January (Pg. 95-101)

January, well here we are back from the three months of nothingness that the book skipped over. As I said last week my complaint isn't that we skipped but how we did so. Just jumping from one period of time to another is usually the way it goes. The useless page turning just infuriated me. 

How is our girl now that we are back. Well, she's doing superficially well, she has explained that she is getting all As, rarely serving leftovers, and never getting in trouble. The perfect daughter...which is what she thinks of herself. The chapter opens, after some meaningless monologue about how time tramples forever on no matter who you are, with Charlie telling Bella he is going to send her "home." By "home" he means to her mother's house in Florida. I find that kind of odd because one would think that Charlie would think of Bella's home to be with him, and not to be with the woman who left him with his daughter for some minor league baseball player. 

Bella reacts shocked, she wants to stay in Forks but she never explains why. I can guess, though since its obvious, she's hoping that Edward or one of the Cullens will come back and if she's in town they might bump into each other. Charlie, to his credit for once, gets it. First off it's not that Bella is depressed that angers him, it's that she isn't. If she moped as she put it, she would be doing something. Instead, "you're just...lifeless Bella." 

Bella insists that she's fine, that she's being good, and that she can handle things. Like all smart ass teenagers, she thinks she knows better than anyone else. Again, Charlie makes sense when he tells her that she's not the only person that's ever gone through this. It's a good point, but useless. I'm sure we've all been dumped before, and it always feels like no one else has ever been through what you've been through. But in truth, it's all the same. Your life won't be complete without them, you'll never find another person, love is a lie, etc. Charlie comments that he is thinking of getting a Bella a shrink. 

Bella takes this as an insult. She's too smart to need psychiatry, she'll just keep plodding along like a golem until Edward comes back for her. If there were a Denny's in Forks, she's be the type to be hanging out at it until well past midnight bragging about how stupid her shrink is, and how she's fine. The depression will make her creative or something. She'll be no danger to anyone else, or even herself, but she'll be miserable for her entire life. 

Bella doesn't see this problem, "I didn't know much about psychoanalysis, but was pretty sure that it didn't work unless the subject was relatively honest. Sure, I could tell the truth--If I wanted to spend the rest of my life in a padded cell." 

This is something that tells a lot about the character, probably more so than we are meant to. At first it may seem confusing why Bella was so upset. It's just a highschool guy, and they are pretty much all douchebags. Then we understand that it's her first boyfriend and he's so far up the ladder from her that she just felt privileged that he even talked to her. When he left, despite the fact that is exactly what she's been telling us he ought to do and that she deserved, she became upset. So was all of her early self-deprecations just that? Possibly, but there's more to the story. 

Let's say that she goes to the psychiatrist and talks about what is bothering her, why would she be committed to a padded room (do they still have those?)? But wait blogger person, you reply, it's because she would have to tell the shrink that he was a vampire and that his family was all vampires as well. Ah, I would reply to you, would she? 

I've talked to friends about being dumped before, mostly, as a guy, you get told to drink a beer and shut up the game is on. So I don't know what it's like for women, but if why should she have to mention that he's a vampire? It's because it was him, the gorgeous, sociopathic, control freak, stalker, that she was in love with. Couldn't she just be honest about that? Or is there some other reason that she is so upset? The question we should be asking is what she loves more Edward or the Vampire? It seems silly but there is no reason for her to mention is undead nature to the shrink, unless that shrink is going to be asking a lot of oddly specific questions:

Shrink: So did you two eat a lot?
Bella: Not really, he didn't eat much.
Shrink: Watching his weight? You've mentioned repeatedly, at nauseum, how hot you thought he was.
Bella: No more of a drinker really.

The other problem for her is that if she did go to a psychiatrist and talk about the relationship, the shrink might begin to besmirch his good name. Surely a doctor would recognize that he's not the most healthy of boyfriends that she could have. Definitely the psychotherapist is out. 

In an effort to explain to Charlie that she's fine, she decides that her and her friends are going to go to a movie tonight and that she won't be back for dinner. Right now she is facing a steep difficulty, she has no fiends. Bella put all her chips in the Cullens' basket and lost. Remember she explained at the beginning of this book that while they all sat together she never spoke to Mike or Jessica unless she had to, that is when Alice and Edward were not in school that day. 

Mike is basically our lost cause guy at this point. His torch bearing for Bella has existed even through his relationship with Jessica at the end of the last book. We also know that Bella works at Mike's family's sporting goods store, I'm sure she shook her money maker to get that position. What the most frustrating thing about the skip in time is how he took the break up. Was he happy, did she notice a repressed smile, or has he grown passed the crush and onto actual concern. Or, as I would like to have done, has he washed his hands of her. "He didn't bother walking me to class anymore."

Good for him.

Jessica is a different case. We got the impression that she was the alpha female in the school before Bella came to town. It's hard to tell because there are about five people, aside the Cullens, that actually attend this high school. Bart Simpson's class room has more recognizable names in it than this place has students. Jessica, to her credit actually gives her some shit. "Are you talking to me Bella Swan?"

The interesting part of the Jessica situation is that she resists at first, but then sighs and relents. Maybe that's normal for teenage girls, I don't really know, but it's an actual nice touch. Jessica may actually think that Bella wants to be her friend again, it's too bad that this horrible person is only using Jessica to get her father off her back. 

Time (pg. 84-93)

We've got a short one today, but I know that upon writing that I've just jinxed myself. One of the problems in writing this blog is that sometimes I have to make choices about what I want to write about. Last week's entry covered a rather large portion of the book but there was one central idea that occurred in the section. This week we have a short section, but it isn't really a section at all since absolutely nothing happens. We left off with a Bella's incoherent, but not out of character, rambling after being dumped by Edward. We must remember that the reason that Edward dumped Bella is because they are different creatures, not because he didn't love her or anything else. His reasoning is actually valid, their relationship would be like that of a snake and a rat. One of them just really wants to eat the other.

Out of this breakup we discover that before it happened Edward broke into Bella's room and stole the picture of himself. Because somehow that will make the breakup easier. Bella is shocked by this but regards it with some admiration. She's just had her heart broken for a reason that was apparent when they first met, so at this point it's pretty arbitrary, and still she can't assert herself enough to admit that he might not be perfect. She goes to sleep. And then we have today's actual section. This happens in September, which we know because the new school year had just started.

This is the entirety of pg. 85 "October."

Alright, it is a chapter heading...but then here is the entirety of pg. 86"        "

Here's pg. 87 "November"

This continues to January on Pg. 91 and on 93 the story resumes. That's eight pages discussing the passage of time. with four words on those eight pages. At first I thought it silly, then stupid, now utterly pointless as a waste of time. Granted it only wasted a minute or two but those are minutes I want back. The problem for me is that I understand why Meyer did it, and that's because I understand what sloppy writing is through my own early attempts at writing fiction.

We start out with October, which is fine if something happens in October. Since nothing does we quickly skip over to November and on and on until January. What we should have read after Bella goes to sleep on pg. 84 was "January" on pg. 85 and perhaps a line in the very beginning of that paragraph which read something like "It was now winter, and going back to school after winter break was going to be difficult..." or even a more trite "four months had passed and it still wasn't getting easier."

Placing those eight pages like she did reminds me of Lord of the Rings. No, not the books or the Peter Jackson trilogy but rather the, uh interesting Ralph Bakishi animated version that comprised the first two books of the trilogy. People who only know the Jackson movies miss the fact that the story takes place over a period of many years. Between Bilbo's leaving the Shire and Frodo leaving the Shire a number of years pass, 17 in fact. It is 3001 of the third age when Bilbo turns 111, it is the 3018 when Frodo leaves the Shire with Sam and the ring. This is glossed over in Jackson's movies because it lends to a sense of panic--that Gandalf made haste to determine whether or not Bilbo's ring was the one they were looking for. Bakishi goes a different route. He has an external shot of Bag End in the summer and then runs through a change of seasons, eight or nine times at high speed. Just so we get the sense of the passing of time. The only time that passes is ours, because a simple subtitle would suffice both in Meyer's book and in the movie.

The other problem with this abrupt time shift is that are we really to believe that nothing of any importance happens to her in the next four months? Our main issue with Bella is that she has no life outside of the person that she is attached to, in this case Edward. Bella identifies herself solely as Edward's girlfriend now that he is gone, she has to establish her identity. Even less philosophical, she was just dumped by a person who, for some reason, is the love of her life. Wouldn't a chapter or so of immediate post break up psychological exploration be something teenage girls would be interested in? Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't writing for your audience be a good thing? It's why Kevin Smith works in at least one star wars reference in every film, while it may seem pandering it works. Here it ought to be necessary we have many questions to ask about what happened in October:

1) did she go to school?
2) how did her friends react?
3) what exactly did she do to pass the time?

Instead we are left to make assumptions about these four months in which I guess she just laid in her bed. It sounds pretty lame but if there's no water we have to drink something.

The Plunge (Pg. 65-84)

After Bella is done considering how ugly she is in the mirror, she decides that she might as well face the music and deal with Edward. First though she has a plan, "I decided that, if I couldn't talk to him today, really talk, then I was going to see Carlisle tomorrow. I had to do something."

While it's hard to be accurate (mostly because I'm not going back and counting) it's been a couple of days since the party where Ed almost killed Bella. In that time, Edward has gotten distant leading Bella to doubt her future with the god among men which has motivated her to do--nothing. She's done nothing, she hasn't really tried to corner him into a conversation. I mean, she sort of has, but then he waves it off as being nothing dropping the subject. Bella, of course, can't bring it up again for fear of displeasing her master, er boyfriend. During the last novel I discusses many times that Edward was an abusive boyfriend, he made all of the decisions for the two of them and for her alone, but also that she's at the point where she's obviously in fear of displeasing him. So much so that she won't even confront Edward about the distance between them, but would rather go behind his back to his "dad" to figure out what is going on. That's either indicative that she is psychological enthralled by him or that she's such a chicken shit that she won't even try to talk to the source of the problem. Instead she's going to go the backdoor method in order to not make him mad, but what does she think is going to happen when Carlisle tells him?

The problem with the book is that we are supposed to think that Edward is the ideal mate for our girlish hearts. However he seems to lack two things that every woman I know has claimed to want in a guy: sense of humor and ability to listen. I'm not going to make some hackneyed 80's stand up joke about how women are lying about it, what I'm going to say is that Edward isn't funny. Not at all, in fact there is an incredible lack of levity in the story so far. Edward, not only misses that sense of humor, but also he never listens to her. Not once does he really have a conversation with her wherein her viewpoint is discussed in some way without him correcting her or basically telling her how to think. Again, I ask, what does she get out of this relationship?

The four worst words strung together in the English language are, 'we need to talk.' Nothing good ever follows that phrase, otherwise why would you need to talk. Here Edward goes about it differently, "Come for a walk with me." It sounds normal but to Meyer's credit, she does well in the atmosphere sense--it just feels bad. Anyone that has ever been dumped has said some silly things or made some ridiculous assumptions about the other person in order to avoid the inevitable. During this walk Edward talks about how it is time for the Cullens to move on, to transfer locations as Carlisle is no longer seeming reasonable to pass for 30. Eyebrows, according to Edward, are being raised.

This is how Edward dumps her. He's not straight with Bella, it's all about the moving. Bella does something odd here, instead of pleading with him not to move--which would be the obvious course of action she just assumes that she's going with them. It's another example of how bad of a role model Bella actually is. She has no identity of her own, everything regarding her existence is wrapped up in Edward. She's prepared to drop her only family members, her actual life, and whatever aspirations she made have had just to be with this one guy. In some ways I get it, I've been there thinking that the person dumping me would come around if only I would change every last thing about my life. That reality though hits home, and you realize that what the other person needs is not reasonable. That realization hurts but it's what helps you get through the break up. Bella doesn't get it and finally Edward spells it out, "Bella, I don't want you to come with me."

I've literally had those words said to me (with a different name of course).

Edward then does the excuse making. He tells her that he's no good for her, that she ought to find someone else, that his life is too dangerous, etc. The one thing that he never says to her is that she'll find someone better. Which is curious because usually that is something said, but Edward's pride won't let him say it. What Edward actually means is that she doesn't belong in his world, a much better world as he's portrayed it. Bella just kind of takes it like a whipped dog. The only thing that Edward does do right is perceive her sadness at the break up and fear for her safety. He tells her not to do anything stupid, but then does something rather clever. She can't kill herself because of any intrinsic self worth, or Kantian/religious argument against suicide but because she has a responsibility to her father. It's clever because a person who wants to kill themself in such a state won't perceive that they are worth anything, that the self can't be improved by its own destruction, or that God/god/gods don't approve. He instead heaps a responsibility on her that he knows she won't ignore.

He finishes by telling her to forget about him, that it would be like he never existed...aside from her memory of course, and then vanishes in the forest. What happens now is around 12 pages of rambling incoherent thought processes coupled with her fainting. It's tough to dissect because on one hand her inability to make any sense reflects her pain at being dumped. On the other hand I can't say that it's on purpose. Especially because she's currently unconscious on the floor of the forest so the incoherence is at one time a bit too coherent for her being unconscious and at the same time too incoherent for the thought of a person still possessing rationality.

The rain wakes her up as well as the sound of a large creature, like a dog, nearby. When she gets up it's a person looking for her, not a dog. A bit of obvious foreshadowing there as the person is one of Billy Black's friends from the reservation. It's then revealed that Carlisle has told everyone that he's moving to Los Angeles, a fact that we know is wrong from what Edward had said earlier and seems only to be there so that Bella can be smug about knowing something that the other people don't. Finally there's a brief conversation with Charlie where we find out that the Blacks on the reservation are having a party because the Cullens have left. It adds nothing to the plot, but what's curious is that the Charlie is called at all. Reservations are zones that operate with their own legal systems. In other words Chief Swan isn't going to be called if the kids on the reservation are doing something on the reservation, there's a different Sheriff for that--probably Sheriff Black. Now the Reservation Sheriff might give Swan a call out of courtesy but he wouldn't be the first one notified. In either case the Reservation is celebrating because the Cullens have left Forks.

Which brings us to a plot hole. In the previous book Charlie and Billy had stopped talking because Billy wouldn't allow the reservation kids to go to the hospital with Dr. Cullen working there. When we first meet Billy it's the first time that Charlie and he have been together in several months. So it seemed that Carlisle was only working in Forks for the same amount of time. Yet the Cullens seem to be so established in Forks that they must have been there longer. Carlisle's replacement talks about what a great loss he was, but he couldn't have been that integral unless he had been there for a long time. So which is it?

Prelude to the Fall (Pg. 59-65)

I had a student write in a paper once, "break-ups don't end nearly as sweet as they begin." I'm not sure what exactly she was going for, maybe "break-ups" was supposed to be "relationships" or maybe she was really really looking forward to dumping someone and it just didn't work out the way she planned. Like all of life's little problems nothing ever goes the way we assume that they would. That's cliche of course, if things always went the way we planned, we wouldn't have problems. What we ought to see however, or perceive, is that deep breath before the plunge. Seeing the decline before the drop off is one aspect of intelligence, not to say that we should always be able to prevent it but that we should be prepared for it.

To Bella's credit I think she sees what is going to happen, but she has that most horrible of human tendencies--hope. She sees the break up coming but she has hope that it's something else--what else it could be is anyone's guess but Edward has gotten distant since the birthday party, since he, made a paper cut much worse than it needed to be. She's home with Charlie and Edward watching the sports highlights on television, she's in her room looking at the camera she received for her birthday, "trying to ignore the butterflies in my stomach as I thought of the strange distance I didn't want to see in Edward's eyes."

While she's being paranoid and whiny fretting about something that is so far only in her head, this is entirely normal. In fact the only abnormal thing about this is how accurate the portrayal is. I've been there, I am sure we all have. The train of thought was the entirety of an episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza thinks he can keep his girlfriend who wants to dump him if he can only avoid her until the dinner party that he wants to bring her to. Bella's avoiding Edward and only interacting with him in happy things, like expending a significant amount of film in her camera.

"You don't have to use the whole roll now." I just wanted to point out the word "roll," and how there is a segment of the population who will never have to know what that word refers to in the sentence. "Is it like memory or something" I'm sure I'll be asked if my daughter ever reads these books. This book was written in 2006, so the idea of a film camera had long been lost to anyone that wasn't holding on for nostalgia purposes, however the book takes place around 2002 (the latest I've seen is 2004) so film is beginning its decline as a medium of choice. I think a 2mp camera in 2002 would have cost around 500 hundred dollars. Nothing to fault here, I'm just saying that technology can really date a story that was set only 9 years ago. We can also ask why does she have a camera that isn't part of her phone, or where is her phone?

Moving on...sort of. See back in the old days it was more than just plugging your phone into your laptop to get the pictures, or doing the same with the memory card, or through bluetooth or whatever. The thing is she has to get the film developed. She has to drop the camera off and then return later to grab her pictures. It's pretty needless and in this section there is a lot of needlessness. The whole deal with the camera, for me anyway, is to see whether or not he would show up on film. It's important because vampires aren't supposed to give off reflections, that goes back to Dracula, whether or not they show up on film is a different thing altogether.

"When I pulled it out, I gasped aloud," there's a lot of unintentional porn dialogue in these books, and I do like to quote out of context to emphasize it. Here Bella is commenting on Edward's image in the photograph. Yay, mystery solved after so much waiting. What follows is some more bullshit about how good looking he is, which my new policy is to ignore from now on except  for this interesting piece of information she observes about herself in comparison to Eddie, "I looked very average even for a human."

It's subtle but it's there. First off we can ignore the self-deprecating comments regarding her appearance. Edward has said that every guy in the high school wanted her when she first showed up, she's played by Kristen Stewart who isn't exactly average, but we set that aside. The problem is that she views the Cullens as having "otherworldly looks" i.e. that their striking appearance is because they are vampires. The problem with that is that their appearance is entirely based on the fact that they were human. Vampire fiction tends to do this the vampires are all horribly sexy in appearance wearing the most revealing or figure hugging clothing possible, I think the world latex supply almost ran dry for the filming of the Underworld series. Yet there isn't too much in the world that gives us ugly vampires. Which is odd because Count Dracula was portrayed as being very ugly in Stoker's Novel, and Count Orlock from "Nosferatu"--the very first Vampire movie* was bald and hook nosed. Let's actually take a look at Stoker's description, "His face was a strong-a very strong-aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor."

Dracula looks sickly, but with an Eastern European bent. Every vampire since Bella Lugosi and Christopher Lee have been attractive. If the Cullens are hot now as vampires it's because they were hot as humans. Bella entirely misses the connection, if the one of the Cullens turns her into a vampire she won't suddenly be hot like they are, she might lose some color in her face but that's it. She'll still be miserable Bella, only she won't be able to go backward. If she looks average now she'll look average in the future. Being a vampire isn't going to make her life better but it will give her what she wants, a permanent connection to Edward.

 
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*And the source for the fact that sunlight kills them.