Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Some things I didn't like about Breaking Dawn (and Twilight in general)

Warning—may contain spoilers if I’m not careful enough. If you haven’t read the Twilight series, don’t read this unless your eyes are closed.


The main problem I have with Breaking Dawn and Twilight is that in the books, when you love someone, they become your replacement for God.

Let’s start out with Breaking Dawn. When Jacob imprints (I returned the book to the library already, so I can’t quote directly from the book), we’re told that everything that held him to the universe—his love for Bella, his love for his father, his loyalty to his brothers and to the tribe, and whatever else is snipped away, and the object of his imprinting (I am trying not to give away too many spoilers, for the sake of those who haven’t read BD) is the center of the universe for him. Now, if Jacob was religious at all, and believed in God, guess what would have been added to that list of things which became less important than who he imprinted on?

On to Bella. We all know that Edward is far more important to her than God (in fact, she doesn’t even really seem to believe in God at all); we’re repeatedly informed that she’d trade her soul to become a vampire, that Edward is more important to her than her soul, and that her idea of Heaven is wherever he is—even if that’s Hell?—and that she wouldn’t be happy in Heaven unless he was there.

As for Edward? None of the books are told from Edward’s point of view, so we don’t get a look inside his head, but I don’t doubt he’s with Bella on most of the things I mentioned above (though he does value her soul more than she does). The only thing I can really think of for Edward is that Stephenie Meyer repeatedly mentions that Edward speaks of Renesmee the way religious people speak of their God.


Ooh, and did any Catholics besides me catch the mistake Stephenie Meyer made when Jacob was thinking briefly about the Immaculate Conception? The Immaculate Conception refers to Mary being born without sin, not to her conceiving Jesus while remaining a virgin.


Ok, review over. Note: this was by no means a complete review of Breaking Dawn. And please don’t get the impression that I hated the books—there were a lot of things I liked about it, and the same with the whole Twilight series.

I think I may do another review on the Twilight series sometime soon. In the meantime, readers, occupy yourselves: Don’t say more, say Mordor.

3 comments:

Katrina said...

I agree with everything you said here. And since I agree I guess I have nothing to add. So this comment is too short. I don't like making short comments. Now I'm just trying to make it longer. Really, I am.
MORDOR!!
OK, now I'm done.
Good post.

Anonymous said...

lets just say not all authors can be perfect. having the kind of faith we do we can often forget how lacking the rest of the worlds understanding of things is... so we can't really judge them on how they see things because they don't have the knowledge we do... anywho, for a secular author i thought it was very good, and i have read parts of midnight sun online and the one thing that struck me the most about it was that edward was really trying to be a gentleman... i thought that was pretty cool

Lanta said...

Yeah, I understand that Stephenie Meyer isn't the same faith as I am, so she probably does look at things differently--my point was that I didn't agree with the that particular view, the subplot running through the books that God is less important then people you love. I think she has the two greatest commendments in the wrong order =P