have pale skin. Aside from that her list is simple perception, but then she shifts over to Jacob's list and none of that makes sense. She's never seen him drink blood, he's not fought a werewolf and more importantly she hasn't established their existence aside from a dream, and then there's "immortal."
By immortal she means "deathless." Vampires aren't immortal, never were never are because of one fact: they can be killed. Every vampire movie/story establishes this. Greek gods are immortal. By most people's misuse of this word Zombies are immortal and no one will stand by that. Bella, again, has no proof of this and neither do we. Just that Jacob said Dr. Carlisle could be the same thing that made a deal with his great grandfather. Bella is worse than a Creationist in the respect that she's already arrived at a conclusion and now she's making up evidence to fit the proof. There is however a snag:
"And then another problem, one that I'd remembered from the small number of scary movies that I'd seen and was backed up by today's reading--Vampires couldn't come out in the day time, the sun would burn them to a cinder."
Well no, that's not even remotely true. "Haven't you read the Irishman's fable," asked Dracula to Blade in Blade III while standing in the sunlight. There isn't the consistency that Bella finds here and it's unclear whether any Vampires are killed by the day or the sun, and as Meyer placed our story in an area with little sunshine she doesn't have that proof either. The research she does is understandable but completely useless if she already has a conclusion in mind.
Her first solution is to play a CD to her given by her step-father. When that doesn't work, she takes a shower, then she decides that she is going to look up some things on the internet. This is obviously easier than going to the library, and who knows what kind of information that the small library in Forks is going to have. It also shows that Meyer does have a finger on the pulse of her audience, the internet is the first place anyone goes to now. An older writer would definitely have used the library or some mysterious book or something like that.
"My modem was sadly outdated, my free service substandard; just dialing up took so long that I decided to go get myself a bowl of cereal while I waited." She doesn't just get that bowl of cereal, she fixes it up, eats it, then cleans up the dishes and finally gets back to the computer. You people that are the intended age group for this book, will never know what it was like but it sucked. Clicking on the wrong link meant waiting and waiting and waiting to find out that it was the wrong link, then clicking back, then starting over. Dial up sucked, but once you got that 28.8 modem it was faster than light. Meyer is very accurate here.
Once loaded, "naturally the screen was covered in pop-up ads" 2005 was a tough year for internet use. Pop-ups had hit their stride, it just seems that if her computer is so outdated it's surprising that it didn't crash under the weight of the ads. It's a bit pedantic for me to make this gripe but it seems as if the author is making this complaint and not Bella as narrator.
Searching for Vampires on the internet is like trying to eat at a mall, sure the food court is there but do you really want to eat at any of those places? Here's an experiment, go to Google/Bing and type in the word "Vampire." Ok, now that you've done that skip over the wikipedia entry (as we are supposed to be in 2005 and it wouldn't have been number 1 then) and how many of those entries look like they would be worth checking out?
Skip the forums where people pretend they are vampires, the gothic clothing sites, and you are still left with tons and tons of garbage. At least in our simile we've decided not to eat at Sbarro, but we're left with Manchu Wok and Burger King. Finally she finds something that has an academic look to it and is first greeted with two quotes. One of these quotes is from French Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and among the vampire community is pretty popular the quote runs as follows "If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates: the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?"
What the websites, forums, and communities won't mention is that the quote comes from Rousseau as he was defending his work "Emile" from the fires of censorship because he had the gall to criticize religion. The quote above is offered not as proof that vampires exist but that authority figures (either religious or political) will make appeals to the supernatural in order to instill fear in the populace. It's been argued by Phillip Cole that the "vampire craze" of the 17th and 18th centuries is no different than the witch hunts of the 15th and 16th. Answer Rousseau's question for yourself, who really believes in Vampires? No one, all of those people on the internet know that they are posers and are merely indulging in wishful thinking.
The thing is that the vampire web page that Bella finds, is real. I don't know if the book preceded the page or vice versa, but it's there if you want to take a look at it. She clicks away and becomes rather insightful, "It seemed that most Vampire myths centered around beautiful women as demons and children as victims; they also seemed like constructs created to explain away the high mortality rates for young children, and to give men an excuse for infidelity."
It seems as though Rousseau was probably right all along. The only people that really believe in Vampires are the people that have a reason for doing so. Calling upon the myth of the Succubus, not actually a Vampire, makes as much sense as all of those ancient Greek women knocked up by Zeus. The myth is ready made for the excuse, who can really resist the demonic powers of the succubus? Here, Bella is really intelligent here she looks at all of the myths and begins seeing a pattern. That however isn't good enough.
The odd thing about Bella at this point is that she has completely bought into the story. If she's so smart, she needs to rationalize more that's what smart people do when they don't understand something. The first explanation she comes up with is superhero, then Jake gives her the Vampire story that isn't necessarily about Edward but she shoehorns him right into it. This whole list of Vampires is nice, but she needs something that works with Edward, "Speed, strength, beauty, pale skin, eyes that shift color; and then Jacob's criteria: blood drinkers, enemies of the werewolf, cold-skinned, and immortal."
"Pale skin?" just like Bella was so fond of reminding us that she has in the beginning of this book. They live in Washington state, everyone should have pale skin. Aside from that her list is simple perception, but then she shifts over to Jacob's list and none of that makes sense. She's never seen him drink blood, he's not fought a werewolf and more importantly she hasn't established their existence aside from a dream, and then there's "immortal."
By immortal she means "deathless." Vampires aren't immortal, never were never are because of one fact: they can be killed. Every vampire movie/story establishes this. Greek gods are immortal. By most people's misuse of this word Zombies are immortal and no one will stand by that. Bella, again, has no proof of this and neither do we. Just that Jacob said Dr. Carlisle could be the same thing that made a deal with his great grandfather. Bella is worse than a Creationist in the respect that she's already arrived at a conclusion and now she's making up evidence to fit the proof. There is however a snag:
"And then another problem, one that I'd remembered from the small number of scary movies that I'd seen and was backed up by today's reading--Vampires couldn't come out in the day time, the sun would burn them to a cinder."
Well no, that's not even remotely true. "Haven't you read the Irishman's fable," asked Dracula to Blade in Blade III while standing in the sunlight. There isn't the consistency that Bella finds here and it's unclear whether any Vampires are killed by the day or the sun, and as Meyer placed our story in an area with little sunshine she doesn't have that proof either. The research she does is understandable but completely useless if she already has a conclusion in mind.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Cold Ones (Pg. 117-128)
We’ve been kind of waiting for this section, because it’s part of the explanation of what exactly Edward and the Cullens are. On the other hand it’s difficult because Bella has no reason to believe that Edward is anything more than a dreamy sociopath who is paying out random compliments and affection like a sentient slot machine. Before we get down to it let’s look at the “proof” that Bella has: she perceives a color transition in his eyes that is correlative with his mood, he sits isolated with his family from the others, he is convincing when he needs to be, and there is the miraculous way in which he saved her from the accident…which again is a great leap of logic that she makes. None of this points to him being anything other than a normal person aside from the certain personality traits that he shares with Ted Bundy.
All the kids are at Mike’s party at the beach. They have just returned from the tidal pools (and an example of a great description) when Bella notices that the number of kids have swelled. It seems that some of the locals from the reservation (you Jacob fans can inhale now) have joined the other kids at the beach. None of them are given much attention, the leader of the group is noticed because he is older and obviously there leader in a way that Mike is for the Forks kids. One of them is given some particular attention because he notices Bella who for once does a good job at catching a name, “…and the one that noticed me was Jacob.” (Now you can exhale)
They have history together, it seems that Bella’s father bought the truck off of his father and as young children they used to hang out together. A nice reunion but something is amiss. The jealous catty girls don’t like that Bella is getting attention again and one of them mentions that they thought Edward and the Cullens were going to show up. The older reservation kid snaps back, “The Cullens don’t come here,’ he said in a tone that closed the subject, ignoring her question…his tone had implied something more–that they weren’t allowed; they were prohibited.”
That’s one interpretation, and reluctantly I have to admit it’s realistic. Bella has dreamed up some fantasy around Edward and since the Cullens don’t come to the reservation it’s actually consistent that she would think they were barred for some reason or another. We are spared her magical reasoning, but not her intense curiosity regarding the situation. She eyes up Jacob, who is showing a great deal more interest in her than anyone else. She seeks him out, in a sense of inconsistent confidence luring him to a private walk on the beach like a creep in a van with promises of candy or puppies in order to extract information from him, and I wish I was just making assumptions about her but I’m not. “I hoped that young Jacob was as yet inexperienced around girls, so that he wouldn’t see through my sure to be pitiful attempts at flirting.”
Jacob, who is 15, takes the bait. Bella certainly has learned something from Edward, unfortunately it’s how to manipulate people into telling them whatever she wants though. However, she doesn’t need magical super powers to do so, in the end that means she’s better at it at the age of 17 than Edward is at around 100. Still, it does mean that I feel sorry for poor Jacob, a sentiment that I’m told is going to be consistent throughout the book series, he’s just a poor kid being led around by feelings that he barely has a grasp on. The first thing he does is betray his people’s tribal secrets which aren’t supposed to be shared with the pale faces (his words not mine).
The first story, “The ancient Quileutes tied their canoes to the tallest trees on the mountain to survive like Noah and the Ark.” The above quote is a bit out of context, Meyer doesn’t imply that Noah and his family did the same thing, but that’s how the indigenous people survived the flood. It’s a nice bone to throw because it explains how a group of people that are older than the flood but didn’t originate in the Middle East exist at all. I wonder two things though: how did Aboriginal Australians do it and save the Koala at the same time? And secondly does this mean that God’s plan at worldwide genocide wasn’t fool proof?
The second story he tells is that his people are descended from wolves, consider them relatives, and that is why it is illegal to kill a wolf for a Quileute. He says that the original people of his tribe would be called werewolves by Bella’s people.
The third story revolves around the “cold ones.” We know what they are, it’s unclear if Bella does but Jacob isn’t that great a story teller no matter what Bella says to goad him along. His label has no context, he never explains why they are called “cold,” but we know what to expect so we just skip over it (which is why I read each section twice…I missed it the first time), it needs context because there is no reason thus far in Meyer’s world to think they exist other than that we read the back cover of the book before we purchased it. In movies this is called, “breaking the fourth wall,” an appeal to the audience. C3P0, in the Star Wars saga does this repeatedly.
Like every story that has Vampires and Wolves, “the cold ones are traditionally our enemies,” says Jacob without, again, explaining why this is the case. He might be nervous about betraying the trust of his tribe, and he’s clearly not thinking with the bone atop his shoulders, but this is the “big reveal” and one of the few times pages and pages of explanation are actually permitted in a story. He should go on, and Bella should be encouraging him for more information but she doesn’t. She doesn’t because in her head Jacob is just confirming something she suspects, Edward is even more dreamy because he’s actually different.
Meyer though rescues herself. Jacob explains that a truce exists between the cold ones and his people as long as the Cullens stay the hell off the reservation. It seems that Dr. Carlisle isn’t descended from that original pack of cold ones, his is the exact same pack with two new additions–a man and a woman. Predictable, as to who one of the new ones are, but not trite so we let it slide. Finally he explains what a cold one is, “Blood drinkers,’ he replied in a chilling voice, ‘Your people call them vampires.”
“Blood drinkers?” Sigh, a good writer should do her research and come up with something like this, “uno’nu okwe.”* Which means “cold person” in the language of the Seneca Nation of Indians. The whole thing about her people calling them ‘vampires’ is moot because Jacob’s people don’t seem to have a word for them. It wouldn’t really matter if there is no actual word in Quileute for the concept, but if she’s getting her information from the cliche of the wise native it should sound like it’s coming from them, just come up with something from one of the languages or choose the one that sounds/looks the coolest. They did in the movie Stigmata, where the Gospel of Jesus was supposed to be written in Aramaic but the movie used Ancient Hebrew because it looked better on film. The real “pale faces” reading the book aren’t going to know, and I wouldn’t have taken the time to look it up if there was something there.
Jacob, though, has outlived his usefulness and Bella promises to see him again but she’s full of shit. She’s teased enough information out of him that she’s satisfied and it is coincidentally time for them to leave. She lays her head down in the car and tries not to think about everything. Which is nice because it shows how gullible she really is, some kid looking to hook up tells her exotic stories of his people and she buys every single word of it. We know Jacob isn’t lying, so far he’s the least manipulative character in the story, but she isn’t even the least skeptical. Even the odd story of the flood didn’t raise an alarm in her. I know people that have used unique ethnic backgrounds and weird ancestral stories to impress girls, and it’s very similar to what happened here. The only difference is that Jacob, so far the most like able character, didn’t want to say anything. However now he has gotten a taste of it, Bella might have unwittingly doomed large numbers of women to an attractive man with unique stories when he gets older. The damage this book does just keeps going up.
___________________________
*Elapsed time in looking that up: ~5 minutes
All the kids are at Mike’s party at the beach. They have just returned from the tidal pools (and an example of a great description) when Bella notices that the number of kids have swelled. It seems that some of the locals from the reservation (you Jacob fans can inhale now) have joined the other kids at the beach. None of them are given much attention, the leader of the group is noticed because he is older and obviously there leader in a way that Mike is for the Forks kids. One of them is given some particular attention because he notices Bella who for once does a good job at catching a name, “…and the one that noticed me was Jacob.” (Now you can exhale)
They have history together, it seems that Bella’s father bought the truck off of his father and as young children they used to hang out together. A nice reunion but something is amiss. The jealous catty girls don’t like that Bella is getting attention again and one of them mentions that they thought Edward and the Cullens were going to show up. The older reservation kid snaps back, “The Cullens don’t come here,’ he said in a tone that closed the subject, ignoring her question…his tone had implied something more–that they weren’t allowed; they were prohibited.”
That’s one interpretation, and reluctantly I have to admit it’s realistic. Bella has dreamed up some fantasy around Edward and since the Cullens don’t come to the reservation it’s actually consistent that she would think they were barred for some reason or another. We are spared her magical reasoning, but not her intense curiosity regarding the situation. She eyes up Jacob, who is showing a great deal more interest in her than anyone else. She seeks him out, in a sense of inconsistent confidence luring him to a private walk on the beach like a creep in a van with promises of candy or puppies in order to extract information from him, and I wish I was just making assumptions about her but I’m not. “I hoped that young Jacob was as yet inexperienced around girls, so that he wouldn’t see through my sure to be pitiful attempts at flirting.”
Jacob, who is 15, takes the bait. Bella certainly has learned something from Edward, unfortunately it’s how to manipulate people into telling them whatever she wants though. However, she doesn’t need magical super powers to do so, in the end that means she’s better at it at the age of 17 than Edward is at around 100. Still, it does mean that I feel sorry for poor Jacob, a sentiment that I’m told is going to be consistent throughout the book series, he’s just a poor kid being led around by feelings that he barely has a grasp on. The first thing he does is betray his people’s tribal secrets which aren’t supposed to be shared with the pale faces (his words not mine).
The first story, “The ancient Quileutes tied their canoes to the tallest trees on the mountain to survive like Noah and the Ark.” The above quote is a bit out of context, Meyer doesn’t imply that Noah and his family did the same thing, but that’s how the indigenous people survived the flood. It’s a nice bone to throw because it explains how a group of people that are older than the flood but didn’t originate in the Middle East exist at all. I wonder two things though: how did Aboriginal Australians do it and save the Koala at the same time? And secondly does this mean that God’s plan at worldwide genocide wasn’t fool proof?
The second story he tells is that his people are descended from wolves, consider them relatives, and that is why it is illegal to kill a wolf for a Quileute. He says that the original people of his tribe would be called werewolves by Bella’s people.
The third story revolves around the “cold ones.” We know what they are, it’s unclear if Bella does but Jacob isn’t that great a story teller no matter what Bella says to goad him along. His label has no context, he never explains why they are called “cold,” but we know what to expect so we just skip over it (which is why I read each section twice…I missed it the first time), it needs context because there is no reason thus far in Meyer’s world to think they exist other than that we read the back cover of the book before we purchased it. In movies this is called, “breaking the fourth wall,” an appeal to the audience. C3P0, in the Star Wars saga does this repeatedly.
Like every story that has Vampires and Wolves, “the cold ones are traditionally our enemies,” says Jacob without, again, explaining why this is the case. He might be nervous about betraying the trust of his tribe, and he’s clearly not thinking with the bone atop his shoulders, but this is the “big reveal” and one of the few times pages and pages of explanation are actually permitted in a story. He should go on, and Bella should be encouraging him for more information but she doesn’t. She doesn’t because in her head Jacob is just confirming something she suspects, Edward is even more dreamy because he’s actually different.
Meyer though rescues herself. Jacob explains that a truce exists between the cold ones and his people as long as the Cullens stay the hell off the reservation. It seems that Dr. Carlisle isn’t descended from that original pack of cold ones, his is the exact same pack with two new additions–a man and a woman. Predictable, as to who one of the new ones are, but not trite so we let it slide. Finally he explains what a cold one is, “Blood drinkers,’ he replied in a chilling voice, ‘Your people call them vampires.”
“Blood drinkers?” Sigh, a good writer should do her research and come up with something like this, “uno’nu okwe.”* Which means “cold person” in the language of the Seneca Nation of Indians. The whole thing about her people calling them ‘vampires’ is moot because Jacob’s people don’t seem to have a word for them. It wouldn’t really matter if there is no actual word in Quileute for the concept, but if she’s getting her information from the cliche of the wise native it should sound like it’s coming from them, just come up with something from one of the languages or choose the one that sounds/looks the coolest. They did in the movie Stigmata, where the Gospel of Jesus was supposed to be written in Aramaic but the movie used Ancient Hebrew because it looked better on film. The real “pale faces” reading the book aren’t going to know, and I wouldn’t have taken the time to look it up if there was something there.
Jacob, though, has outlived his usefulness and Bella promises to see him again but she’s full of shit. She’s teased enough information out of him that she’s satisfied and it is coincidentally time for them to leave. She lays her head down in the car and tries not to think about everything. Which is nice because it shows how gullible she really is, some kid looking to hook up tells her exotic stories of his people and she buys every single word of it. We know Jacob isn’t lying, so far he’s the least manipulative character in the story, but she isn’t even the least skeptical. Even the odd story of the flood didn’t raise an alarm in her. I know people that have used unique ethnic backgrounds and weird ancestral stories to impress girls, and it’s very similar to what happened here. The only difference is that Jacob, so far the most like able character, didn’t want to say anything. However now he has gotten a taste of it, Bella might have unwittingly doomed large numbers of women to an attractive man with unique stories when he gets older. The damage this book does just keeps going up.
___________________________
*Elapsed time in looking that up: ~5 minutes
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.
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.
Get In The Damn Car! (Pg. 88-104)
First a bit of correction, last week I only really covered to P. 88, initially the plan was to end the chapter but those three pages gave me some real traction so for brevity’s sake I ended where I did. This is what would have been the rest of the chapter.
I said last week that my mind constantly switches between the feelings of hate and pity with Bella. In Edward I have no such issue, he is the epitome of a douche bag and I loathe him. Having never been a teenage girl I can’t understand what the draw is, I get it with Romeo Montague–a gangster who is willing to over look the rival blood coursing through Juliet Capulet’s veins in order to love her, but Romeo treats Juliet well, like a lady and suffers for her. Edward…well he likes to play games.
Bella and Edward, are not Romeo and Juliet despite what various blogs may say on the issue. I know that initial meetings, and the courting phase of any relationship is supposed to be awkward but it shouldn’t be uncomfortable awkward bordering on the creepiness that oozes from Edward Cullen. Sitting together at lunch Edward spends most of the time hinting toward Bella that he’s bad and dangerous. The mark of a truly heinous person. The “bad boy” types that undoubtedly my daughter will eventually bring home don’t sit around and brag about it like this. They flaunt authority, develop their own rule systems, and have a generally stoic demeanor. The person who brags isn’t bad, he’s overcompensating. In all likelihood he’s not the dangerous type that a 1950s sitcom dad would tell his daughter to stay away from, he’s just a shy meek introvert that is going to kill himself overcompensating. Most women that I have met can see right through this bullshit…especially the smart ones which Bella claims to be but simply isn’t.
Bella admits that he could be dangerous “But not bad,” I whispered, shaking my head. “No I don’t believe that you’re bad.”
–”You’re wrong.”
No, she’s not. A truly bad person, who was aware of their own ‘badness’ wouldn’t warn someone else. They would say it once and then let that person just find out for themselves. This is the guy in college who will sleep with a girl, and tell her that she’s not going to find a boyfriend with him. Hugh Jackman played this character very well in a movie called Someone Like You: “I don’t pretend to be the white knight.” He then goes on to explain that whatever expectations they bring to him, are their fault not his. He, at least, was honest in the beginning.
It’s a way of removing guilt from the inevitable future break up. Tell them this isn’t going to last, and you can feel that they are on borrowed time. They should relish the experience because all they are really doing is taking a trip on the Titanic, you know how it ends but isn’t the trip worth it?
Well it depends on who the captain is, or more importantly how many times the captain has been in the sea. Most of the time both the man and the woman are around the same age, which makes our normal “bad boy” better ethically. If I’m 21 and the girl I’m telling this to is 19, we don’t have that much of an experience differential, I can’t completely take advantage of her because at that point in my life I’m pretty much just guessing too. In Bella’s case this is much worse because she’s 17 (she finally tells us this in these pages) and he’s over a hundred. He’s had years to practice which makes him bad for two reasons.
The first is that he has to resort to these sorts of games to attract a woman in the first place. At 100 and still in possession of his wits, he should be able to just charm the hell out of this girl drawing from a life experience with women, this is “incompetent bad.” The second version is “morally bad,” because he is purposely seeking out the victim and then treats her like a victim.
Edward skips Biology, Bella goes and this is the day the Bio teacher is going to have the class determine their blood types. A simple process made more complicated by the oddly coincidental fact that Bella is a hemaphobe, that is, she’s afraid of blood. She faints in class, because she can smell blood and Mike escorts her to the nurse’s office. Along the way Edward sees the goings on and interrupts. Which leads me to the question: if he skipped class why is he still hanging around the school? Obviously he needed to be there to forward the plot but without another excuse it’s just lazy writing.
Edward takes over and notices that Mike doesn’t like him. Well, duh, but this allows him to explain it to Bella furthering his own cause to be viewed as the bad boy. The proof breaks down like this, Mike doesn’t like me, Mike likes a lot of people, therefore I’m the bad boy. Which is faulty logic even for a hypothetical syllogism, Mike may not like idiots, or the pretentious, or whatever. Yet this all works on Bella who is now absolutely smitten and agrees to let Edward take her home.
Remember earlier when I said that Edward was ethically bad as well as incompetent? Well here comes the proof. Edward is walking Bella in the parking lot after using his magic powers to convince the school nurse to excuse a pale, 110 pound girl, who fainted twice out of gym class (which is like my magic ability to predict the outcomes of the Superbowl on Monday). Bella notices that they aren’t walking toward her truck but to Edward’s Volvo. She protests, she’s going to drive herself home, because she’s a strong independent girl who just fainted twice at the sight of a drop of blood.
Edward disagrees, he insists then after her further protests he orders, “Didn’t you hear me promise to take you safely home? Do you think I’m going to let you drive in your condition?’ his voice was still indignant.”
On one hand he has a point, she did just faint twice. On the other hand this attitude is about him not her, (I should point out that this is being said to her standing outside of the car while he is sitting down. If he cared so much about her, then either he would have opened the door for her and placed her in the passenger’s seat or they would be standing beside her car), “Didn’t you hear me promise…”
It reads like the excuse an abusive boyfriend gives to his crying girlfriend in the corner, “do you think I want to do this…” I’ve had experiences with girls in abusive relationships, I have heard them make excuses for them and it’s always like Edward here. "He never wanted to hit me, sometimes I just frustrate him and he loses it," etc. It’s about ownership and Edward feels entitled.
Bella considers running to her car but decides against this because, “He’d probably just drag me along anyway if I did.”
“I’ll just drag you back,” he threatened, guessing my plan."
By the arm no doubt, twisting it until it spiral fractures and she dreams up an excuse to tell Dr. Cullen at the hospital. All that’s remaining for him to say to her is the title of this post. Yeah he’s bad alright, just not in any good way, yet millions of teenage girls are idealizing this relationship? I wonder how the abuse help lines are going to handle the call volumes in five years?
I said last week that my mind constantly switches between the feelings of hate and pity with Bella. In Edward I have no such issue, he is the epitome of a douche bag and I loathe him. Having never been a teenage girl I can’t understand what the draw is, I get it with Romeo Montague–a gangster who is willing to over look the rival blood coursing through Juliet Capulet’s veins in order to love her, but Romeo treats Juliet well, like a lady and suffers for her. Edward…well he likes to play games.
Bella and Edward, are not Romeo and Juliet despite what various blogs may say on the issue. I know that initial meetings, and the courting phase of any relationship is supposed to be awkward but it shouldn’t be uncomfortable awkward bordering on the creepiness that oozes from Edward Cullen. Sitting together at lunch Edward spends most of the time hinting toward Bella that he’s bad and dangerous. The mark of a truly heinous person. The “bad boy” types that undoubtedly my daughter will eventually bring home don’t sit around and brag about it like this. They flaunt authority, develop their own rule systems, and have a generally stoic demeanor. The person who brags isn’t bad, he’s overcompensating. In all likelihood he’s not the dangerous type that a 1950s sitcom dad would tell his daughter to stay away from, he’s just a shy meek introvert that is going to kill himself overcompensating. Most women that I have met can see right through this bullshit…especially the smart ones which Bella claims to be but simply isn’t.
Bella admits that he could be dangerous “But not bad,” I whispered, shaking my head. “No I don’t believe that you’re bad.”
–”You’re wrong.”
No, she’s not. A truly bad person, who was aware of their own ‘badness’ wouldn’t warn someone else. They would say it once and then let that person just find out for themselves. This is the guy in college who will sleep with a girl, and tell her that she’s not going to find a boyfriend with him. Hugh Jackman played this character very well in a movie called Someone Like You: “I don’t pretend to be the white knight.” He then goes on to explain that whatever expectations they bring to him, are their fault not his. He, at least, was honest in the beginning.
It’s a way of removing guilt from the inevitable future break up. Tell them this isn’t going to last, and you can feel that they are on borrowed time. They should relish the experience because all they are really doing is taking a trip on the Titanic, you know how it ends but isn’t the trip worth it?
Well it depends on who the captain is, or more importantly how many times the captain has been in the sea. Most of the time both the man and the woman are around the same age, which makes our normal “bad boy” better ethically. If I’m 21 and the girl I’m telling this to is 19, we don’t have that much of an experience differential, I can’t completely take advantage of her because at that point in my life I’m pretty much just guessing too. In Bella’s case this is much worse because she’s 17 (she finally tells us this in these pages) and he’s over a hundred. He’s had years to practice which makes him bad for two reasons.
The first is that he has to resort to these sorts of games to attract a woman in the first place. At 100 and still in possession of his wits, he should be able to just charm the hell out of this girl drawing from a life experience with women, this is “incompetent bad.” The second version is “morally bad,” because he is purposely seeking out the victim and then treats her like a victim.
Edward skips Biology, Bella goes and this is the day the Bio teacher is going to have the class determine their blood types. A simple process made more complicated by the oddly coincidental fact that Bella is a hemaphobe, that is, she’s afraid of blood. She faints in class, because she can smell blood and Mike escorts her to the nurse’s office. Along the way Edward sees the goings on and interrupts. Which leads me to the question: if he skipped class why is he still hanging around the school? Obviously he needed to be there to forward the plot but without another excuse it’s just lazy writing.
Edward takes over and notices that Mike doesn’t like him. Well, duh, but this allows him to explain it to Bella furthering his own cause to be viewed as the bad boy. The proof breaks down like this, Mike doesn’t like me, Mike likes a lot of people, therefore I’m the bad boy. Which is faulty logic even for a hypothetical syllogism, Mike may not like idiots, or the pretentious, or whatever. Yet this all works on Bella who is now absolutely smitten and agrees to let Edward take her home.
Remember earlier when I said that Edward was ethically bad as well as incompetent? Well here comes the proof. Edward is walking Bella in the parking lot after using his magic powers to convince the school nurse to excuse a pale, 110 pound girl, who fainted twice out of gym class (which is like my magic ability to predict the outcomes of the Superbowl on Monday). Bella notices that they aren’t walking toward her truck but to Edward’s Volvo. She protests, she’s going to drive herself home, because she’s a strong independent girl who just fainted twice at the sight of a drop of blood.
Edward disagrees, he insists then after her further protests he orders, “Didn’t you hear me promise to take you safely home? Do you think I’m going to let you drive in your condition?’ his voice was still indignant.”
On one hand he has a point, she did just faint twice. On the other hand this attitude is about him not her, (I should point out that this is being said to her standing outside of the car while he is sitting down. If he cared so much about her, then either he would have opened the door for her and placed her in the passenger’s seat or they would be standing beside her car), “Didn’t you hear me promise…”
It reads like the excuse an abusive boyfriend gives to his crying girlfriend in the corner, “do you think I want to do this…” I’ve had experiences with girls in abusive relationships, I have heard them make excuses for them and it’s always like Edward here. "He never wanted to hit me, sometimes I just frustrate him and he loses it," etc. It’s about ownership and Edward feels entitled.
Bella considers running to her car but decides against this because, “He’d probably just drag me along anyway if I did.”
“I’ll just drag you back,” he threatened, guessing my plan."
By the arm no doubt, twisting it until it spiral fractures and she dreams up an excuse to tell Dr. Cullen at the hospital. All that’s remaining for him to say to her is the title of this post. Yeah he’s bad alright, just not in any good way, yet millions of teenage girls are idealizing this relationship? I wonder how the abuse help lines are going to handle the call volumes in five years?
I Can't Even Come Up With Something Clever (Pg. 85-100)
I was seriously looking forward to both this entry and the chapter. The hope was that it would be the “big reveal” that Edward would tell Bella that he was a Vampire, and then Meyer would have to explain how the undead work in her little world. So with disappointment, I must tell you that entry will have to wait. After last week it was all I could do to not plod ahead reading forward. The worst part about it is that I know that I am going to have to wait at least three weeks before I can write the “vampire post,” but enough about that.
This section makes me worry about Bella. I find odd that I vacillate between two emotions with her: disgust and pity. I know that people who are actually depressed can’t just snap themselves out of it, I’m up enough on the subject of psychology to understand this, but certain things that she does seem so self-imposed that it leads me to roll my eyes at her self-pity. The trouble is that the person that who undergoes self-imposed exile, an undeserved air of superiority at the rest of their peers, and an unrealistic image of advanced maturity can start to believe themselves. This will lead them to actual exile which then turns into unwanted loneliness. Ask any guy, we all knew someone in highschool who wanted to be left alone and by the end of our senior year that person was alone–all the time. The trouble for these guys is that they become so needy that they will take anything after awhile just to have some human contact. This usually manifests itself in drug use, it’s not really the drugs so much as the feeling of being in a group. It always amazes me how those people always knew where to find them, it didn’t matter what city they were in, they could sniff out a dealer. Too bad that cops don’t have the same ability.
Anyway, that’s the male experience. I know because for a good part of the time I was like that in school. I was lucky that at the time I viewed drugs as a moral issue and not merely a legal issue as I do now. With women I imagine the scenario to be much worse. Instead of just being in the wrong crowd, they can often fall to the wrong type of guy. Dr. Drew, from Loveline, used to say that he wanted “predator vision” which was the ability of abusers to instantly find the victim. He wanted to know what they look for because intervention would be a lot easier if you could see “victimhood” in a person before they were abused/raped. Chronic abusers seem to know, according to him, what type of person won’t talk.
I’m beginning to get that from Bella. Certainly Edward is a predator, he has to be because he is a vampire that’s just his nature. In 2002 a little known, but fairly good movie, called Roger Dodger was released. It was about a womanizer who takes his teenage nephew out in New York City because the young lad wants to get laid. They meet two women and Roger (Campbell Scott) asks them what they find most attractive in a man. Elizabeth Berkeley replies that the sense of humor is the most important thing.
Which is total bullshit, I know plenty of funny guys who haven’t had a date in years, so Roger calls her out. He tells her that the first guy she slept with probably had a tattoo, or a leather jacket or something. And she answers that he was a married guy with a motorcycle. Danger is the best aphrodisiac, never mind romantic comedies or period pieces, horror movies are the best date movies.* The danger aspect is good but coupled with mystery and it’s better than a half bottle of tequila and a hot tub. Edward knows this and he ferments it in Bella who has been drawn to him even though any being with even an iota of Kantian intrinsic value would see that he’s wrong. He treats her terribly, ignores her whenever he pleases, lords himself over her, and returns her affections like a slot machine. So of course she’s smitten.
After ignoring her, then half-heartedly apologizing for being a douche, he tells her that he will drive her to Seattle for her impromptu-yet-planned trip. She agrees, then it’s lunch time. The dance is approaching, as well as the beach party that Mike was planning. We’ve been given clues that there was a beach thing coming up, but that was before the accident and we still don’t know what month/season we are in. Bella tells us that there was probably going to be no rain but the temp would be at the most in the 40s. Being from Western New York, that puts our possible time period between January 1st and May 30th, or September 30th and December 31st. I have nothing to work with here.
The beach party is awfully impertinent because it doesn’t allow us to concentrate on picking on Bella for not going to the dance. This is inconsistent with her character: she won’t go to the dance for some reason but she will go to the beach party that will contain (and this is important): THE EXACT SAME FUCKING PEOPLE! She has told her father that she doesn’t dance, well neither do a lot of people who attend those things, I just don’t get it.
The other thing is that for someone who claims that she never fits in, she sure has taken the alpha role at lunch which is, again, the most important discernment of social order in high school. Bella is sitting with all of her “friends” disappointed that Edward isn’t there at his usual table, not eating, and ignoring her. Her “friends” are gabbing away about normal stuff, stuff that she deems beneath her: “Jessica babbled on and on about her dance plans– Lauren and Angela had asked the other boys and they were all going together–completely unaware of my inattention.”
In other words Jessica, Lauren, and Angela are being girls while Bella has more important things to do. Who are Lauren and Angela? Since Bella doesn’t pay them any regard or view them as in possession of any importance we don’t know. They are apparently not important enough to even be “Red Shirts” they’re more like the people that walk on to the bridge hand the captain the iPad and then walk away without so much as a nod from Kirk/Picard/Sisko. Then Jessica notices something odd, “Edward Cullen is staring at you again.”
“Again”? No Jessica, Edward is staring at her. This is the first time that anyone has ever noticed it outside of Bella. The odd thing that Jessica should have noticed is that Edward isn’t sitting with his pretentious aristocratic family, he’s by himself. Using his finger to order Bella to him. Jessica is surprised, and probably more surprised that she goes over. Further adding to the surprise is that the other girls are jealous, which I’m not going to complain about since it is normal girl behavior.
Taking a look at Edward’s motioning, it’s pure entitlement. It displays an attitude that she should be honored to be asked to his table. He doesn’t come over and politely interrupt. He sits by himself, stares, and then motions. It’s creepy and disgusting, I’ve known high school football stars that acted with more humility than this smug bastard. The worst part: she goes over delighted at the opportunity to grovel at the Duke’s feet hoping for a scrap of affection. He’s a sociopath alright but now I’m getting that confused feeling towards her: I really don’t know if I should pity her or hate her.
__________________________________
*And actual horror movies, not the bullshit torture porn/snuff movies like Saw or Passion of the Christ. Those aren’t scary so much as anatomical.
This section makes me worry about Bella. I find odd that I vacillate between two emotions with her: disgust and pity. I know that people who are actually depressed can’t just snap themselves out of it, I’m up enough on the subject of psychology to understand this, but certain things that she does seem so self-imposed that it leads me to roll my eyes at her self-pity. The trouble is that the person that who undergoes self-imposed exile, an undeserved air of superiority at the rest of their peers, and an unrealistic image of advanced maturity can start to believe themselves. This will lead them to actual exile which then turns into unwanted loneliness. Ask any guy, we all knew someone in highschool who wanted to be left alone and by the end of our senior year that person was alone–all the time. The trouble for these guys is that they become so needy that they will take anything after awhile just to have some human contact. This usually manifests itself in drug use, it’s not really the drugs so much as the feeling of being in a group. It always amazes me how those people always knew where to find them, it didn’t matter what city they were in, they could sniff out a dealer. Too bad that cops don’t have the same ability.
Anyway, that’s the male experience. I know because for a good part of the time I was like that in school. I was lucky that at the time I viewed drugs as a moral issue and not merely a legal issue as I do now. With women I imagine the scenario to be much worse. Instead of just being in the wrong crowd, they can often fall to the wrong type of guy. Dr. Drew, from Loveline, used to say that he wanted “predator vision” which was the ability of abusers to instantly find the victim. He wanted to know what they look for because intervention would be a lot easier if you could see “victimhood” in a person before they were abused/raped. Chronic abusers seem to know, according to him, what type of person won’t talk.
I’m beginning to get that from Bella. Certainly Edward is a predator, he has to be because he is a vampire that’s just his nature. In 2002 a little known, but fairly good movie, called Roger Dodger was released. It was about a womanizer who takes his teenage nephew out in New York City because the young lad wants to get laid. They meet two women and Roger (Campbell Scott) asks them what they find most attractive in a man. Elizabeth Berkeley replies that the sense of humor is the most important thing.
Which is total bullshit, I know plenty of funny guys who haven’t had a date in years, so Roger calls her out. He tells her that the first guy she slept with probably had a tattoo, or a leather jacket or something. And she answers that he was a married guy with a motorcycle. Danger is the best aphrodisiac, never mind romantic comedies or period pieces, horror movies are the best date movies.* The danger aspect is good but coupled with mystery and it’s better than a half bottle of tequila and a hot tub. Edward knows this and he ferments it in Bella who has been drawn to him even though any being with even an iota of Kantian intrinsic value would see that he’s wrong. He treats her terribly, ignores her whenever he pleases, lords himself over her, and returns her affections like a slot machine. So of course she’s smitten.
After ignoring her, then half-heartedly apologizing for being a douche, he tells her that he will drive her to Seattle for her impromptu-yet-planned trip. She agrees, then it’s lunch time. The dance is approaching, as well as the beach party that Mike was planning. We’ve been given clues that there was a beach thing coming up, but that was before the accident and we still don’t know what month/season we are in. Bella tells us that there was probably going to be no rain but the temp would be at the most in the 40s. Being from Western New York, that puts our possible time period between January 1st and May 30th, or September 30th and December 31st. I have nothing to work with here.
The beach party is awfully impertinent because it doesn’t allow us to concentrate on picking on Bella for not going to the dance. This is inconsistent with her character: she won’t go to the dance for some reason but she will go to the beach party that will contain (and this is important): THE EXACT SAME FUCKING PEOPLE! She has told her father that she doesn’t dance, well neither do a lot of people who attend those things, I just don’t get it.
The other thing is that for someone who claims that she never fits in, she sure has taken the alpha role at lunch which is, again, the most important discernment of social order in high school. Bella is sitting with all of her “friends” disappointed that Edward isn’t there at his usual table, not eating, and ignoring her. Her “friends” are gabbing away about normal stuff, stuff that she deems beneath her: “Jessica babbled on and on about her dance plans– Lauren and Angela had asked the other boys and they were all going together–completely unaware of my inattention.”
In other words Jessica, Lauren, and Angela are being girls while Bella has more important things to do. Who are Lauren and Angela? Since Bella doesn’t pay them any regard or view them as in possession of any importance we don’t know. They are apparently not important enough to even be “Red Shirts” they’re more like the people that walk on to the bridge hand the captain the iPad and then walk away without so much as a nod from Kirk/Picard/Sisko. Then Jessica notices something odd, “Edward Cullen is staring at you again.”
“Again”? No Jessica, Edward is staring at her. This is the first time that anyone has ever noticed it outside of Bella. The odd thing that Jessica should have noticed is that Edward isn’t sitting with his pretentious aristocratic family, he’s by himself. Using his finger to order Bella to him. Jessica is surprised, and probably more surprised that she goes over. Further adding to the surprise is that the other girls are jealous, which I’m not going to complain about since it is normal girl behavior.
Taking a look at Edward’s motioning, it’s pure entitlement. It displays an attitude that she should be honored to be asked to his table. He doesn’t come over and politely interrupt. He sits by himself, stares, and then motions. It’s creepy and disgusting, I’ve known high school football stars that acted with more humility than this smug bastard. The worst part: she goes over delighted at the opportunity to grovel at the Duke’s feet hoping for a scrap of affection. He’s a sociopath alright but now I’m getting that confused feeling towards her: I really don’t know if I should pity her or hate her.
__________________________________
*And actual horror movies, not the bullshit torture porn/snuff movies like Saw or Passion of the Christ. Those aren’t scary so much as anatomical.
Love/Hate (Pg. 75-85)
Comedian Patrice O’Neal (Even googling the name I’m not sure what the correct spelling is), mentioned on a morning radio show that all he ever needed to get a girl in bed was to make her hate him. I don’t remember the exact quote but it was close to this, “if I can get a girl to hate me I can flip that over to love in a week.” I don’t agree with the method,* but I understand why it works. It’s the emotional violence of hate, a feeling that is so powerful that it draws a connection to the two people related to it, and in this it has so much more in common with love than any other emotion in the human spectrum. It is also the most uniquely human, my daughter when she was an infant only displayed two emotions: hate and love, which she switched between so frequently it was easy to see how little difference the two actually have.
Let me explain this through Bella’s experience with Edward. First she hated Edward when he abhorred her very presence. She hated him so much that she couldn’t stop thinking about him, which then turned to curiosity, and then led to the contest in biology. She had to prove that she was better than this person, when that didn’t work and he saved her life, she wanted to hate him again. It didn’t work, it couldn’t work, she’s already fallen for him. What’s worse for her sake, is that he knows this which is why the remainder of this chapter is a bit amusing. Not amusing in a good way though, it’s amusing in the way that Sci-Fi original picture is amusing.
It’s amusing because of the “situation” that Bella finds herself in. It’s almost Spring,** and Forks HS, is having their “Girl’s Choice” dance. The rules seem to be that the women ask the men to go to the dance with them, but that isn’t the way it seems to be working out. First, to the chagrin of Jessica, Mike asks Bella if she will ask him to the dance. Due to the rules of the dance this is the only Asimovian way to logically work around the law. However that is splitting legal hairs, Mike asking Bella to ask him is just a fancy way of asking her. She says no. Then Eric, the greasy haired dragon t-shirt boy, asks her in much the same way. Again she says no.
What I don’t understand is that this high school seems to operate under different social rules than any other high school in the history of the United States. This is especially odd because the tale takes place in modern times, and the only high school in modern times that operates like this was the one in Saved by The Bell, or 90210. Eric shouldn’t be eating lunch with the moderately popular kids. He should have his own clique of which he would no doubt be the king. It makes me wonder if our author was home schooled or some ultra small private Mormon school that made such social distinctions impossible. Forks is small, but it isn’t that small.
Then Tyler asks her. Tyler is unique because he isn’t asking her because he likes her. He’s asking her because he almost killed her. It’s the most selfish way of achieving contrition, because what he’s saying is this, “Hey, sorry I almost pulverized a good number of your bones the other day. As a way of making it up to you I would like for you to ask me to take you to the dance.” Even if there was no sex, groping, making out, he still gets both a date and absolution. A nice deal for him. She says no. Her reason: she decided on the spot she’s going to Seattle. For the Day.
I figured this was a reasonable idea. She wants to see the big city, and I with little knowledge of the state of Washington figured it would be like driving from Rochester to Buffalo (a little over an hour). However, it’s not. As the crow flies, it’s around 90 miles, but driving it takes 140 miles. Her on-the-spot excuse is now a seven hour road trip and it’s going to be just for the day. When I would drive from Toledo OH to Buffalo NY, I planned my week around that trip.
We don’t get an exact reason why she doesn’t want to attend the dance. We can assume it’s because she’s shy, but that doesn’t really work because there are going to be enough people there that she does know and can tag along with. We can assume that it is because she constantly reminds us that she is a klutz, but this doesn’t work because she can hold up the walls or talk to her friends. We get the impression that it is because she doesn't want to be in the spotlight. I, however, don’t see why she would be the center of attention, because the accident? Because she’s the new girl? Someone help me out here because her vacuous excuses are insulting to the superior liar that lives inside my brain.
In all three cases that she is asked about going to the dance, Edward is present and he snorts or smiles as she turns each one of her suitors down. It’s just like the end of the Odyssey only without the masterful writing, engaging plot, or interesting characters; she has to stall while the hidden Odysseus plans his move. Edward snorts, smugly which Meyer forgot to add as an adverb here, because he knows none of these pretenders are going to succeed. The only person that she would go to the dance with isn’t going to ask her, because it’s him.
She hates him, but she can’t stop thinking about him. The nerve of him saving her life and all. She toys with running over his car, which seems like an extreme response. Her truck, made of solid steel and forged in the heart of Detroit would not only have annihilated the Cullen’s pussy ass Volvo but just out of spite killed everyone inside it and standing near it. Edward, she hates, but are his siblings just supposed to take it?
I also like the fact that as she’s stuck behind Edward’s car she calls back to Tyler to explain why she hasn’t moved, “I’m stuck behind Cullen.” The phrasing and context mean that she has friends. The dance wouldn’t be her sitting on the bench watching people have fun. She assumes by this phrase that the listener both knows who she is talking about, and understands the predicament. Not just because he’s been stuck in traffic, but this exact act-token is repeated at this school. She’s one of them now, her attempts to be viewed as a loner have utterly failed. Now, she should probably be viewed as the girl who is just a little busier than most. To any normal person this would be good, but Bella’s narcissism mandates that if her peers don’t view her as she wants them to she must be depressed about it.
In the long run her tired excuse of going to Seattle works out though, because Edward asks to drive her. This is going to lead us into what sends the internet nerds into ‘roid rage, because in order to do this Meyer is going to have to explain the rules of her vampires. I’m kind of looking forward to that.
____________________________________
*At least now that I have a daughter I don’t.
**I guess, it’s hard to say what month it is. The snow fall happened, then the ice which almost caused the accident, but then there is a period of time that goes by yet we don’t actually know how much time has passed. I’m going to assume Spring since that is usually school dance season.
Let me explain this through Bella’s experience with Edward. First she hated Edward when he abhorred her very presence. She hated him so much that she couldn’t stop thinking about him, which then turned to curiosity, and then led to the contest in biology. She had to prove that she was better than this person, when that didn’t work and he saved her life, she wanted to hate him again. It didn’t work, it couldn’t work, she’s already fallen for him. What’s worse for her sake, is that he knows this which is why the remainder of this chapter is a bit amusing. Not amusing in a good way though, it’s amusing in the way that Sci-Fi original picture is amusing.
It’s amusing because of the “situation” that Bella finds herself in. It’s almost Spring,** and Forks HS, is having their “Girl’s Choice” dance. The rules seem to be that the women ask the men to go to the dance with them, but that isn’t the way it seems to be working out. First, to the chagrin of Jessica, Mike asks Bella if she will ask him to the dance. Due to the rules of the dance this is the only Asimovian way to logically work around the law. However that is splitting legal hairs, Mike asking Bella to ask him is just a fancy way of asking her. She says no. Then Eric, the greasy haired dragon t-shirt boy, asks her in much the same way. Again she says no.
What I don’t understand is that this high school seems to operate under different social rules than any other high school in the history of the United States. This is especially odd because the tale takes place in modern times, and the only high school in modern times that operates like this was the one in Saved by The Bell, or 90210. Eric shouldn’t be eating lunch with the moderately popular kids. He should have his own clique of which he would no doubt be the king. It makes me wonder if our author was home schooled or some ultra small private Mormon school that made such social distinctions impossible. Forks is small, but it isn’t that small.
Then Tyler asks her. Tyler is unique because he isn’t asking her because he likes her. He’s asking her because he almost killed her. It’s the most selfish way of achieving contrition, because what he’s saying is this, “Hey, sorry I almost pulverized a good number of your bones the other day. As a way of making it up to you I would like for you to ask me to take you to the dance.” Even if there was no sex, groping, making out, he still gets both a date and absolution. A nice deal for him. She says no. Her reason: she decided on the spot she’s going to Seattle. For the Day.
I figured this was a reasonable idea. She wants to see the big city, and I with little knowledge of the state of Washington figured it would be like driving from Rochester to Buffalo (a little over an hour). However, it’s not. As the crow flies, it’s around 90 miles, but driving it takes 140 miles. Her on-the-spot excuse is now a seven hour road trip and it’s going to be just for the day. When I would drive from Toledo OH to Buffalo NY, I planned my week around that trip.
We don’t get an exact reason why she doesn’t want to attend the dance. We can assume it’s because she’s shy, but that doesn’t really work because there are going to be enough people there that she does know and can tag along with. We can assume that it is because she constantly reminds us that she is a klutz, but this doesn’t work because she can hold up the walls or talk to her friends. We get the impression that it is because she doesn't want to be in the spotlight. I, however, don’t see why she would be the center of attention, because the accident? Because she’s the new girl? Someone help me out here because her vacuous excuses are insulting to the superior liar that lives inside my brain.
In all three cases that she is asked about going to the dance, Edward is present and he snorts or smiles as she turns each one of her suitors down. It’s just like the end of the Odyssey only without the masterful writing, engaging plot, or interesting characters; she has to stall while the hidden Odysseus plans his move. Edward snorts, smugly which Meyer forgot to add as an adverb here, because he knows none of these pretenders are going to succeed. The only person that she would go to the dance with isn’t going to ask her, because it’s him.
She hates him, but she can’t stop thinking about him. The nerve of him saving her life and all. She toys with running over his car, which seems like an extreme response. Her truck, made of solid steel and forged in the heart of Detroit would not only have annihilated the Cullen’s pussy ass Volvo but just out of spite killed everyone inside it and standing near it. Edward, she hates, but are his siblings just supposed to take it?
I also like the fact that as she’s stuck behind Edward’s car she calls back to Tyler to explain why she hasn’t moved, “I’m stuck behind Cullen.” The phrasing and context mean that she has friends. The dance wouldn’t be her sitting on the bench watching people have fun. She assumes by this phrase that the listener both knows who she is talking about, and understands the predicament. Not just because he’s been stuck in traffic, but this exact act-token is repeated at this school. She’s one of them now, her attempts to be viewed as a loner have utterly failed. Now, she should probably be viewed as the girl who is just a little busier than most. To any normal person this would be good, but Bella’s narcissism mandates that if her peers don’t view her as she wants them to she must be depressed about it.
In the long run her tired excuse of going to Seattle works out though, because Edward asks to drive her. This is going to lead us into what sends the internet nerds into ‘roid rage, because in order to do this Meyer is going to have to explain the rules of her vampires. I’m kind of looking forward to that.
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*At least now that I have a daughter I don’t.
**I guess, it’s hard to say what month it is. The snow fall happened, then the ice which almost caused the accident, but then there is a period of time that goes by yet we don’t actually know how much time has passed. I’m going to assume Spring since that is usually school dance season.
Corrections and Aftermath (Ch. 3, 68-75)
It seems that I do have to take back my “snow” criticism from last week. I was under the impression that the chains on tires have to do with depth of snow but it has more to do with slickness of terrain especially in higher elevations. The average elevation of Forks is 300′ above sea level, and of course this is an average so the hilly terrain would necessitate some added traction. I guess the road crews in Forks have their work cut out for them repairing the damage (see The Simpsons: Marge vs. the Monorail for an amusing example of why this is the case).*
That however doesn’t make the book any better, just more on the side of accuracy. We are still left with the issue of the lie. Bella is convinced that something odd happened, she is of course correct but she doesn’t have any evidence. Let’s look at what she is claiming happened: Edward was four cars away, the van was going to hit her, then she was on the ground with Edward standing over her. In her perception Edward crossed the distance of around 20 feet or so to push her aside. Edward tells her that he was standing next to her.
The only problem on Bella’s part is that for the entire length of the book so far, she has come off as a shy, introverted, person with a self-imposed stamp of advanced maturity. She consistently reminds the reader that she is unsure of herself in just about everything she does. So like a shut-in fan of Joss Whedon she has to hold on to something that everyone else believes to be false or else her worldview will fall apart. Where does the confidence come from? Only four chapters in and her character has changed this much?
Well, no it hasn’t. It’s only changed for this one thing. She still resents being the center of attention, she still reminds us that she is clumsy, and she still hides behind her hair in class. I’m willing to accept that the near death experience shook her up, but the problem lies in the plot itself: this is obviously going to be the catalyst that brings together Bella and Edward. Edward, for being a vampire much advanced in years than his appearance, apparently is an idiot. I could think of about four other lies that would better cover up the incident than his. What makes it worse is that he folds on the lie so quickly in the hospital that we have to push his motives into suspicion. He’s not the suave cool vampire of every other popular vampire fiction, he’s as every bit a doofus as Bella. The cool guy doesn’t explain himself, he should have just said, “live and be happy,” and let it drop. She would come around anyway, but he lacks the confidence to actually do this.
Which makes his further actions even more mysterious. “Live and be happy” theoretical vampire (whom I will now abbreviate as TV because I’m sure this is going to come up again) and Edward would behave the same way. Edward has taken to avoiding Bella whenever possible and when they arrive together in Biology he doesn’t speak to her. It’s a good move because we know from various vampire series that Edward has been scolded by the Vampire King/Scion/Lord.
Bella, on the other hand is having trouble dealing with everything. Tyler, who almost killed her, is seeking penance. Which is normal for almost having made her the meat in a car sandwich. Mike, her dough-eyed torch bearer and Eric, the greasy dragon t-shirt wearing loser won’t talk to Tyler. Which makes sense in a way. Bella is the new girl, the one they didn’t grow up with so they want her and Tyler almost killed her so they are giving him the cold shoulder. Bella of course draws the wrong conclusion, “Mike and Eric were even less friendly toward him (Tyler) than they were to each other, which made me worry that I’d gained another unwelcome fan.“
What doesn’t make sense is the context. Tyler isn’t a fan, he’s her almost murderer, that’s why he’s hanging around. It’s not because he likes her. These two have a connection. Clint Eastwood said in the movie Unforgiven that killing a man is a strange thing, you take away everything they have and everything they were ever gonna have. She knows this, what is also puzzling is how she derives that from the fact that the guys competing for her affection won’t talk to the third.
It’s also a mystery to me why she doesn’t like Mike. We know how she feels about Eric, and that is understandable. Mike may have come on too strong, but we don’t have any real evidence for this. He seems nice, is popular enough that nobody hates him, and from our bland descriptions he is decent looking. I know that sometimes you just know when you aren’t going to like someone, but if that was the case I would think that the shy introvert would just say it.
Obviously the crash is the center of everyone’s attention. Bella notices that no one is talking about Edward, she finds this strange. So do I, no matter how things turned out or what happened in the end he saved her life. She’s right to protest that he was the real hero but she feels different, “With chagrin I realized the probable cause–no one else was as aware of Edward as I always was. No one else watched him the way I did. How pitiful.”
It doesn’t matter that no one else has a crush on him the way she does, they would still have noticed a couple of things: that he pushed her out of the way of the car, that he was over her after the impact, and that he wasn’t in school that day because he was put into an ambulance. These things would be noticed, not in the same light as Bella does but still noticed.
Bella and Edward still aren’t talking. I have never saved anyone’s life before but I can imagine that I would feel a bit uncomfortable around them afterward. I could sympathize with Edward, if he were a tolerable person, but since he isn’t it doesn’t matter. Bella isn’t as understanding, “He wished he hadn’t pulled me from the path of Tyler’s van–there was no other conclusion that I could come to.”
“No other conclusion,” wow, someone needs to stop reading Emily Dickinson. I know that emotionally she is out of whack because she has a huge crush on Edward but this is extreme and leads us to Bella’s other problem, she is clinically depressed. I don’t mean that in a gothy-cutty way, I mean that in a DSM IV way. Someone won’t talk to her and this is the only conclusion that she can come up with. How about that he just doesn’t like her? Or that he feels uncomfortable after telling her there was a big secret at the hospital and that is what he regrets? He would rather that she just “live and be happy,” and not constantly wonder about him? Any of those three are far more plausible than her conclusion.
To her credit she does confront him on the issue: “When he finally spoke he almost sounded mad, ‘You think I regret saving your life?’
‘I know you do,’ I snapped.”
All of this because he won’t return her affections. Edward becomes angry with her, which is completely understandable. If I saved someone’s life and they were insistent that I would rather them dead, I would be awfully pissed off as well. What could you say to a person who thinks you believe you made a mistake when you didn’t let them die? It all emanates from Bella’s obsession with him, because he doesn’t share the same preoccupation with her that she does with him. It’s this kind of bullshit that makes me glad that I went to an all boys high school.
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*Thanks to Deadmoneywalking and Jupiter888Girl for directing me to check on this.
That however doesn’t make the book any better, just more on the side of accuracy. We are still left with the issue of the lie. Bella is convinced that something odd happened, she is of course correct but she doesn’t have any evidence. Let’s look at what she is claiming happened: Edward was four cars away, the van was going to hit her, then she was on the ground with Edward standing over her. In her perception Edward crossed the distance of around 20 feet or so to push her aside. Edward tells her that he was standing next to her.
The only problem on Bella’s part is that for the entire length of the book so far, she has come off as a shy, introverted, person with a self-imposed stamp of advanced maturity. She consistently reminds the reader that she is unsure of herself in just about everything she does. So like a shut-in fan of Joss Whedon she has to hold on to something that everyone else believes to be false or else her worldview will fall apart. Where does the confidence come from? Only four chapters in and her character has changed this much?
Well, no it hasn’t. It’s only changed for this one thing. She still resents being the center of attention, she still reminds us that she is clumsy, and she still hides behind her hair in class. I’m willing to accept that the near death experience shook her up, but the problem lies in the plot itself: this is obviously going to be the catalyst that brings together Bella and Edward. Edward, for being a vampire much advanced in years than his appearance, apparently is an idiot. I could think of about four other lies that would better cover up the incident than his. What makes it worse is that he folds on the lie so quickly in the hospital that we have to push his motives into suspicion. He’s not the suave cool vampire of every other popular vampire fiction, he’s as every bit a doofus as Bella. The cool guy doesn’t explain himself, he should have just said, “live and be happy,” and let it drop. She would come around anyway, but he lacks the confidence to actually do this.
Which makes his further actions even more mysterious. “Live and be happy” theoretical vampire (whom I will now abbreviate as TV because I’m sure this is going to come up again) and Edward would behave the same way. Edward has taken to avoiding Bella whenever possible and when they arrive together in Biology he doesn’t speak to her. It’s a good move because we know from various vampire series that Edward has been scolded by the Vampire King/Scion/Lord.
Bella, on the other hand is having trouble dealing with everything. Tyler, who almost killed her, is seeking penance. Which is normal for almost having made her the meat in a car sandwich. Mike, her dough-eyed torch bearer and Eric, the greasy dragon t-shirt wearing loser won’t talk to Tyler. Which makes sense in a way. Bella is the new girl, the one they didn’t grow up with so they want her and Tyler almost killed her so they are giving him the cold shoulder. Bella of course draws the wrong conclusion, “Mike and Eric were even less friendly toward him (Tyler) than they were to each other, which made me worry that I’d gained another unwelcome fan.“
What doesn’t make sense is the context. Tyler isn’t a fan, he’s her almost murderer, that’s why he’s hanging around. It’s not because he likes her. These two have a connection. Clint Eastwood said in the movie Unforgiven that killing a man is a strange thing, you take away everything they have and everything they were ever gonna have. She knows this, what is also puzzling is how she derives that from the fact that the guys competing for her affection won’t talk to the third.
It’s also a mystery to me why she doesn’t like Mike. We know how she feels about Eric, and that is understandable. Mike may have come on too strong, but we don’t have any real evidence for this. He seems nice, is popular enough that nobody hates him, and from our bland descriptions he is decent looking. I know that sometimes you just know when you aren’t going to like someone, but if that was the case I would think that the shy introvert would just say it.
Obviously the crash is the center of everyone’s attention. Bella notices that no one is talking about Edward, she finds this strange. So do I, no matter how things turned out or what happened in the end he saved her life. She’s right to protest that he was the real hero but she feels different, “With chagrin I realized the probable cause–no one else was as aware of Edward as I always was. No one else watched him the way I did. How pitiful.”
It doesn’t matter that no one else has a crush on him the way she does, they would still have noticed a couple of things: that he pushed her out of the way of the car, that he was over her after the impact, and that he wasn’t in school that day because he was put into an ambulance. These things would be noticed, not in the same light as Bella does but still noticed.
Bella and Edward still aren’t talking. I have never saved anyone’s life before but I can imagine that I would feel a bit uncomfortable around them afterward. I could sympathize with Edward, if he were a tolerable person, but since he isn’t it doesn’t matter. Bella isn’t as understanding, “He wished he hadn’t pulled me from the path of Tyler’s van–there was no other conclusion that I could come to.”
“No other conclusion,” wow, someone needs to stop reading Emily Dickinson. I know that emotionally she is out of whack because she has a huge crush on Edward but this is extreme and leads us to Bella’s other problem, she is clinically depressed. I don’t mean that in a gothy-cutty way, I mean that in a DSM IV way. Someone won’t talk to her and this is the only conclusion that she can come up with. How about that he just doesn’t like her? Or that he feels uncomfortable after telling her there was a big secret at the hospital and that is what he regrets? He would rather that she just “live and be happy,” and not constantly wonder about him? Any of those three are far more plausible than her conclusion.
To her credit she does confront him on the issue: “When he finally spoke he almost sounded mad, ‘You think I regret saving your life?’
‘I know you do,’ I snapped.”
All of this because he won’t return her affections. Edward becomes angry with her, which is completely understandable. If I saved someone’s life and they were insistent that I would rather them dead, I would be awfully pissed off as well. What could you say to a person who thinks you believe you made a mistake when you didn’t let them die? It all emanates from Bella’s obsession with him, because he doesn’t share the same preoccupation with her that she does with him. It’s this kind of bullshit that makes me glad that I went to an all boys high school.
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*Thanks to Deadmoneywalking and Jupiter888Girl for directing me to check on this.
An Odd Sound...(Ch. 3)
I don’t know much about Stephanie Meyer, and I refuse to go to wikipedia to look certain things up as I am trying to do this project without any research into Twilight the book, the movie, or the author. What I do know though is that she isn’t very familiar with snow. I assume she’s from Utah, because I know that she’s a Mormon and I like to stereotype. Utah maybe in the desert but there is also some snow, and this would give us some of the description that we had in the previous section about melting snow and socks. According to the national weather center, Forks averages about a foot of snow a year. This means that the residents of the small town should be used to the dastardly white stuff that falls from the sky. I bring this us up because as Bella is going to school the day after her momentous pissing contest with Edward she notices that there are chains on her tires.
Chains, as in tire chains, not as in some weird post-apocalyptic steam punk decoration type of chain. But the kind of chains that people use in mountain or arctic environments for heavy snow. I find it odd because in a town that has that small an average snow precipitation they would even need chains. It reminds me of grad school when a student from California, Medesto to be exact, asked some of us what it cost to get chains on your tires when the snow started to fall. The Toledo and Michigan natives laughed as did I being from Buffalo. In all three locations we have never needed chains on the tires even though the average snowfall in Buffalo is almost 8 feet. However some regions of the country become so paranoid about snow that they mandate chains with a couple of inches, shut down the entire city from unnecessary travel, and then pray to their gods that the nightmare ends. In Buffalo we send them a nice letter asking them if they need warmer skirts sent (Atlanta, 2003).
This shows that Meyer is either unfamiliar with snowy regions or lives in a panic area, which I doubt considering that Utah’s elevation should inculcate them with handling the white stuff. What else is odd is that Bella seems to have the need to constantly remind us that she is worthless. I’m going to skip the part about her ruing the personal revelations that she had with Edward, as anyone that has had a crush on someone else will know that everything you say to the object of desire seems stupid. Even if you aren’t tongue tied, you look back and think, “X must think me to be a blathering idiot,” no matter how suave or witty you might actually have been.
No, I’m talking about Bella’s need to remind us that she is clumsy, at this point in the story she has reminded us so frequently that it almost has to pay off in the long run. If it doesn’t, if her clumsiness either does not get her into more trouble or accidently discover the secret switch (a la Scooby Doo) to the Vampire’s hidden lair then hearing about it just makes the reader wish that she would stop whining. She reminds me of a girl I dated who before everything she did needed to remind me that she wasn’t good at anything. It’s a way of preparing someone for the worst, but all it does is make a person impatient wanting the person to just do something without qualification.
This time it precedes the accident, the accident which is such a transparent set up for the big reveal of Edward that you can see it a mile away. Here’s what happens, Bella gets out of her car, she hears an odd sound, sees an oncoming van about to pulverize her, then “I saw several things simultaneously, nothing was moving in slow motion, the way it does in the movies. Instead, the adrenaline rush seemed to make my brain work faster, and I was able to absorb in clear detail several things at once.”
Here’s the contradiction: if your brain is working faster, thus speeding up your perception then things do appear to happen slower. Things don’t actually move slower, in the movies it’s done for effect, it’s not like Neo in the Matrix ever emerged from a bullet time sequence sea sick from the spinning, it was after all to show us the perception of the character. Bella for all her supposed intelligence either takes the slow motion as being literal or she is just amazed at the pretty colors.
That aside the things she does notice is the Blue van coming at her quite fast, the impact point is the corner of her tank like truck, the fact that she is standing between the two, and the fact that Edward is standing four cars away. Don’t make fun of her for noticing him, he is devilishly attractive. Seriously though, when I was in my accident I remember the radio station playing (Detroit Talk Radio). Information does process quite quickly when that adrenaline is going, and it is horribly important that she notices where Edward is…after the fact. Looking back it becomes important for the book, but at the time I think it doubtful that she would notice where Edward was so specifically.
Edward saves her with his superman vampire powers. All she suffers is a bonk on the head from where he shoved her out of the way and then stopped the van. He hasn’t explained, and neither has the book, why he did it. But just being a remotely decent person should be all, he saw impending death and sought to stop it. Good enough? Well Bella wants more.
Bella remembers that he was too far away to stop anything. Edward, being far older than his looks, has to explain it without saying that he has Vampire superpowers. Here’s his brilliant explanation to Bella at the hospital, “I was standing right next to you.” She describes him as saying that with all of the tone and rehearsal of a seasoned liar. He isn’t a seasoned liar because if he were he would have come up with something better and he doesn’t rely on the fact that she hit her head.
Sure he brings it up, several times, but then he protests too much. A good lie needs the force of will from the liar, the more you try and prove it the more desperate it seems. The more desperate the least likely the audience is to believe it, just ask Kirk Cameron. Let’s follow Bella’s explanation for what happened, a car was about to hit her, Edward from over 10 yards away sped to her safety, and stopped a runaway van with his hands and was not injured. It’s a ridiculous story that Bella tells with no self doubt–something completely out of character for her. Of course that is what happened and Edward tries to spin a web of lies that states he was standing next to her. Given their verbal fencing the other day there’s no way this lie is remotely plausible. Edward should have just said he was closer, but not too close, and then walked away. Instead he gives up on the fake story and promises an explanation…yeah he’s a real seasoned liar.
Chains, as in tire chains, not as in some weird post-apocalyptic steam punk decoration type of chain. But the kind of chains that people use in mountain or arctic environments for heavy snow. I find it odd because in a town that has that small an average snow precipitation they would even need chains. It reminds me of grad school when a student from California, Medesto to be exact, asked some of us what it cost to get chains on your tires when the snow started to fall. The Toledo and Michigan natives laughed as did I being from Buffalo. In all three locations we have never needed chains on the tires even though the average snowfall in Buffalo is almost 8 feet. However some regions of the country become so paranoid about snow that they mandate chains with a couple of inches, shut down the entire city from unnecessary travel, and then pray to their gods that the nightmare ends. In Buffalo we send them a nice letter asking them if they need warmer skirts sent (Atlanta, 2003).
This shows that Meyer is either unfamiliar with snowy regions or lives in a panic area, which I doubt considering that Utah’s elevation should inculcate them with handling the white stuff. What else is odd is that Bella seems to have the need to constantly remind us that she is worthless. I’m going to skip the part about her ruing the personal revelations that she had with Edward, as anyone that has had a crush on someone else will know that everything you say to the object of desire seems stupid. Even if you aren’t tongue tied, you look back and think, “X must think me to be a blathering idiot,” no matter how suave or witty you might actually have been.
No, I’m talking about Bella’s need to remind us that she is clumsy, at this point in the story she has reminded us so frequently that it almost has to pay off in the long run. If it doesn’t, if her clumsiness either does not get her into more trouble or accidently discover the secret switch (a la Scooby Doo) to the Vampire’s hidden lair then hearing about it just makes the reader wish that she would stop whining. She reminds me of a girl I dated who before everything she did needed to remind me that she wasn’t good at anything. It’s a way of preparing someone for the worst, but all it does is make a person impatient wanting the person to just do something without qualification.
This time it precedes the accident, the accident which is such a transparent set up for the big reveal of Edward that you can see it a mile away. Here’s what happens, Bella gets out of her car, she hears an odd sound, sees an oncoming van about to pulverize her, then “I saw several things simultaneously, nothing was moving in slow motion, the way it does in the movies. Instead, the adrenaline rush seemed to make my brain work faster, and I was able to absorb in clear detail several things at once.”
Here’s the contradiction: if your brain is working faster, thus speeding up your perception then things do appear to happen slower. Things don’t actually move slower, in the movies it’s done for effect, it’s not like Neo in the Matrix ever emerged from a bullet time sequence sea sick from the spinning, it was after all to show us the perception of the character. Bella for all her supposed intelligence either takes the slow motion as being literal or she is just amazed at the pretty colors.
That aside the things she does notice is the Blue van coming at her quite fast, the impact point is the corner of her tank like truck, the fact that she is standing between the two, and the fact that Edward is standing four cars away. Don’t make fun of her for noticing him, he is devilishly attractive. Seriously though, when I was in my accident I remember the radio station playing (Detroit Talk Radio). Information does process quite quickly when that adrenaline is going, and it is horribly important that she notices where Edward is…after the fact. Looking back it becomes important for the book, but at the time I think it doubtful that she would notice where Edward was so specifically.
Edward saves her with his superman vampire powers. All she suffers is a bonk on the head from where he shoved her out of the way and then stopped the van. He hasn’t explained, and neither has the book, why he did it. But just being a remotely decent person should be all, he saw impending death and sought to stop it. Good enough? Well Bella wants more.
Bella remembers that he was too far away to stop anything. Edward, being far older than his looks, has to explain it without saying that he has Vampire superpowers. Here’s his brilliant explanation to Bella at the hospital, “I was standing right next to you.” She describes him as saying that with all of the tone and rehearsal of a seasoned liar. He isn’t a seasoned liar because if he were he would have come up with something better and he doesn’t rely on the fact that she hit her head.
Sure he brings it up, several times, but then he protests too much. A good lie needs the force of will from the liar, the more you try and prove it the more desperate it seems. The more desperate the least likely the audience is to believe it, just ask Kirk Cameron. Let’s follow Bella’s explanation for what happened, a car was about to hit her, Edward from over 10 yards away sped to her safety, and stopped a runaway van with his hands and was not injured. It’s a ridiculous story that Bella tells with no self doubt–something completely out of character for her. Of course that is what happened and Edward tries to spin a web of lies that states he was standing next to her. Given their verbal fencing the other day there’s no way this lie is remotely plausible. Edward should have just said he was closer, but not too close, and then walked away. Instead he gives up on the fake story and promises an explanation…yeah he’s a real seasoned liar.
Snow Balls and Brass Balls (Pg. 39-52)
“You know what your problem is? You’re just too hip to be happy!”-Danny DeVito, Heist.
The underrated and under viewed movie Heist, written by David Mamet, is full of little gems like this. The line comes from Danny DeVito’s crime boss getting frustrated with master thief Gene Hackman who has double crossed him. Shot in the leg, held at gunpoint, Hackman refuses to give up the gold and instead cracks wise. This ties in to this week’s Twilight post, not because of the context but from the literal reading of the above line.
Bella, is just too hip to be happy. It’s her second week of school in Forks, Edward hasn’t been in all week which it seems she is getting more and more comfortable with. The crush is obviously passing…or it would have–more on that in a couple minutes. She walks outside after her first class and she sees snow, a lot of it. Enough that an impromptu snowball fight has broken out among the students, something that is not only realistic but pretty much mandatory in a high school. Bella, who I remind you, is from Arizona and has only visited her father in the summer (we assume since the book isn’t that specific), is mortified, “Ew, snow. There went my good day.”
“Ew?” Really, Isabella Swan? This is the first time she has more than likely been in snow. We know this because she tells Mike that she’s only seen it on television, which could be an exaggeration but probably isn’t, and her first reaction is disgust. “Once people start throwing wet stuff, I go inside;” this is an odd reaction for two reasons: A) snow isn’t wet, it’s dry. She doesn’t have the prior experience either, unless they can throw rain in Arizona. I mean, sure it melts and becomes wet, is made of water, but snow itself is a dry substance; and B) This is her first snowfall and instead of gazing at the natural wonder and beauty of the cascading snow she needs to go inside.
Does she not want to get hit? That’s a possibility, not having the experience before doesn’t mean that one would be utterly clueless of what it felt like. But that isn’t it, it’s because everyone else is having fun and she needs to be a loner. She’s allergic to fun and must take all matters completely serious. She runs inside with “the look” on her face. “The look” is a facial expression that I am way too used to, it mostly came from women I knew as I would try to goof around. It’s a rolling of the eyes so quickly, so hard, that it makes a noise. It’s usually followed by a shake of the head and the phrase I have heard out of every girl/woman I have ever known, “Did you really just do that?”
Bella is too hip to be happy, too cool for school. In the future, depending on how the series ends she’s the morose woman in the black turtle neck sitting in the back of open mic night angry because some guy had the audactiy to read the lyrics of DMX as a poem for a larf,* or shaking her head in disgust when someone comments on the miss/hit ratio of the latest school shooter. Take away the vampires and in ten years she’s telling her boyfriend that he needs to take life more seriously. She can’t just have fun, the snow didn’t ruin her day, it was being reminded that everyone around her is a kid.
All of that is in the past, even though Mike is planning a snow battle of Napoleonic proportions (The actual Napoleon actually did this in war college) she doesn’t care. She notices that Jessica has got a bit of a thing for Mike. It’s a complete non-sequitor that she notices this but I have to give Meyers credit becaus she writes that possible love story off with us not worrying about whether Mike is going to be miserable in the long run. Next to that, Edward is back in school, at lunch shaking the water out of his hair, but it’s different with him because he looks so damn hot doing it.
Seriously, she makes this comment several times. The important thing to note is that the Cullens can have fun too, in the long run of their relationship she’ll wear him down. Ok, maybe I’m being hard on Bella again. She’s new at the school, her dream guy is finally back in attendance, and she’s in an alien world where white crap falls from the sky (which means she drives like every asshole on the road in Western New York at the first snowfall). If only there were some line in the book that could push the lever one way or the other…
“It’s too bad about the snow isn’t it?” Edward asked…”Not really,” I answered honestly, instead of pretending to be normal like everyone else.
You be the judge, who is she lying to: Edward or us? It has to be one or the other since she spent four pages telling the reader that she needed to hide from the snow. I understand that since she has a huge crush on Edward that her answer might change, but that would be to Edward she wouldn’t tell us that she was talking honestly to him and then say that the snow wasn’t bad. The only other option is that I am correct and that the snow never bothered her whatsoever.**
This exchange takes place in the Biology class, where one week ago Edward was aghast at being in the presence of Bella. He’s better, color has returned to his face and eyes. To fans of the mythology of Vampires this means that the population of Forks has recently dropped by at least one person in the last week, but let’s not get bogged down in trite details because we have a pissing contest to attend.
We know that Bella is smarter than her peers, Edward, is apparently also having the advantage of going through this before.*** Now they must each display their feathers proving that they are worthy mates. They do this in a well written sequence over the different stages of cellular mitosis (anaphase, prophase, etc.). Each underestimates the other and each are surprised. It’s nice and unlike everything else we have seen from Bella this shows her advanced maturity. She’s testing Edward looking for something more than a pretty face, she appreciates intelligence. They blast through the exercise and now make chit chat with Edward doing what all dapper young Casanovas do: gets her to talk about herself. She tries to go back into “too hip” mode but her usual brush off phrase doesn’t work:
“It’s complicated.”
“I think I can keep up,” he pressed.
I love his retort because he’s already proven that he’s at least as smart as her. She is completely subjugated by him and for all her superiority it’s nice to read it. He listens to her, asks her personal questions, then tells her why she’s wrong about herself. He’s not just some hot guy in school, he’s smart too, but it’s more than that–he’s a hunter. He knows women: listen, listen, compliment, tell her she’s wrong about herself, make an observation, then walk away. It leaves her wondering and that is his intent the whole time.
______________________________
*NOT a true story.
**We know which one I am voting for.
***That question still persists, but I’m waiting till he explains it before I offer my own explanation.
The underrated and under viewed movie Heist, written by David Mamet, is full of little gems like this. The line comes from Danny DeVito’s crime boss getting frustrated with master thief Gene Hackman who has double crossed him. Shot in the leg, held at gunpoint, Hackman refuses to give up the gold and instead cracks wise. This ties in to this week’s Twilight post, not because of the context but from the literal reading of the above line.
Bella, is just too hip to be happy. It’s her second week of school in Forks, Edward hasn’t been in all week which it seems she is getting more and more comfortable with. The crush is obviously passing…or it would have–more on that in a couple minutes. She walks outside after her first class and she sees snow, a lot of it. Enough that an impromptu snowball fight has broken out among the students, something that is not only realistic but pretty much mandatory in a high school. Bella, who I remind you, is from Arizona and has only visited her father in the summer (we assume since the book isn’t that specific), is mortified, “Ew, snow. There went my good day.”
“Ew?” Really, Isabella Swan? This is the first time she has more than likely been in snow. We know this because she tells Mike that she’s only seen it on television, which could be an exaggeration but probably isn’t, and her first reaction is disgust. “Once people start throwing wet stuff, I go inside;” this is an odd reaction for two reasons: A) snow isn’t wet, it’s dry. She doesn’t have the prior experience either, unless they can throw rain in Arizona. I mean, sure it melts and becomes wet, is made of water, but snow itself is a dry substance; and B) This is her first snowfall and instead of gazing at the natural wonder and beauty of the cascading snow she needs to go inside.
Does she not want to get hit? That’s a possibility, not having the experience before doesn’t mean that one would be utterly clueless of what it felt like. But that isn’t it, it’s because everyone else is having fun and she needs to be a loner. She’s allergic to fun and must take all matters completely serious. She runs inside with “the look” on her face. “The look” is a facial expression that I am way too used to, it mostly came from women I knew as I would try to goof around. It’s a rolling of the eyes so quickly, so hard, that it makes a noise. It’s usually followed by a shake of the head and the phrase I have heard out of every girl/woman I have ever known, “Did you really just do that?”
Bella is too hip to be happy, too cool for school. In the future, depending on how the series ends she’s the morose woman in the black turtle neck sitting in the back of open mic night angry because some guy had the audactiy to read the lyrics of DMX as a poem for a larf,* or shaking her head in disgust when someone comments on the miss/hit ratio of the latest school shooter. Take away the vampires and in ten years she’s telling her boyfriend that he needs to take life more seriously. She can’t just have fun, the snow didn’t ruin her day, it was being reminded that everyone around her is a kid.
All of that is in the past, even though Mike is planning a snow battle of Napoleonic proportions (The actual Napoleon actually did this in war college) she doesn’t care. She notices that Jessica has got a bit of a thing for Mike. It’s a complete non-sequitor that she notices this but I have to give Meyers credit becaus she writes that possible love story off with us not worrying about whether Mike is going to be miserable in the long run. Next to that, Edward is back in school, at lunch shaking the water out of his hair, but it’s different with him because he looks so damn hot doing it.
Seriously, she makes this comment several times. The important thing to note is that the Cullens can have fun too, in the long run of their relationship she’ll wear him down. Ok, maybe I’m being hard on Bella again. She’s new at the school, her dream guy is finally back in attendance, and she’s in an alien world where white crap falls from the sky (which means she drives like every asshole on the road in Western New York at the first snowfall). If only there were some line in the book that could push the lever one way or the other…
“It’s too bad about the snow isn’t it?” Edward asked…”Not really,” I answered honestly, instead of pretending to be normal like everyone else.
You be the judge, who is she lying to: Edward or us? It has to be one or the other since she spent four pages telling the reader that she needed to hide from the snow. I understand that since she has a huge crush on Edward that her answer might change, but that would be to Edward she wouldn’t tell us that she was talking honestly to him and then say that the snow wasn’t bad. The only other option is that I am correct and that the snow never bothered her whatsoever.**
This exchange takes place in the Biology class, where one week ago Edward was aghast at being in the presence of Bella. He’s better, color has returned to his face and eyes. To fans of the mythology of Vampires this means that the population of Forks has recently dropped by at least one person in the last week, but let’s not get bogged down in trite details because we have a pissing contest to attend.
We know that Bella is smarter than her peers, Edward, is apparently also having the advantage of going through this before.*** Now they must each display their feathers proving that they are worthy mates. They do this in a well written sequence over the different stages of cellular mitosis (anaphase, prophase, etc.). Each underestimates the other and each are surprised. It’s nice and unlike everything else we have seen from Bella this shows her advanced maturity. She’s testing Edward looking for something more than a pretty face, she appreciates intelligence. They blast through the exercise and now make chit chat with Edward doing what all dapper young Casanovas do: gets her to talk about herself. She tries to go back into “too hip” mode but her usual brush off phrase doesn’t work:
“It’s complicated.”
“I think I can keep up,” he pressed.
I love his retort because he’s already proven that he’s at least as smart as her. She is completely subjugated by him and for all her superiority it’s nice to read it. He listens to her, asks her personal questions, then tells her why she’s wrong about herself. He’s not just some hot guy in school, he’s smart too, but it’s more than that–he’s a hunter. He knows women: listen, listen, compliment, tell her she’s wrong about herself, make an observation, then walk away. It leaves her wondering and that is his intent the whole time.
______________________________
*NOT a true story.
**We know which one I am voting for.
***That question still persists, but I’m waiting till he explains it before I offer my own explanation.
Caste System (pg. 29-38)
There’s a scene in HBO’s Rome where Titus Pullo is paid to escort the young Octavian Caesar to a high class bordello so that Octavian can lose his virginity. Pullo, a Legionnaire, is a hedonist and he’s used to low rent whorehouses is interested when he finds the upper class of the oldest profession. What’s funny about the scene is that he’s escorting the oldest male relative of the Counsel of Rome, a member of one of the most powerful aristocratic families in the Republic and he knows that the credit line for this visit is good. He wants in too, but the matron denies him. His kind isn’t going to be having the sex at this kind of place, and it doesn’t matter who’s paying (although it would probably be different if the Counsel Julius Caesar where there with him), he is beneath this place even a brothel has social connotations.
Which is why I thought of it when I’ve read this section of our book. We’ve established who Bella is: what I have termed the “lonely loner.” A type of person that wants to appear to be the lone wolf type but is only using the appearance as a desperate vie for the attention and affection of others. This doesn’t make her sympathetic in my book since all of this is self-imposed. However she wants us to sympathize with her but her actions really make it tough for us to do so.
It’s the second day of school, the morning after the night she presumably went home and cried herself to sleep (she did promise us this) and instead of being ignored or harassed we find out that she has actually made friends, “Mike came to sit by me in English, and walked me to my next class, with Chess Club Eric glaring at him all the while; that was flattering.” [Emphasis mine] We get why Mike is sitting next to her, walking her to class, and hanging around with her–he likes her and has decided to play the always successful nice guy routine. Eric, we know is the dragon tee shirt wearing greasy pervert type, I resent the fact that she gives him the title “Chess Club Eric,” I was in chess club in high school and I wasn’t the greasy pervert type. In fact I don’t know anyone that was in chess club that was the greasy pervert type–pervert, yes but he wasn’t that greasy.
What is interesting to me is that the phrase “Chess Club Eric” reaffirms the high school social caste system. Bella isn’t the popular cheerleader girl, she’s not going to date the captain of the football/lacrosse team, but she knows that Eric better respect his social betters because he’s not getting any. So far the hierarchy is Eric at the bottom, Jessica/Mike somewhere close to the top, with the Cullen coven so far above the type they are the Medici family to the rest of Italy.* Bella isn’t sure where she belongs…well she is sure but she hasn’t found a way in yet, she wants to marry a Medici but she’s got nothing to offer them.
This is the only explanation for, “It looked like I was going to have to do something about Mike.” Why, Bella? Why does Mike have to get got? So far Mike is good looking, social, and not at Eric’s level in the social strata so the only explanation is that she is looking to trade up. Bella is at a unique place in the culture of high school, she hasn’t been pegged yet. This is both liberating and confining. She can talk to anyone she wants but only once. That second conversation, that second table at lunch is going to put her in a place that might as well be tattooed on her, your caste is your place in high school and it is as strict as it is in Hinduism. She can’t afford to apply herself as a Raja, because she wants to be a Sattva.
Luckily for her Edward has decided to skip the day. She worries about him the whole time, as her crush would necessarily dictate, but he’s not there. The book is really wonderful here as it adequately describes what it’s like to have a crush on someone you are pretty sure hates you. It’s purposely unclear what is making her more nervous: that he’s not there or that he could be there. In any case he’s not there, but she does espy the rest of the Cullens at the grocery store, driving a new Volvo wearing designer clothes (because all Vampires must be rich). He isn’t with them but she is embarrassed by her beat up truck.
She’s doing the grocery shopping because like her mother, her father can’t do normal adult things either. Sure, he’s a cop and has been living in Forks for many years now, but the guy can’t make anything more than eggs and bacon. It makes me wonder what his Cholesterol count must be if that’s all he’s been eating, so Bella showing her maturity and why normal kids don’t like her must do the shopping. She notes that the Cullens, although gorgeous and obviously wealthy, don’t have many friends in Forks, if any. She wonders if this is a small-town thing but then she figures that “the isolation must be their desire,” it would have to be right?
I can almost feel the jealousy ooze off her. They don’t play the game, they don’t have to and her biggest concern is how she can become part of that.
___________________________
*In other words, everyone respects and fears them but they are beyond such petty concerns of the mere plebians that occupy the rest of the school.
Which is why I thought of it when I’ve read this section of our book. We’ve established who Bella is: what I have termed the “lonely loner.” A type of person that wants to appear to be the lone wolf type but is only using the appearance as a desperate vie for the attention and affection of others. This doesn’t make her sympathetic in my book since all of this is self-imposed. However she wants us to sympathize with her but her actions really make it tough for us to do so.
It’s the second day of school, the morning after the night she presumably went home and cried herself to sleep (she did promise us this) and instead of being ignored or harassed we find out that she has actually made friends, “Mike came to sit by me in English, and walked me to my next class, with Chess Club Eric glaring at him all the while; that was flattering.” [Emphasis mine] We get why Mike is sitting next to her, walking her to class, and hanging around with her–he likes her and has decided to play the always successful nice guy routine. Eric, we know is the dragon tee shirt wearing greasy pervert type, I resent the fact that she gives him the title “Chess Club Eric,” I was in chess club in high school and I wasn’t the greasy pervert type. In fact I don’t know anyone that was in chess club that was the greasy pervert type–pervert, yes but he wasn’t that greasy.
What is interesting to me is that the phrase “Chess Club Eric” reaffirms the high school social caste system. Bella isn’t the popular cheerleader girl, she’s not going to date the captain of the football/lacrosse team, but she knows that Eric better respect his social betters because he’s not getting any. So far the hierarchy is Eric at the bottom, Jessica/Mike somewhere close to the top, with the Cullen coven so far above the type they are the Medici family to the rest of Italy.* Bella isn’t sure where she belongs…well she is sure but she hasn’t found a way in yet, she wants to marry a Medici but she’s got nothing to offer them.
This is the only explanation for, “It looked like I was going to have to do something about Mike.” Why, Bella? Why does Mike have to get got? So far Mike is good looking, social, and not at Eric’s level in the social strata so the only explanation is that she is looking to trade up. Bella is at a unique place in the culture of high school, she hasn’t been pegged yet. This is both liberating and confining. She can talk to anyone she wants but only once. That second conversation, that second table at lunch is going to put her in a place that might as well be tattooed on her, your caste is your place in high school and it is as strict as it is in Hinduism. She can’t afford to apply herself as a Raja, because she wants to be a Sattva.
Luckily for her Edward has decided to skip the day. She worries about him the whole time, as her crush would necessarily dictate, but he’s not there. The book is really wonderful here as it adequately describes what it’s like to have a crush on someone you are pretty sure hates you. It’s purposely unclear what is making her more nervous: that he’s not there or that he could be there. In any case he’s not there, but she does espy the rest of the Cullens at the grocery store, driving a new Volvo wearing designer clothes (because all Vampires must be rich). He isn’t with them but she is embarrassed by her beat up truck.
She’s doing the grocery shopping because like her mother, her father can’t do normal adult things either. Sure, he’s a cop and has been living in Forks for many years now, but the guy can’t make anything more than eggs and bacon. It makes me wonder what his Cholesterol count must be if that’s all he’s been eating, so Bella showing her maturity and why normal kids don’t like her must do the shopping. She notes that the Cullens, although gorgeous and obviously wealthy, don’t have many friends in Forks, if any. She wonders if this is a small-town thing but then she figures that “the isolation must be their desire,” it would have to be right?
I can almost feel the jealousy ooze off her. They don’t play the game, they don’t have to and her biggest concern is how she can become part of that.
___________________________
*In other words, everyone respects and fears them but they are beyond such petty concerns of the mere plebians that occupy the rest of the school.
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.
_____________________
*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.
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.
_____________________
*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.
Not Disappointed Enough (Pg. 17-21)
The Germans have a word for being disappointed at not being disappointed enough. It has no direct English translation and I also can’t remember the word, but it is one of those words that seems uniquely German. It also perfectly describes the feeling that I had when I read this section of Twilight, Bella is in the lunch hall feeling morose at the fact that no one sees her as the delicate snowflake that she obviously thinks that she is while at the same time ignoring all of the other people that so far seem to be attempting to make nice with the new girl. She looks over and sees a table full of people that are apart from everyone else, naturally it makes her curious.
It makes her curious because she wants to be at that table. She knows that everyone knows who they are, they are the subject of gossip and inquiry, and most importantly they are not mingling with everyone else. In college I used to sit by myself in the lunch hall too, but not because I had no friends but because my schedule was odd. I wasn’t the type of person, like Bella, who sat alone wondering who noticed that they were sitting alone. This, however, isn’t what failed to disappoint me. It’s her description of them, “The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room.”
Followed by: “But all this is not why I couldn’t look away. I stare [sic] because their faces, so different, so similar were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine or painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard decide who was the most beautiful–maybe the perfect blonde girl, or the bronze haired boy.”
There is an X-Files episode from way back in season 5, “Bad Blood,” which had Agent Mulder kill a teenage boy whom he thought was a Vampire. In the Twilight Zone-esque ending, typical of the “Monster of the Week” episodes it turns out that not only was he a vampire but the whole town was as well. While the episode was an entertaining one, the relevance here is that the vampire itself was not attractive nor debonair nor aristocratic. He was a misfit that the others disdained for his ways. Part of me wants this in Vampire fiction, the vampire who is just a jerk, not evil, but what we would call a douchebag. I would also like to see the Vampires who are not drop dead gorgeous (Blade for example) nor the complete monster (the Nosferatu clan of the little known “Kindred: The Embraced” show) since pop-culture has since dropped all actual reference to Stoker’s book.
Vampires were never attractive nor sexy in appearance until Bela Lugosi donned the cape and medallion attempting to seduce Helen Chandler in 1931. Before that the physical deformities were omnipresent. They had to be because since the Elizabethan era (and probably before but I wasn’t a literature major) evil had to be represented physically. Look at Shakespeare, Richard III had a hump back; Professor Moriarty had an over pronounced forehead (but not too overpronounced as Holmes observes) even the Vampyre of Polidori wasn’t portrayed as being beautiful, but merely an aristocrat, although he was sexually effective.*
We can blame Polidori/Byron (since the story was falsely attributed to Byron when it was first published) for the alluring Vampire, but more accurately we must drop it on Lugosi since his film portrayal was so iconic that over seventy years later you can still buy his costume around Halloween. In this book, do we have an excuse?
Well, I don’t want to read about ugly people do you? Aristotle said that in order to be happy one must be on the better end of the attractiveness spectrum. It sounds superficial, but we are wired this way. The more attractive a person is the easier a time that person is going to have. Plus, we have already seen Bella shun aside the greasy overweight guy in her class so she needs some other group of loners that she must be drawn to. That is why I am probably not disappointed enough, I understand Bella’s character to be superficial and since in the long run we know she’s going to be drawn to one of the Vampires then I don’t really want the story to be about how she falls in love with the ugly kid who happens to also be a Vampire.
One final note: I love this, “…from somewhere in Alaska.” I asked for it last entry and I got it. The Vampire clan, it is explained came from Alaska originally. It was pointed out to me that one of the problems with living in Alaska is that for every month of night, you do get that much time of day as well. The cloud cover of Washington state makes more and more sense.
_______________________________
*And this probably has more to do with Polidori being jealous of Lord Byron’s way with women viewing him more as a predator than anyone of true worth.
It makes her curious because she wants to be at that table. She knows that everyone knows who they are, they are the subject of gossip and inquiry, and most importantly they are not mingling with everyone else. In college I used to sit by myself in the lunch hall too, but not because I had no friends but because my schedule was odd. I wasn’t the type of person, like Bella, who sat alone wondering who noticed that they were sitting alone. This, however, isn’t what failed to disappoint me. It’s her description of them, “The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room.”
Followed by: “But all this is not why I couldn’t look away. I stare [sic] because their faces, so different, so similar were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine or painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard decide who was the most beautiful–maybe the perfect blonde girl, or the bronze haired boy.”
There is an X-Files episode from way back in season 5, “Bad Blood,” which had Agent Mulder kill a teenage boy whom he thought was a Vampire. In the Twilight Zone-esque ending, typical of the “Monster of the Week” episodes it turns out that not only was he a vampire but the whole town was as well. While the episode was an entertaining one, the relevance here is that the vampire itself was not attractive nor debonair nor aristocratic. He was a misfit that the others disdained for his ways. Part of me wants this in Vampire fiction, the vampire who is just a jerk, not evil, but what we would call a douchebag. I would also like to see the Vampires who are not drop dead gorgeous (Blade for example) nor the complete monster (the Nosferatu clan of the little known “Kindred: The Embraced” show) since pop-culture has since dropped all actual reference to Stoker’s book.
Vampires were never attractive nor sexy in appearance until Bela Lugosi donned the cape and medallion attempting to seduce Helen Chandler in 1931. Before that the physical deformities were omnipresent. They had to be because since the Elizabethan era (and probably before but I wasn’t a literature major) evil had to be represented physically. Look at Shakespeare, Richard III had a hump back; Professor Moriarty had an over pronounced forehead (but not too overpronounced as Holmes observes) even the Vampyre of Polidori wasn’t portrayed as being beautiful, but merely an aristocrat, although he was sexually effective.*
We can blame Polidori/Byron (since the story was falsely attributed to Byron when it was first published) for the alluring Vampire, but more accurately we must drop it on Lugosi since his film portrayal was so iconic that over seventy years later you can still buy his costume around Halloween. In this book, do we have an excuse?
Well, I don’t want to read about ugly people do you? Aristotle said that in order to be happy one must be on the better end of the attractiveness spectrum. It sounds superficial, but we are wired this way. The more attractive a person is the easier a time that person is going to have. Plus, we have already seen Bella shun aside the greasy overweight guy in her class so she needs some other group of loners that she must be drawn to. That is why I am probably not disappointed enough, I understand Bella’s character to be superficial and since in the long run we know she’s going to be drawn to one of the Vampires then I don’t really want the story to be about how she falls in love with the ugly kid who happens to also be a Vampire.
One final note: I love this, “…from somewhere in Alaska.” I asked for it last entry and I got it. The Vampire clan, it is explained came from Alaska originally. It was pointed out to me that one of the problems with living in Alaska is that for every month of night, you do get that much time of day as well. The cloud cover of Washington state makes more and more sense.
_______________________________
*And this probably has more to do with Polidori being jealous of Lord Byron’s way with women viewing him more as a predator than anyone of true worth.
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