Another pet peeve of mine with fiction, and especially this fiction, is when a character does something entirely out of the ordinary or against character just to make sure that we the reader understand that the plot is moving forward. It's like breaking the fourth wall, only less on purpose. Think C3P0 in Star Wars, unless he is answering a request by another character his main role in the movie series is to remind us the movie viewer that the story is going forward or that there is some sort of obvious danger that we ought to be aware of. More often than not, he's utterly useless. Another good example is the ship's counselor in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Troi is mostly there to tell us what emotions we should be feeling but again, she's kind of useless. In this story it happens arbitrarily to so many different characters that it's impossible to really narrow down who we ought to be ignoring, so in the end we have to endure the eye-rollingly bad situations when it happens. It's odd because instead of just moving the story along, Meyer has to tell us that it's time to move the story along.
Bella has run out of the woods as five extremely large wolves have chased off Laurent. As she gets home she engages in some non-sensical banter with her father as he, I assume watches the game. Once he gets a good look at her he gets concerned, realistically concerned I might add. Then especially concerned when she explains that she was in the woods and she saw "the bear" that people have been reporting, only it wasn't a bear but five huge wolves. First off Meyer has this problem and it's a problem that I am all too familiar with: laziness. Here's what I mean, "The rangers said that the tracks were wrong for a bear--but wolves just don't get that big."
The laziness comes from Meyer's reluctance to do any superficial research whatsoever. This blog has kept a running tally of all the times she has neglected to do the research. Twenty years ago this would be kind of forgiveable, but unless I find out that she writes on anything but a computer it's just not. There is no way a forest ranger would let the chief of police assume it's a bear when the tracks are clearly wolf. Size doesn't matter if the track is a wolf track. As Hercule Poirot would say, if the facts don't fit the theory ditch the theory. Google it up, bear and wolf tracks aren't similar. The number of toes is your first clue.If it's a large wolf then it's a large wolf.
Bella actually does well here, because she lies about where she saw the wolves. It's a shitty lie because the Rangers will investigate and either won't find the tracks or will find the tracks in a different place but she does it for the right reasons. She's worried because she still thinks Laurent is out there and doesn't want to risk anyone's life. Once in awhile she seems to stumble upon a good deed. It's a nice scene because rarely do we get to see Charlie caring about his daughter without her snide remarks or false persecution.
Then the scene is ruined, "Didn't you say that Jacob was gone of the day?"
Huh?
Your daughter was just witness to five wolves that were so large that people have been thinking they were bears, she ran out of the woods scared to death, and this is the follow up question? But hold on it gets worse, "I could tell he was worried--watching me jump at any loud sound, or my face suddenly go white for no reason that he could see. From the questions he asked now and then, he seemed to blame the change on Jacob's continued absence."
How about this detective? Your daughter just had a near death experience. Now, it's not the near death experience that you think she had, but still...This is what I was talking about in the opening. After a genuinely tense scene with the wolves (ruined by the telepathic/memory voice of Edward) we are reminded that this is a story about Jacob and Bella. Bella, of course, being the female girls should aspire to simply because she feels that she is worthless without a man. There's alot of bullshit in this section about Laurent and Victoria. The troubling thing is that there is a really good subtext going on here that gets put on the backburner because we need to be reminded that there are vampires in the area and that Jacob hasn't been around.
Bella calls her dad because Jacob hasn't been around and she's worried about the La Push gang. Charlie doesn't care because Billy has vouched for Sam and Sam is generally a nice guy. Charlie though can't talk because he has police matters to deal with as two tourists have gone missing in the woods. Bella remarks, "What I'd seen in the meadow just got stranger and stranger--more impossible to understand."
She's referring to why Laurent ran from the wolves rather than kill them. We know that the vampires in this world hunt wolves, that's Edward's favorite I think (I'm not looking back to figure that out). Despite their size it shouldn't have been difficult for Laurnet to kill them. That's what's been occupying Bella's worries about Jacob and her father for the last ten pages. She figured that Laurent had fell back but nevertheless killed the wolves. Now that two people have just gone missing due to the wolves, she's puzzled. Frankly, I'm rather impressed that it even comes up at all.It would actually be a decent mystery if I didn't already know how it was going to be explained. I suppose all that's left now is for her to figure it out.
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