I Just Figured Out Twilight

I'd just finished a critical analysis essay about "The Government Inspector". I went on Facebook and some guy (!!!) started lamenting about people complaining that he likes Twilight. There were a long line of garbled comments, none of which I read (I don't really know the guy. He claimed we were childhood friends when we were little. Those were the loser days, though, so everybody mostly just picked on me until Grade 4 where myself and another kid amassed armies of every kid in our grade and warred them in the schoolyard with sticks. I found out at the end of that year that I had natural charisma when I convinced the opposing side's forces to join my side. From the end of that war on, I grew more and more awesome, until the end of Grade 5 where I moved away, was home schooled in my puberty years, and subsequently was the biggest loser in Grade 8. Damn. Anyways, I'm pretty sure this guy either doesn't really know me, or he's one of the kids who was even lower than me on the social scale and in turn got the brunt of my doling of bullying). Instead, I just posted up the following, still in critical analysis mode. Keep in mind the natural charisma I mentioned in the parentheses. That really just means I'm obligated to talk to people, including fan girls. This is why I know all the plot details of the series without ever having picked up a book by Stephanie Meyer. I'm glad to have anonymous forums like these where I can safely share and debate opinions and witticisms without somebody being attracted to some faux Algernon/Khlysekov appeal.


The tl;dr version: Here is my analysis of Twilight.

Isn't Edward a potentially hazardous relationship due to his overbearing nature and obsessive personality? Theoretically, is the 'monster' within Edward (haha, yeah right, he sparkles, how monstrous) the cycle of emotional abuse he will engage Bella in with his attitude? Theoretically, the entire series is a brilliantly written and very subtle expressionist piece about a woman who is trapped in an abusive relationship, tries to find new love, and forces herself to vilify the far better men she meets out of a misplaced loyalty to the first lover, whom she only started dating to distance herself from her father. In the series's climactic conclusion, Bella is finally trapped once and for all - she becomes pregnant with Edward's child, forcing Edward to turn her into a vampire, and she too becomes a 'monster' who will carry on the chain of abuse to her own children.



And there you have it. Stephanie Meyer isn't a bitch, she's actually a very badly misinterpreted literary genius.

EDIT: For additional evidence, notice that Bella has no friends of her own. From my only primary source (the second half of the movie), Bella hangs out with Edward's friends, who probably try to keep the two together for all the wrong reasons, going so far as to help Bella's other prospects seem like horrible people.

Does Meyers's background as a Mormon support this? It could. While it originally seemed she was a hypocrite for being a devout Mormon who wrote a sexy book about vampires, it now seems that the series is meant as a warning to girls who want to get frisky too soon before marriage: Don't do it or you'll get stuck with a guy like Edward, get knocked up, and be stuck with him literally forever.

So it's actually a very conservative, Mormon view.

 

That's an interesting viewpoint but I still disagree completely.

I think you're reading far too much into it based on your own or other experiences. I picked up the books once, discovered it was an underwritten piece of angsty trash and threw it on the floor. I still hold strongly to the idea that it's all Meyer's fucked up fantasy and that they needed to put it on paper. The lack of friends doesn't have to mean anything in particular - it could be she is just isolating the Bella-Edward relationship to make it more prominent in the story, either that or as to remove influences that could potentially cast negativity on her perceived-self (Bella) and her perceived relationship (with Edward).

Regardless, I dislkike the story because it's an underwritten self-important piece of trash and I'm sure many others are the same. The actual meaning/interpretation in the end means nothing

It does remind me of the late night news last night which was discussing the premier of the latest movie. The news reader seriously said
"the cinema was surrounded by thousands of twilight fans.

And they call themselves twitards"
Atleast I got a cackle out of it, anyway.

 

We need to look past our dislike of the novel and its fandom at the literary analysis. You'll need to come forward with some reasonable evidence negating my points before you deny me the ability to tell twitards that they didn't get the point of their favorite book, and seriously mean it.

The evidence is all there. The 'monster' is Edward's abusive tendencies. In the end of the series, Bella becomes pregnant with Edward's child, and because of this she too becomes a 'monster', continuing a chain of abuse. Meyers causes the child to age rapidly to quickly showcase that the child itself is becoming a 'monster' as well.

Bella takes a liking to several other boys during the course of the series, and they generally end up becoming antagonists. This supports what I said about Bella vilifying her lovers out of misplaced loyalty to Edward.

Bella fears inwardly that, because she has devoted her life to Edward and has no social network outside of his, she will be lost without Edward. So she stays with him, even though he is not a satisfactory partner in most any aspect, and idealizes him to make herself feel better. Throughout, she tries to assure herself that Edward is a great partner, and that things will always get better soon.


It's not underwritten. It's expressionistic! The whole thing is an inner conflict within Bella that symbolizes her feelings with supernatural creatures.

 

By Bella you mean Meyer... right?

Your interpretation is a valid one, but in the end it is just that and not anything quantifiable or otherwise. In the same way I could interpret it as a vampire chic flick and read nothing else into it which would, also, be entirely correct.

Besides I don't think I need to give empirical evidence for something that is quite literally in front of you. Opinions can't really be negated, I could perhaps convince you otherwise with a strong argument, sure, but I neither have the time nor the inclination to bother.

It's a nice thought, honestly, but having known a few obsessive borderline manic "artists" (most of them related) i can't say that they'd be up to anything more than what Meyer has done (if that). Also, writing is more an expression of self than of others in my experience. Hell, maybe Meyer got knocked up (although I'm not sure by what) and was too scared to tell her Mormon daddy and Mormon mummy.

Cynical comments aside, my literary analysis has always been that it is underwritten and either a clever marketing tool or a screwed representation of the authors fetishes and/or fantasies.

 

I've had the horrific experience of trying to plow through Twilight in an attempt to understand what all the fuss was about. (And I have never regretted an action more in my life.) As wonderful as your theory would be, Meyer simply doesn't have the intelligence and writing ability to create a situation like the one you describe on purpose.

She has created a perfect arguement to support my desire to stay out of dating, though!

Edward is her wet dream. Bella is a Mary Sue self-insert with no personality whatsoever. The only decent character in the series so far appears to be Jacob, but even he is flat and useless, and when the demon-child is born in the last book, he loses what little spark he had and heralds the book's decay from 'Dude, whut?' to 'Holy fuck what the hell was she thinking???'

So, again, love the idea, but she doesn't have the ability to actually pull it off deliberately.

 

I don't buy it, but the idea is great. Just think about it: something which in theory was supposed to warn the world's female population about Edward (being the incarnation of bad males) in practice resulting in nothing else but a fuckload of "OMG I love Edward!" fangirls. Gotta love the irony. Take that, Grakelin's Stephanie, you silly Mormon bitch you.

 

You guys are silly. Ad hominem attacks on the person's writing and personality do not count as evidence against a literary analysis. You can be deeply symbolic without having skills at writing and visa versa. I stand by this, and don't see how it is flimsy at all. I've backed it up with pretty powerful evidence. Meyer may not be good with her prose, but she is apparently amazing with deeper meanings.

 

I see you're really enjoying this thing, eh Grakelin?

 

Hell yes. You guys are silly by trying to 'bash' Meyer and the Twitards by saying she can't have written this. Faced with evidence like this, Twitards are to be struck dumb. Everything they've ever believed in has been wrong: their hero is really the villain! It's like suddenly finding out that Obama eats babies every morning after getting up.

 

Gee, thanks for not making any assumptions there grak.

My 'literary analysis" has nothing to do with hating meyer at all. And I refuse to provide evidence for something that's right infront of your fucking eyes anyway.

Hey, it would be nice to rub it in their twitardistic faces, but honestly, it's not gonna happen. Who said both cases can't be true anyway?

Neither can be prooved or disprooven via 'evidence' you gleaned from reading a book. It's symbolism. That's the idea.

 

If it's in front of my eyes, you should be able to give examples.

 

Fine, go actually READ Twilight, sweetheart. At least I've read the book I'm being hissy at!

 

I see Grakelin's points to be valid as he assessed the context, not the person, refer to my signature for further inquiries.

edit: My bad I meant context, thanks for pointing that out Xiao

 

But he can't assess the content without having actually read it first.

 

If SMeyer were savvy enough to pull off anything more than a stupid vampire wet humpfest, she'd have done this by now.

Since she hasn't, I'll assume that Grake's reinterpretation is just an attempt to cast SMeyer as something other than primordial sludge.

 

Alright, I'll read it, despite already knowing all the primary plot points. I doubt it will do anything more than allow me to bolster my theory with chapter by chapter analysis in this thread.

It won't be til after Christmas, though. I'm not going to actually spend my money on it. I'll wait til I'm visiting family and steal it from the people in that town.

 

I haven't read the books either, and I really only have a passing familiarity with the whole thing, but I rather liked this series of essays about Twilight. Provides some very good arguments about why the books are bad, why Meyer should feel bad for having written them, and why fans' defenses of it don't hold water.

 

Oh, thanks Silvara! I likey very much.

In thanks, I direct you to Swankivy's delightfully intelligent and snarky criticisms of Eragon and Eldest. I hope she does Brisingr at some point too.

 

You're forgetting about two important things there, Grak.

Firstly, your argumentation may be logically coherent, but since when are twifucks guilty of using logic? They are immune to it. If they had the ability to think, they would have already been crushed by some other form of rational "Twilight sucks" argumentation.

Secondly, if you would tell the twifucks what are you making up here, you would have to admit that Meyer is a good writer. Even when lying and manipulating that's just friggin' wrong.