A Review: Twilight

Summary

Twilight tells the first person story of Bella Swan, a 17 year old from sunny Phoenix who has to move to the damp, dark town of Forks, Washington to be with her Dad. (Oddly, Forks is embracing its newfound fame, though the picture painted of the town in the book is far from ideal.) Her mom is following her stepfather to Florida and Bella doesn’t want to go. So Bella moves to a town where she knows her father and no one else. The story follows Bella as she moves into the new community and struggles to fit in to its closed society.

At the local high school she wrestles with the typical challenges of the new kid as she tries to carve out her own self identity while trying as best she can to “fit in”. In her first few days of school, she notes one group of teens who stay off by themselves, away from the regular students. They are members of the Cullen family, whose pater familias is a prominent local doctor. One of them in particular catches the eye of young Bella, another 17 year old named Edward.

Initially, Edward seems to go out of his way to either avoid, or torment young Bella. Despite his frigid attitude toward her, she is hopelessly drawn in by his good looks. After he saves her life in a near car accident, she discovers that he has reciprocal feelings for her and their relationship begins in earnest.

As most everyone knows by this point, Edward is a vampire, part of a unique family of vampires who have foresworn human blood so that they might continue to live among humans. They hunt and consume animals, and are thus able to satiate their bloodthirst and coexist with humans.

The story unfolds as Bella learns more and more about Edward’s clan, as well as the other vampires who roam the earth and still pursue humans. She is threatened by these other vampires, but ultimately is saved by Edward and his family.

Most of the problems I had with this work were sytlistic and are explained by the simple fact that I’m not its intended audience. Twilight is clearly aimed at the Young Adult (and specifically female) market. For example, it describes Edward as he and Bella were resting in a country field:

“He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn’t sleep. A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal.”

I had to take an insulin shot before typing that quote.

But more interesting that the literary dimension of the text is the theological.

A Theological Reading

The text is laden with theological meaning. There are some clues that Meyer has in mind a theological reading of this text. (And regardless of her intent, as a Believer, I can’t really read it any other way.) The cover of the text depicts two female hands offering a delicious red apple. There’s quite a track record with women bearing apples of course (never mind the more recent incarnations of Disney movies and one particular ABC television show, complete with apparel).

This cover calls to the mind of the reader another fruit borne of a woman, the famous fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Yes, Genesis 2 and 3 makes no mention of the word apple. Which makes it a gap of course. The reason that so many have thought it was an apple has to do with the Latin, which...sorry, off topic. Go here if interested.)

So the very cover leads the reader to conclude that there might be some element of forbidden knowledge, or forbidden fruit involved in the narrative. And when you open the cover and read the frontspiece, that suspicion is confirmed as the first text of the book that appears is the scriptural citation Genesis 2:17 “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” So Meyer clearly reads this forbidden fruit into the background of the story.

The story rightly emphasizes the importance of blood. Blood is what the vampires must have if they are to live. As Leviticus 17:14reminds us “ because the life of every creature is its blood. That is why I have said to the Israelites, ‘You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off.’” The vampire story gets this element right. There is no life without the blood.

Meyer also portrays immortality as coming with a significant cost. The vampires are immortal, but without a soul. They can only find a meaningful existence by interacting with humans and ummm, playing baseball. The vampires strive for divinity but fall far short in their attempt to reach it on their own. They gain the entire world, but in the process lose their souls.

And lastly, I think that Meyer skillfully constructs a narrative in which blood is a metaphor for sex. In the story’s account of vampires, each vampire is particularly sensistive to a specific human’s scent. Naturally, Edward is highly attuned to Bella’s scent. It makes her particulary enticing for him and he is tempted throughout the book to feast upon her blood and turn her into a vampire. Consequently, there is a tension throughout the book as Edward and Bella fall in love. Does he really love her, or is he after her only for her body blood?

Edward’s bloodlust becomes a stand in for actual lust. Edward is animalistic and primal in his lust for blood. He desires Bella and the reader anxiously awaits alongside her to find out if Edward will simply use her for his own desires and get what he wants. And will Bella lose a vital part of herself in the process?

After Scooter and I read Twilight, we went out for lunch and talked about each of these theological themes in the book. Approaching these issues using a story from her world was unusual for us and I think we both enjoyed the talk. I hope that in the end, it will help her develop as a critical reader of popular texts.

After we talked, a friend of mine from church asked me if I was glad that I let her read it. I replied “She just read a story which compares hormone ridden teen-age boys to blood-sucking vampires. Of course I’m glad she read it!”