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.

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*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.

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*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.

What Has Passed is Prologue (Pg. 451-457)

In order to accurately go through this section we have to go waaaay back to my second post in the series. I mentioned then, that beginning any story with a phrase about dying is difficult to do. Because while it sets the tone of the story it also ruins the fact that the character is going to survive until we come back to that point. Well here we are, the point in the story that syncs up with where we began almost a year ago. Bella is laying semi-conscious on the floor of the dance studio, where she begins her tale saying, "I'd never given much thought as to how I would die--"

James has left, Bella is drifting out remarking, "And then I knew I was dead."

Well the thing is she isn't. We know she isn't and she knows she isn't because she's still having thoughts about her mortal life. As an atheist I don't pretend to understand what happens to a person when they die. People who know me don't usually ask me either so I haven't really given it much more thought than I had when I was a teenager. The best explanation I ever heard or read comes from Plato who, through the mouth of Socrates, explains that you either go to the afterlife where you get to meet all of the dead people that you have known or wanted to know or it's like a deep dreamless sleep. Bella's worldview is probably more of the former given the writer's religious leanings, but in either case she isn't dead. She's drifting in and out. Then the angel appears.

The identity of the angel is obvious. It's so obvious because we have been beaten over the head with it throughout the entire book. At some point I would imagine that even the most star struck readers of this book must be rolling their eyes thinking, "we get it Edward is perfect."

"Carlisle!' the angel called, agony in his perfect voice." So it sounds like the entire Cullen family has finally arrived. Carlisle, who is a doctor, obviously is going to tend to Bella's injuries. It's noted by him that she has a broken leg, the cut on her face is nothing serious, and probably some broken ribs. These are all from the beating that James gave her in the dance hall. What I wonder is how much blood is in the room, and how the vampires can stand it. I know that these are special vampires that can resist the blood lust, but a funny scene (that we are not going to get) might be one of the them licking their fingers or their hands. A more realistic scene might be the trepidation or the anxiety over actually having to touch the blood on her face as they are bandaging the wound. The doctor is probably used to it, but the others probably don't have the experience.

"Alice?'
'She's here, she knew where to find you."

Really? Alice knew where to find her. How did she do that? By looking into the present. Like the prologue Alice is a tricky part to write and only a very clever person is going to figure out a way to have Bella outwit the future, other than merely walking out of the airport. Then again we don't know enough about Alice, maybe she saw the whole thing and wove her threads so that went exactly as it did. She let Bella escape and let her confront James. Bella couldn't have been unconscious to the world for very long so Alice's timing seems to revolve around when Edward and Carlisle landed. Hopefully they didn't have to wait too long before their luggage was unloaded. In the end of it all, Alice knew Bella would be ok...right? The thing is that for the whole expanse of this book I have only liked one character, and that was Mike. He was just a pitiable guy shafted by a girl who wanted better. Alice is the next one, but I only want to like her, so I'm probably cutting her more slack than I would if it was just Jasper in the airport.

Back to Bella though, she's on the ground and Carlisle notices that she has been bitten, by James we assume or perhaps some large rat wandered into the Studio. As Bella thrashes about she begins screaming that her hand is on fire. We know from Alice that the way a person becomes a vampire is through being bitten by one, there is a toxin in the Vampire's saliva that changes the human into the undead. That's why Bella's hand is burning, it's been infected.

Carlisle looks to Edward, "See if you can suck the venom back out. The wound is fairly clean."

Edward hesitates and then hems and haws. Finally doing so. Why? Because Carlisle isn't a very good doctor that's why. This type of advice appears to be sound, in fact at some point we were probably taught that this is what you do if you are bitten by a snake, BUT YOU SHOULD ABSOLUTELY NOT DO IT. Carlisle should know this, and he should know that Bella is screwed unless there is some sort of anti-venom she can take. First off, sucking the venom out is bad because the sucker is now poisoned. In this case we can assume that vampires are immune to the vampire-making toxin. Secondly, the blood stream isn't like a series of straws. You cant just rewind the circulatory system by pulling in the other direction. And thirdly, how long was Bella out? A couple of seconds or an hour? Even after a couple of minutes a snake's venom is dangerous when the bite is untreated, and Bella wasn't doing anything. We can assume that she was unconscious for more than a few seconds because she never realized that she was being bitten.

The heart pumps the blood at a good rate so that venom from her finger tip should be long gone by now. Edward's sucking it shouldn't work at all, even worse as he sucks the counter motion in his mouth could actually put more of the venom back in her! Carlisle and Edward are realistically making this situation much worse than it was. Bella ought to be done for, but then Edward finishes, "Her blood tastes clean,' Edward said quietly, 'I can taste the morphine."

I don't know where the morphine came from or why it's in Bella's bloodstream. The more important question is to ask why Edward knows what Morphine tastes like. I wonder how long has he been chasing the dragon?

Nice Move (Pg. 442-451)

Bella has escaped the airport through the daring and creative move of walking out the door and hopping in a shuttle and then a cab. I've said numerous times that she is neither possesses the intelligence or the ingenuity that she would like us to believe, but despite that her plan worked. At her mom's house she does as James asked her dialing the number on the phone. Again James answers with a playful voice that is befitting someone who is outsmarting someone that is completely below his level. I wonder if Moriarty had this voice when he was taunting any opponent other than Sherlock Holmes...then again probably not. Moriarty was too smart to actually make contact with his other victims.

"Unless you didn't come alone, of course.' Light, amused." First off there is no way that he can know whether or not Bella is alone. The only reasonable motive for her to actually be alone is fear of James and his mother. Secondly what is with that second sentence? It's clearly not a sentence since it contains only two adjectives, I've been seeing this more and more in fiction which leads me to believe that this is either being taught somewhere or some extremely popular writer used it a decade ago. The placement of the comma is even more confounding because at this point why should the writer even pretend to be using the rules of grammar?

Bella is instructed to leave her mother's house and go to the dance studio around the corner. This seems unnecessary. If she's already alone why make her do something else to attract attention? Maybe I should cut James some slack as he could just be exercising caution, let's go with that as it actually makes some sense. If Bella showed up with the Cullens in tow he might not notice it right away, but making her go to another location in the sun would certainly indicate the presence of the other undead. She opens the Dance studio door which has a sign indicating that the place is closed for Spring Break. Yeah, sure whatever. A private studio wouldn't close for Spring Break, it has no reason to, in fact it might stay open as its customers wouldn't have school to interrupt their lessons there.

"Bella? Bella? That same tone of hysterical panic." Bella hears her mother's voice, but the "as" is misplaced if she's not going to tell us what it refers to. The tone she heard on the phone earlier? The general tone she uses because she has mental issues? We don't know, but then we find out.

Bella looks around for her mother and instead sees a television playing a tape from a vacation they took several years ago. It would seem that James has pulled a ruse. A well done ruse I might add. Apparently I need to backtrack a little bit in my entries because James really did a good thing here. Everything that I have said previously about James and the hostage situation and how dumb it was has to be retracted, he never had a hostage. So while Alice and Jasper were keeping vigil (although not as vigilant as they ought to have) over Bella's mother's house it was all for naught. They would never have seen anything because Alice's vision of him going through the tapes was completely accurate. They just thought it was more than it was, such must be the trouble with being able to see the future.

The only thing wrong that James did, although it worked out for him, was assume that his opponents were completely stupid. It wasn't wrong in this case, because they are, but he assumed that Bella would do exactly as he asked with no backup plan. He's either really new at this or really old at this. The former because it's quite a risk, the latter because he could just really understand his prey. "Sorry about that Bella, but isn't it better that your mother didn't really have to be involved in all this?"

Ah the polite villain. While I can't actually back this up with evidence I do wonder if this has its origin in "The Final Problem" where Holmes and Moriarty meet having a relatively polite conversation. Now it's such a trope that we are almost shocked when our villains act like villains. Another trope Meyer exploits here is the idea that the villain must explain his actions to the protagonist. Instead of just killing Bella he has to go into a monologue about how beneath him she is, how the Cullens were so easily duped, and how the two of them are now meeting in the studio.

The biggest problem with this is that by not knowing how everything worked out James seems that much more impressive. When he explains what happened it makes his plan seem less and less impressive because those he was outwitting acted really oblivious. Here's what we can piece together: James headed North behind Edward and Carlisle. Victoria stayed behind where Esme tracked her around Charlie's house. So far the Cullens have their ridiculous plan working. Then Victoria gives up on Charlie and somehow finds out more information on Bella which she then communicates to James. James just stops heading North and flies directly to Phoenix. We should note that Phoenix had always been the destination of Bella, Alice, and Jasper. When James disappeared, no one thought to either follow him or head to Phoenix, where I should note they were going to head eventually anyway. Not one of the super-awesome Cullens ever thought to watch Bella's mother's house or at least inquire as to her location. Edward couldn't read James's mind to determine anything. If, Bella is killed then the Cullens are as responsible as she is. This is the most incompetent group of guards to work outside of the James Bond universe.

It also gets a little eye-rollingly coincidental as James explains that the only time he had ever been outsmarted is when he went after a young woman under the care of an older vampire in an insane asylum. He remarks that the woman would have been burned as a witch a hundred years prior for her visions, but not was being subjected to electroshock. This woman is, of course, Alice. Again this is just like how Leia's ship gets attacked over Tatooine in Episode IV. Of all the forests in all of the world, James had to walk into Forks. This also means, that the explanation of the psychic powers of the vampires is bullshit because Alice had her visions before being a vampire. The established story thus far is now unravelling.

This also means that Alice, not Bella, was the original target of James.

The beating begins. James attacks Bella, throwing her against the mirrors in the story and hurting her in several ways before she passes out. It makes no sense for him to do this other than to enrage the Cullens, but just biting her as was his intention should have done this as well. The needless sadism of the scene lends us to believe that James is more of the psychotic type of villain than his previous politeness would have indicated. Bella is unconscious, beaten, and bitten (we assume) by James. Left to die with a nice recording of it on the video camera. We assume he wants revenge but we don't know why. If he's doing all of this for the sport of the thing then why leave the tape? New mysteries abound but none of them are exactly interesting, they just simply are.

The Troubling Future (Pg. 431-442)

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.