Interlude Before the End

We head into the end of the book, the actual end of the book, and we are taking a one week break from wrapping it up. This leaves us with two more posts, the final next week and then the capstone. Of which we shall render our final judgments on the book, its characters, and why it may not live up to the hype of neither its detractors nor its fans.

Given that, the question then remains as to what happens next: to the right of this post is a short quiz which I implore readers to take so we can figure out what is happening next. Now the choices are obvious and while I have a personal favorite for what I would like to do next I will abide by the “winner” of the poll.

Doing this series has been a trial for a number of reasons, but it has been a trial which is most strange. At first, it was difficult. I want to be clear that it was not difficult because of the reading, but more difficult to think of what to say and how much to say about it. Originally I didn’t think there would be that much to unpack with this book given its target audience of teenage girls.

Not to say that they are inherently stupid, but one thing I know about demographics is that they usually include one step below what they are said to be. This book is written for teenagers but tweens (I hate that word but what can you do) are also included in its fan base. The language itself isn’t hard or complex, in fact, its at least several grades above the reading level necessary to read something like USA Today. That’s not a compliment for the book but an insult to USA Today.

Back to the trial, once it this project was absorbed into routine the only trial was finding something good to say once a week. I don’t mean good as complimentary but good in the sense of, worth writing. The page numbers governing each post should be proof of this. At times it was really easy, I would only need to read a couple of pages in order to write nearly a thousand words and other times it would be half a chapter.

Troubling were the times in the beginning. At first I thought that this project would only take a couple of months, one chapter a month in the beginning, than probably more than a chapter at the end. Then I realized that there is so much wrong with these characters, especially the main character that pretty soon I noticed that my posts were spanning about 5-7 pages. At this rate given the length of the book I knew I might be in for a long haul. Someone asked me how long this was going to take, and I sighed having no idea what it was that I begun.

The problem for me now is that I have been engaged in a sort of Stockholm syndrome, that we all know from the movies, I almost don’t want it to end but like all things it pretty much has to.

Despite the limited number of followers I have on the “home website” of this series, and the very few comments that I have gotten on the post, I know that more people read this than are vocal about it. That being said, I didn’t write this for the readership. I’ve had a blog for about seven years now, and it’s the writing that I write for. Yet to continue on I think I may need the encouragement.

It’s not the story, it’s the characters. Some of the characters are pathetic and annoying but they are that way because they are supposed to be that way. People like Mike and Jacob are really like that. Other characters are interesting, actually interesting, like Alice for instance for whom the doom of the world is already apparent to her. Yet it’s too bad that they aren’t the main characters because the main characters are infuriating.

I developed the conclusion very early into the book that these two individuals are good examples of what not to be. Bella is an entitled, depressed, ambitionless, moron, whose existence is solely dependent on her relationship with Edward. Nothing matters to her, she trades friends when convenient, uses people with abandon, and lords over what little connections she does make. Edward isn’t better as he is a sociopathic, stalking, control freak who acts nothing like his alleged age. The worst thing about him is that he serves as an arch-type to fans’ ideas of what a boyfriend should be. Without the addition of new characters I really don’t want to read more about them.

So the poll at the right of this page will basically determine the continuity of this series. Three primary choices exist. The first is to stop doing this to end the misery of this universe and these insufferable characters.

The second is the movie. The movie is interesting because we already know the story so basically it will be mostly a write up of the differences between the book and the movie. I know what I would change and what I would keep. This book was almost turned into an action movie in the first place (seriously).

The third is to move on to the next book because it either gets better or worse. Since I’m aware of the whole Edward v Jacob thing from Burger King commercials, I do know that the series will at least get more cliché as we introduce werewolves into the mix. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, True Blood, pushes the ridiculous envelope all of the time but with good likeable characters it’s easy to overlook.

Take the poll to give me some feedback and we finish off this beast next week.

Is this Even Necessary? (Pg. 480-488)

Like Prologues that begin somewhere toward the end of the story, epilogues are tricky things. Usually an epilogue is reserved for resolving some matter of the story that was not essential to the plot but that readers might want to know about: like the last page in Dickens' "Christmas Carol" where we find out that Scrooge changed permanently and likewise with the final resolution in "A Clockwork Orange" where Alex realizes that children are the reason for him to give up his Droogish ways.* Other times an Epilogue can add a final twist to a story revealing something essential for the future of the character such as in the movie "A Young Sherlock Holmes," where after the credits you see the main antagonist Professor Rathe sign in to a hotel under the name "Moriarty."

We must note however that the story should be done with and the epilogue is merely a "PS" to the main story. It should also have no real bearing on the story but somehow related to it. The main point of that is whether or not an epilogue is needed for this story. Is there any question that we have remaining for the main characters or one of the briefly mentioned side characters? Not to my knowledge. Everything seems to be rather tied up nicely, maybe an explanation of what happened with Charlie. There could be a twist coming, so the only rational course of action is to press on and keep reading.**

Bella and Edward are in a car heading to some unknown destination. Edward is in a black tuxedo while Bella is in a blue dress and stilleto heels. What do we know right now? It's not marriage because Bella isn't in white, they are in high school so that leaves one thing: prom season. This also means that we are forward a couple of months from when we last saw them, apparently the fact that Bella and the Cullens skipped school for several days has been resolved with little to no fanfare. Bella wants to know where they are going and Edward won't tell her.

I suspect that he won't tell her because he's impatient at her stupidity. Seriously where else can they be going? She's been back to school I suspect and if their school was anything like mine there were probably posters and announcements on the wall beckoning people to remember that the prom was going on. No matter because he just looks oh-so-dreamy, "He threw a mocking smile in my direction, and my breath caught in my throat. Would I ever get used to his perfection?"

To cap off a complaint that I have had throughout the entire book, I am sick of hearing about how good looking Edward is mainly because that's all he seems to be. Bella's attraction to him is not based on personality, she's never made mention of anything that he does only what he looks like. His actions speak against it, the only good things that he has done for her have been things that anyone would do in the same situation: rescue her from some punks and then rescue her from a killer. He paid for her dinner once as well, but it was a date so I don't think that counts. Also, the "perfection" that he possesses is just a cop out. Other than his hair color and expensive clothing what does he look like? Pale complexion, golden eyes, hair, and...what else? All we are constantly told is that he is perfect and gorgeous, but never are we shown those features.

Charlie calls Edward's cell phone, and we get to something that we may actually want to know. How did Charlie react to everything? Well he was "worshipfully grateful" toward Dr. Carlisle for saving Bella, but dislikes Edward because he felt that it was his fault Bella ran off in the first place. Now, Bella has curfew rules. That's it. He's not inquisitive about why she ran off, why she ended up in Arizona, or even how (since they took the Cullens car and not hers, especially since she made it clear that Edward was the reason she didn't want to stay in Forks). I would like to know what exactly the explanation was to Charlie. That would be much more of an interesting point of fact for the story than this car ride to what we all know, but Bella, is prom.

Charlie called because Tyler is at his house expecting to take Bella to the prom. If we remember, Tyler is the guy who almost killed Bella and he figured that he would take Bella to the "Girl's Choice" Dance because of that fact. We might think that Tyler is being an idiot here but we don't know what's happened in the last few months (weeks?). We do know that Tyler is still looking for penance for this almost action, and he might be dumb but not a dumb character since he is so purposely clueless, it's probably a good piece of writing there but without the omitted information it's hard to tell. Charlie puts Tyler on the phone and Edward tells him, "To be perfectly honest, she'll be unavailable every night, as far as anyone else beside myself is concerned."

Note that Edward does this without talking to Bella. I'll take controlling boyfriend for one hundred Alex. It's possibly the last time we will have proof that Edward is not an ideal boyfriend or even person. What if Bella wants to hang out by herself, or maybe give Tyler a pity coffee date to get him off her back? Or just hang out with Jessica and Alice? Not if Edward has anything to say about it.

None of this matters though because Bella is far from being any type of role model for women. She doesn't grasp that Edward is the controlling ass that he is, only that finally, after 5 pages she realizes that she's going to prom, "You're taking me to the prom!"

This should be the last proof we need to show that Bella is as stupid as she is oblivious, I'm sure with fifteen pages left though that there is plenty of time for her to demonstrate this once more. Yet her reaction is as puzzling as her obliviousness is offensive, "I was mortified. First, because I'd missed the obvious...my half-fearful hopes seemed very silly now."

I guess we can give her points for at least realizing how dumb she is, but the second part: what hopes? Was she hoping for a surprise wedding? That would seem about right given that Bella Swan seems to have an utter lack of any goals in her life or ambition to do anything but Edward. I suppose Alice could have dressed her in blue to hide the supposed wedding as white would be a dead giveaway but I don't see that working out. Bella is already to commit herself to life with Edward, who will not grow old as she does. Edward just wants to go to the dance, which is realistic for a 17 year old (which he isn't), but Bella keeps needling him with unreasonable worries.

So far all of this seems completely unnecessary and tacked on. Hopefully the actual end of this book will give us a good reason for enduring Bella's utter stupidity and Edward's sociopathic need for control being once more displayed. Other than that the Epilogue is faring much worse than the prologue did.

______________________
*It's pretty lame, and the movie makes more sense where it ends.
**Giving me at least two more weeks of posts for the novel as well.

I Remember These Two (Pg. 471-480)

My biggest problem with this book thus far has been the two main characters. I've repeated it so often that I'm not even going to link to previous posts regarding this opinion, it's far too hard for me to narrow it down to just one or two posts. However it has been a long time since I've harped on it, and this is because there has been an actual plot to distract both the reader and the writer from having to deal with the characters themselves. Now that the plot has thus been resolved there's nothing left to do but wrap up the relationship between them. Yes, we are nearing the end of this journey but even though we can see the end it's over a grand hill.

Bella is in the hospital talking with Edward and she's slipped back into the melodramatic Bella that we've endured for the first couple hundred pages of this book: "I wasn't referring to my most recent near death experience,' I said, growing irritated, 'I was thinking of the others--you can take your pick. If it weren't for you, I would be rotting away in the Fork's cemetery."

Bella's history isn't what she wants to make of it. First off, there has been only one near-death experience for her, and that's the car crash outside of the school. The encounter at Port Angeles wasn't a near-death experience, all it really amounted to was harassment, which admittedly unpleasant wasn't dangerous. We were only told that it was dangerous by Edward who seems to have his own agenda in instilling fear in Bella of the outside world. We can even count James's attack on Bella as NOT being a near death experience since he had no intention of killing her. Bella telling Edward that he can take his pick of the situations is just her being overly dramatic. This is the Bella we remember from the beginning of the book: self-important and prone to delusions of grandeur. What about the old Edward, the one who seems so quick to instill fear in Bella forcing her to become reliant on him for her own safety? Worry not faithful readers he's right here:

"I don't seem to be strong enough to stay away from you, so I suppose that you'll get your way...whether it kills you or not,"

There he is. The above quote is Edward's answer to Bella's request that he promise not to abandon her. Edward is feeling bad that he sucked her blood of out of her finger in order to take out James's venom, which would have turned her into a vampire had it been left in. He feels that he can no longer control himself around her, which is such bullshit because he did exactly just that. He tasted her blood and then broke off, I'm curious to know how his saliva didn't enter her at that point as it's a natural reaction to the action of sucking. I also wonder if all the descriptions of the two kissing have been consistently closed mouthed, which I assume that they have been, but also am going to be too lazy to go back and re-read them. If any fans of the series read this let me know...

Bella wonders about why Edward didn't just let her turn into a vampire, and it's a good question. Yet we never get a good solid answer for it. Instead we are treated to Edward's anger that Bella even knows how it is done, because Bella didn't just ask why she isn't a vampire she asked, "why didn't you just let the venom spread."

It's an poignant way of asking the question because Bella knows how one is turned, but up until that point Edward didn't know that Bella knew. It was a Rumsfeldian, "known unknown" in his mind. If we remember from the middle of the book, Edward balked at the description shuddering at the pain of the memory and wouldn't tell Bella. It was Alice in the motel that explained that it was the saliva that did it. It's curious because Edward gets unreasonably angry about it, which causes Bella to worry for Alice. Edward doesn't just terrorize his girlfriend he also apparently does so to his sister as well. Although Alice could probably see it coming.

Edward says that his doing so would have been wrong, ok I'll take that as a decent reason for two reasons: first being that it was a stranger doing it and Edward, as we have seen is a controlling borderline sociopathic boyfriend.* The second reason is an actual good reason: that it would have been against her will. Then stepping through Bella's counter arguments he asks her, "And the pain?"

Bella shudders at the mention of it. Now, during the last conscious moments after her attack he did mention the burning in her arm, but she also mentioned the pain in her legs, ribs, and head. I doubt she could isolate and identify the specific pain but maybe the burning was more intense. I suppose we can let this slide. Then he angrily responds to Bella's affirmation that the pain would be her choice by saying, "I refuse to damn you to an eternity of night."

This is the most nonsensical objection of all. First off, as most vampire "scholars" point out in their condemnation of these books: the Cullens can walk in the day light. They go to school, they are out and about in the town, and the conversation they are having in the hospital right now is happening in the daytime. Secondly, this isn't the 18th century. It's not like she'll be surrounded by dim candle light, with Edison lamps all around them light isn't a problem. Finally, he'd be better off explaining that he won't damn her to an eternity of a dreamless existence. Although that kind of comment is certainly too poetic and nuanced for him to make.

Bella responds by pulling out a trump card, "Alice already saw it didn't she?"

Alice has foreseen Bella as a vampire, but Edward points out that Alice is sometimes wrong and that Alice has foreseen Bella dead as well. Of Edward's response we have two problems: The first is that Alice hasn't been wrong yet. She missed the coming of the James's trio but that's an omission not an error. Her words at the time weren't, "I didn't think anyone would show up," but they were "I didn't see it--I couldn't tell." This doesn't make her wrong any more than Sherlock Holmes was wrong before he found the three glasses or the second foot print or whatever. The second issue is that if Alice has foreseen Bella as a vampire and Bella as a corpse, those aren't contradictory futures if they happen at different times.

Either case Edward has had enough of this conversation and calls for the nurse for more pain medication to put Bella out. Real nice there Eddie, despite the fact that he has no authority to order pain medication for a patient he's not the guardian for--this is more evidence of his desire to put Bella in her place. Why have a conversation when you can just have the person who has the gall to disagree with you knocked unconscious?

Before she phases out in a drug induced sleep she says, "I'm betting on Alice." Which means that she's betting on her own death,** which must come second to her turning in order to make any sense what so ever. Although with these two idiots who knows how it's going to play out.

____________________________
*I'll take that as a good reason for his character not a good reason mind you. 

**I should mention that Bella makes a good point in her argument with Edward: she tells him that if they really love each other then he has to turn her because she will die and that every second she lives she gets older and thus closer to leaving the circles of this world. Again though, Edward just shrugs it off as the ramblings of a dumb girl. I hate to say this, but she's absolutely right. If this is true agape love, he doesn't have a choice unless he wants to pull an Arwen and choose to die rather than endure the constant flow of time in mourning.

Disappointed Enough (Pg. 458-471)

"Death shouldn't be this uncomfortable..."

I hate this line because of the pretension involved in anyone writing such a thing. If the person was dead, they wouldn't be uncomfortable even eternal torment of the netherworld isn't uncomfortable, it's torturous (unless of course that's the genius of the whole thing: mild irritation for eternity probably makes you think that it will get better in ways that Dante's boiling pitch wouldn't). It's also the type of line that appears in the books of fictional characters where only one line needs to suffice for evidence of the character's literary genius because we think that the entire book is going to be that profound (see Finding Forrester or Californication for what I am talking about) but it won't be, "The Arsonist's Daughter" this isn't. The problem with a line like this is that Bella isn't smart enough to think it. At no point in the story have we learned of her intelligence except when we've been told by her that she is indeed smart. Yet even if we were to grant her book smarts she is unable to glean any sort of insight into life, love, and death. Sorry Meyer no sale on this line.

In fact this whole section is a "no sale." I'm not buying most of it and it can't even be chalked up to being rushed for the end. It's in sight people, we are almost done with this laborious experiment, and somehow the end is turning out to be as bad as the beginning. Probably worse because at least in the beginning there were no reference points.

The room Bella is in is a hospital room. Edward is there, and Edward's mother is somewhere around. Instead of asking Edward what happened the first thing she says is, "Oh Edward I'm so sorry!"

See she was brutally attacked and almost killed by James, and then almost un-killed by James (i.e. turned into a vampire) and the first thing Bella does is apologize? Alright that makes no sense to me. I guess she's apologizing for deceiving him but that shouldn't need the apology since it would seem that everyone knew what she was doing anyway...they just had to get their luggage from baggage claim before saving her.

So she's in the hospital with a broken leg, multiple lacerations, a strange injury on her finger and some head trauma. What did the Cullens tell the authorities (and Bella's parents)? "You fell down two flights of stairs and through a window."

How the fuck does anyone think that is a plausible explanation? Was the window magically placed on the landing below the two flights of stairs or were her injuries the result of two accidents? Where does Edward fit into this? Was he a stranger that found her or did he bring in a severely injured woman and say, 'this is my girlfriend she fell down my stairs and then out of my window.' Yeah no one will call the cops on that. Yet there is something even more ridiculous going on here...that's right I said "more."

The entire book has had a running theme about Bella's character, that she lacks the coordination of a two year old. In gym class she manages to hit her head and Mike's shoulder in one swing with a Badminton Racket, we've been told that she can't walk across a flat surface without falling, and Edward refers to her needing him because of this anti-coordination. Yet the book never showed us this in action, we are instead told about it repeatedly. Throughout the year or so that I have been doing this, I have asked the question of Chekov's Gun, the story trope wherein if a gun appears on scene at some point it has to be fired. Bella's clumsiness is Chekov's gun, and this, THIS, is how it is fired? Used as an excuse for James' attack? That is so utterly weak that I wonder if it was done as an after thought hoping that the target audience wouldn't notice. This is perhaps why, I am not in the target audience.

We also meet the crazy mother, who is obsessive and over-protective when Bella doesn't call. Here, she has an excuse to be a little anxious but instead is only curious about Edward being the reason that she doesn't want to move to Florida. In fact, I wouldn't say that her mother is anything but normal. Although her complete obliviousness to Bella's injuries might speak more to her being crazy than anything else could have...yeah scratch that, Meyer did a good job with the mother.

The other major disappointment in this section comes regarding James. Edward explains what happened after Bella passed out, "After I pulled him off you..."

Emmet and Jasper drag James outside and kill him. They couldn't stand their bloodlust, and James had to, in the words of the Wire, "Get got." If the brothers didn't need to leave the room would the Cullens have drawn lots to see who got to do James? I digress though...All of that chasing, running, switching, and Audrey Hepburn Gambits was for naught because all the Cullens really had to do was lock James in a room with Emmet and Jasper. The only actual conflict in this book is resolved in an off-hand remark that Edward makes. Sure, he appears rueful about it, but then becomes angry when they play the tape and hear James talking about Alice. Why even bother with it? Think about the entire story in light of the ease that James was dispatched with, would anything be that different if the Cullens weren't vampires?

With the RN in the room and her mother gone Bella and Edward talk about why Bella isn't moving to Florida. Edward wishes she would move away to, "someplace where I couldn't hurt you anymore." Despite the fact that he actually hasn't hurt her...yet. I really hope that given the nature of her injuries and his comment, that the RN isn't in the room and I misread something. Because the police ought to be on their way.