Note to faithful readers: due to my school schedule I shall be moving the updates BACK to Mondays.
Last week I ended with the hope that the good vampires are aware of Bella's plan to ditch them at the airport. Bella has to do so because James demanded that or else her mother, his hostage, will be hurt. The interesting thing about that fact is that Alice cannot see either James's plan or Bella's. Odd. Even more odd is that Bella is more worried about Jasper, which leads me to doubt what exactly his power is. We know that he calms people down with some sort of empathic dominance but Bella is worried that he will be able to sense her emotions. Maybe he can, maybe he can't, it's a pretty fuzzy notion so far.
When Bella leaves the bedroom of the motel she sees Alice sitting at the desk gripping it with both hands. "Alice?" She didn't react when I caller her name, but her head was slowly rocking from side to side..."
Descriptions of how someone sees the future are curiously lacking in classic literature. Herodotus, in his Histories, never gives us a description only the mysterious foretellings of the Delphic and Pythian Oracles. Because of their mysterious utterings we can assume it is a trance like state, and Meyer continues on this trend. Alice is seeing the future, now typically she goes into a wide-eyed state where she speaks to the room but this time she isn't doing so. Leading me to believe that she is seeing the encounter that Bella will have with James. Then Alice speaks, "Bella,' she said."
Alice isn't talking to Bella, but merely saying her name. Whereupon she turns to Jasper and buries her head into his chest. This is evocative of concern, although we have to guess at that because Meyer doesn't give us any description of her voice, only her actions. Can we fault our author for this? Long answer no, short answer yes. I'll explain the long answer.
The thing about using a prophetic character in a story is that it often times has the effect of ruining the story. We know that Alice's abilities are accurate to some degree. So far, Meyer has gotten around this by making Alice's visions come either too late (as in the case of meeting James in the woods) or are intentionally vague and mysterious (like the room at Bella's mother's house). In both cases we find out that Alice is right. The trouble here is that Meyer has to write around Alice's vision while handing the reader an answer to the obvious question of how Bella is going to outwit her. The only way she can do so is by not telling us what it is that Alice sees. It's a valiant attempt but it is also a cheap one.
Herodotus gets around the whole thing by making the visions completely ambiguous even when it refers to a historical fact. When King Croesus goes to the Delphic Oracle to ask who will win the war between himself and Darius the Great of the Persians the answer is, "the winner of the battle will destroy a great kingdom." It's clever because while it is established that Darius had won the battle by the time Herodotus finishes his book it answers the question of why Croesus went to war if the Oracle had informed him of the result. The prediction was thus misinterpreted by Croesus whose kingdom was destroyed preserving both the accuracy of the prediction, the historical event surrounding it, and the suspense in a first time reader.
Here Meyer could have done better. Maybe Alice doesn't see Bella and James together but maybe some sort of danger. Anything, because it doesn't make sense if Alice cares about Bella that she wouldn't warn her of whatever her vision is that has Alice so rattled. Bella, though sees that Alice is having a vision and maybe has divined her plan. She does the reasonable thing: panders to her guilty conscience asking Alice, "How does it work?"
Oh good, some explication. Thought to Meyer's credit there haven't been too many of these, unlike those horrid Left Behind novels, but the answer is worth quoting in full, "Yes, things change...Some things are more certain than others...like the weather. People are harder. I only see the course they're on while they're on it. Once they change their minds--make a new decision, no matter how small--the whole future shifts."
The first part of that quote is fine. Things like the weather obey laws, meteorological laws that aren't about choice. Here Alice's abilities would be more like someone who detect the small details that indicate a shift in condition that the weather would change under, like subtle spikes in humidity or pressure. The second part is what doesn't make any sense and I would go so far as to say that it is wholly incorrect.
A person's actions do not take place in a vacuum. It's not like I make a decision that is completely independent of any other decision that I have made in my life prior. What we do today is representative of the amalgamation of our lives up to this point. My decision to begin this blog is representative of a couple of things from my past: my previous and current other blogs, my desire to write, my preference for series in blogs, my fascination with popular culture, the existence of my daughter for whom teen fiction may be something that she desires to read, etc. Deciding to write this was not an individual decision made on the day I first began it about a year ago.
It's important to note because if Alice could have seen me two years ago she would have been able to see my writing this even though at that time this was not something I could have conceived. Yet, I was on that path. The path that will take me wherever I end up in ten years, is the path that I am on now. No matter what decisions I make or if I suddenly change my mind. The trouble for Alice's description is that a person could only change their mind and throw off her prediction if they knew the future and the decisions leading up to it. If Bella knew the result of her encounter with James and then changed her mind about meeting him, that would be close to what Alice was is talking about. Close, but not close enough, because even then the future doesn't change. It is written as it is written. Bella cannot outsmart fate. The trouble is that even if we accept all of the problems with Alice's description it doesn't do anything to help Bella, she hasn't changed her mind.
At the airport Alice is acting strange but Bella waves this off, "she must be attributing the change in her vision to some maneuver of the Tracker rather than a betrayal by me."
Repeating from last week, Bella is an idiot. She is doing this whole charade because James asked her to do so. She's not betraying Alice, just keeping a really dumb secret. The whole scene in the airport is rather trite. She escapes by entering into a two story bathroom, then hops in a shuttle and then a cab arriving at her mother's house. It's quite unlike the daring escape that she would need to perform to outwit a psychic and an empath, whose powers mysteriously disappear. Which again, from last week, I hope they are just pretending if only for the sake of the plot making sense.
Last week I ended with the hope that the good vampires are aware of Bella's plan to ditch them at the airport. Bella has to do so because James demanded that or else her mother, his hostage, will be hurt. The interesting thing about that fact is that Alice cannot see either James's plan or Bella's. Odd. Even more odd is that Bella is more worried about Jasper, which leads me to doubt what exactly his power is. We know that he calms people down with some sort of empathic dominance but Bella is worried that he will be able to sense her emotions. Maybe he can, maybe he can't, it's a pretty fuzzy notion so far.
When Bella leaves the bedroom of the motel she sees Alice sitting at the desk gripping it with both hands. "Alice?" She didn't react when I caller her name, but her head was slowly rocking from side to side..."
Descriptions of how someone sees the future are curiously lacking in classic literature. Herodotus, in his Histories, never gives us a description only the mysterious foretellings of the Delphic and Pythian Oracles. Because of their mysterious utterings we can assume it is a trance like state, and Meyer continues on this trend. Alice is seeing the future, now typically she goes into a wide-eyed state where she speaks to the room but this time she isn't doing so. Leading me to believe that she is seeing the encounter that Bella will have with James. Then Alice speaks, "Bella,' she said."
Alice isn't talking to Bella, but merely saying her name. Whereupon she turns to Jasper and buries her head into his chest. This is evocative of concern, although we have to guess at that because Meyer doesn't give us any description of her voice, only her actions. Can we fault our author for this? Long answer no, short answer yes. I'll explain the long answer.
The thing about using a prophetic character in a story is that it often times has the effect of ruining the story. We know that Alice's abilities are accurate to some degree. So far, Meyer has gotten around this by making Alice's visions come either too late (as in the case of meeting James in the woods) or are intentionally vague and mysterious (like the room at Bella's mother's house). In both cases we find out that Alice is right. The trouble here is that Meyer has to write around Alice's vision while handing the reader an answer to the obvious question of how Bella is going to outwit her. The only way she can do so is by not telling us what it is that Alice sees. It's a valiant attempt but it is also a cheap one.
Herodotus gets around the whole thing by making the visions completely ambiguous even when it refers to a historical fact. When King Croesus goes to the Delphic Oracle to ask who will win the war between himself and Darius the Great of the Persians the answer is, "the winner of the battle will destroy a great kingdom." It's clever because while it is established that Darius had won the battle by the time Herodotus finishes his book it answers the question of why Croesus went to war if the Oracle had informed him of the result. The prediction was thus misinterpreted by Croesus whose kingdom was destroyed preserving both the accuracy of the prediction, the historical event surrounding it, and the suspense in a first time reader.
Here Meyer could have done better. Maybe Alice doesn't see Bella and James together but maybe some sort of danger. Anything, because it doesn't make sense if Alice cares about Bella that she wouldn't warn her of whatever her vision is that has Alice so rattled. Bella, though sees that Alice is having a vision and maybe has divined her plan. She does the reasonable thing: panders to her guilty conscience asking Alice, "How does it work?"
Oh good, some explication. Thought to Meyer's credit there haven't been too many of these, unlike those horrid Left Behind novels, but the answer is worth quoting in full, "Yes, things change...Some things are more certain than others...like the weather. People are harder. I only see the course they're on while they're on it. Once they change their minds--make a new decision, no matter how small--the whole future shifts."
The first part of that quote is fine. Things like the weather obey laws, meteorological laws that aren't about choice. Here Alice's abilities would be more like someone who detect the small details that indicate a shift in condition that the weather would change under, like subtle spikes in humidity or pressure. The second part is what doesn't make any sense and I would go so far as to say that it is wholly incorrect.
A person's actions do not take place in a vacuum. It's not like I make a decision that is completely independent of any other decision that I have made in my life prior. What we do today is representative of the amalgamation of our lives up to this point. My decision to begin this blog is representative of a couple of things from my past: my previous and current other blogs, my desire to write, my preference for series in blogs, my fascination with popular culture, the existence of my daughter for whom teen fiction may be something that she desires to read, etc. Deciding to write this was not an individual decision made on the day I first began it about a year ago.
It's important to note because if Alice could have seen me two years ago she would have been able to see my writing this even though at that time this was not something I could have conceived. Yet, I was on that path. The path that will take me wherever I end up in ten years, is the path that I am on now. No matter what decisions I make or if I suddenly change my mind. The trouble for Alice's description is that a person could only change their mind and throw off her prediction if they knew the future and the decisions leading up to it. If Bella knew the result of her encounter with James and then changed her mind about meeting him, that would be close to what Alice was is talking about. Close, but not close enough, because even then the future doesn't change. It is written as it is written. Bella cannot outsmart fate. The trouble is that even if we accept all of the problems with Alice's description it doesn't do anything to help Bella, she hasn't changed her mind.
At the airport Alice is acting strange but Bella waves this off, "she must be attributing the change in her vision to some maneuver of the Tracker rather than a betrayal by me."
Repeating from last week, Bella is an idiot. She is doing this whole charade because James asked her to do so. She's not betraying Alice, just keeping a really dumb secret. The whole scene in the airport is rather trite. She escapes by entering into a two story bathroom, then hops in a shuttle and then a cab arriving at her mother's house. It's quite unlike the daring escape that she would need to perform to outwit a psychic and an empath, whose powers mysteriously disappear. Which again, from last week, I hope they are just pretending if only for the sake of the plot making sense.
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