Dressed as Victoria, a character from the novels...




(WARNING: This article contains SPOILERS. If you wish to wait to read the novels before
you find out certain details, please be advised that this article does reveal certain plot details).

 

  

 

breaking dawn

 

 
When I decided to write about Breaking Dawn, I knew I was getting myself into a difficult subject. Was this a difficult book in the sense that it had long words and utterly complicated story lines? No, not at all. In fact, it is essentially a young adult book. However, I find this to be a difficult book to write about- let alone explain- because of a few things. First, the fan base is so huge that with Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final installment of the Twilight Series came a lot of controversy about the character’s fates. Second, there is an excess of information to explain about the eight hundred pages in this book plus a quick review of what happened in the first three. Third, the books have morals that can easily go over a young reader’s head. But in defense of my decision to explain the “difficult” Breaking Dawn, I must remind you that the things that make the Twilight series difficult to explain are also the things that separate it from other teen fiction novels. I am hopeful that the reader of this essay will keep an open mind when trying to understand my views of Breaking Dawn, as I did when reading the highly anticipated final book of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire series.  

Our story begins with Twilight, in which Bella Swan moves from sunny Phoenix, Arizona to gloomy and wet Forks, Washington. She soon meets Edward Cullen, a forever 17 vampire and his family, also damned to supernatural existence for all of eternity. But these are not your average Bram Stoker vampires. In fact, the Cullens (Carlisle, Esme, Rosalie, Emmett, Jasper, and Alice) are outcasts in Stephenie Meyer’s vampire world. Like the others, they have ice cold, deathly pale skin, perfect features, super strength, and pearly white teeth (no fangs). However, the Cullens differ in one way: they go against their nature, hunting wild animals instead of people.  

 

 

 

               



Bella quickly falls for Edward’s irresistible charm and intensely interesting life, or death in this case. He objects at first, wishing to keep her safe from his lust for her blood, which smells better to him than anyone’s blood he has come across in his 107 years of existence. Calling himself “selfish”, Edward eventually gives up on trying to stay away from Bella and she gets swept into the secret of the undead.   
 

In book two, New Moon, Edward becomes insecure about Bella’s safety in his world after she is nearly killed by a vampire in the end of Twilight and then threatened by Edward’s brother, Jasper, on her 18^th birthday due to a paper cut. He believes that the best thing to do is leave and Bella is absolutely heartbroken. She lives through months of zombie-like emotions, scaring her father, until she finds a bit of comfort in the company of a sixteen-year-old boy named Jacob Black from the near by Native American reservation for the Quileute tribe: La Push. Of course, with Bella’s luck, Jacob ends up turning into a werewolf when he hits puberty. She decides, as she did with Edward, that it doesn’t matter to her. They remained friends. In the meantime, Bella is slowly going mad at the loss of her “soul-mate” and hears Edwards voice in her head when doing any combination of stupid and dangerous things.  She goes alone cliff diving into dangerously rough waters, and is saved by Jacob. However, Alice, Edward’s psychic sister who has been watching over Bella behind Edward’s back (a difficult task, considering the fact that Edward can read minds) only sees her jump, and a misunderstanding leads to Edward believing Bella is dead. Alice and Bella save Edward in the end from an elaborate suicide attempt involving the vampire law enforcers, the Volturi.   
 

Book three, Eclipse, is wrought with more fear for Bella’s life when an angry vampire, Victoria, is looking to avenge the destruction of her mate who Edward killed in Bella’s defense. She creates and army of newborn vampires that the Cullens destroy with help from the growing werewolf pack, despite being natural enemies. Bella faces many life-changing decisions when she must choose between Edward and Jacob. She must also make a decision about her mortality. Bella decides that she loves Jacob, but cannot live without Edward. They strike a compromise. If Bella agrees to marry Edward first, he will change her into a vampire as she wishes. Although Bella has been raised to be opposed to young marriage, she agrees and the date is set for a wedding a month before her birthday. Jacob runs away when he gets the invitation to Edward and Bella’s wedding. He sees Bella changing as death and can’t bear it anymore. 

Here, we reach Breaking Dawn. The book starts off with Edward and Bella’s wedding, which goes according to plan and then a honeymoon on a private island off the coast of South America. Edward and Bella finally make love, several times despite some nasty bruising on Bella’s part due to Edward’s super strength. (Sorry about that, I swear that’s as graphic as it gets.) This is where Breaking Dawn took an unexpected turn. Bella realizes that she is pregnant with a baby that is developing at a rapid and inhuman speed. The two rush home, Edward eager to get the baby out of Bella for her safety, while Bella shows maternal protection toward the hybrid fetus. The story now shifts from Bella’s point of view to Jacob’s point of view. Jacob faces conflict with his pack when they discover the strange fetus growing in Bella and decide that it is time to attack. Jacob can’t bear to hurt Bella, and breaks away from his pack, becoming his own Alpha wolf. Two other wolves of his pack, Seth and Leah, follow him although he prefers to be alone. They protect the Cullens, and Jacob observes Bella slowly being killed by her baby. He body rejects all food and she gets sicker and sicker as the fetus grows. The injuries include broken ribs and bruises on Bella’s body due to the baby’s super-strength movements. To Jacob’s disgust, the Cullens find that the baby is hungry for blood and Bella finds blood quite appealing. Her health improves, but when a clumsy movement causes her to go into labor, there is a graphic scene involving a C-section, vampire teeth, and Bella getting changed into a vampire in the emergency of cardiac arrest.  

The remaining section of the book is from Bella’s point of view as she discovers what it is like to be a vampire and gets to know her child, a girl. She names the quickly growing vampire-human hybrid Renesmee. It is a mix between Esme and Renee (Edward’s mother and Bella’s mother). Jacob finds that he has imprinted on Renesmee. (Imprinting is a werewolf phenomenon. One feels as if gravity has shifted and the girl was now his world. He would be anything for her - a brother, a friend, or a lover.) Bella is furious with Jacob at first, despite the fact that Jacob cannot help who he imprints on. But when her daughter’s life in endangered by a visit from the Volturi, she decides that Jacob is Renesmee’s last hope for survival and relies on him to save her daughter. With help from vampire friends of the Cullens, the Volturi are able to understand the situation with Renesmee and decide that there is no reason to massacre the group. The closing sentence of Breaking Dawn is “And then we continued blissfully into this small but perfect piece of our forever”. 
 
There was an insane amount of anticipation for Breaking Dawn including midnight release parties all over the world. I of course, was a part of the insanity. I expected people to have very high expectations of the book.  I also expected that there would be some people who disliked the ending. What I didn’t expect was so much harshness and negativity toward the author, Stephenie Meyer. People were brutal. They questioned the morals of the story, claiming that they were wrong and bad lessons for teenaged girls. Some people went as far as telling people “Don’t burn Breaking Dawn, RETURN IT!” Frankly, my reaction to these brutal reviews was that people take this young adult novel far too seriously. I must admit, that I agree with some “hater’s” takes on the book. It seemed sloppy and rushed and the writing quality was the lowest of all the books in the Twilight Saga. However, to say that there are bad morals is taking the ignorant path of interpreting the story.  

Before thrashing at common accusations toward Stephenie Meyer, I want to touch on how silly it is that people take entertainment books and turn them into books reflecting an author’s “preaching”.  I believe that the largest mistake that people took in interpreting Breaking Dawn was that they didn’t understand that the characters had their own morals because of their backgrounds, not because they were Stephenie Meyer’s morals. As an entertainment book, the characters will have personal views.  

This brings me into the first buzz that occurred about Stephenie Meyer’s promotion of morals. People were accusing her of promoting Pro-life views because Bella will not abort the baby that is killing her and says things like “I won’t kill him!” and then everything is okay because of “vampire magic” allowing the “mother and father to hear the fetus's thoughts, and to discover that it already loves them.” I think this is a case where people are not looking at the situation from Bella’s perspective and are ignoring the character’s circumstances. It makes sense that Bella would want to keep they baby with her personal views. I don’t think this is anti-abortion. It is the character’s choice, and Bella is a very stubborn person. Also, people should recall that Edward, who is a Christian, was all for aborting the baby. So, Stephenie Meyer is in no way trying to warp anyone’s views. 
 
Another thing that came up was people angry about the happy ending.  They have claimed that it sends a message to teen girls that if they have problems, everything will work out in the end. I know that there definitely could have been a more graceful way of giving the book a happy ending, but I was surprised that fans were so bitter about things working out for Bella in the end. After all of the near death experiences and crying jags and lost love, I think that a tragic ending might leave fans even angrier with Stephenie Meyer. Because this is fantasy and fiction I think that Bella, Jacob, and Edward deserve a happy ending. If it’s possible, why not leave the characters in a good place? This isn’t a classic novel, so I think people should have lowered their expectations of powerful themes and morals in the book. 
 
After getting past the negative “themes” in Breaking Dawn, I was able to spot the overall theses that Stephenie Meyer was trying to project through writing. One of them was that good conquers evil. I think this is projected ultimately throughout the series. Although there are instances where the “bad guys” win, it is almost constant that the good souls prevail. Edward and the Cullens, who go against their existence to be good, all survive in the end and “live happily ever after”. Edward gets Bella, and I think this is a demonstration of how having a pure soul pays off. 
 
Love prevails over all things. This was another point summed up by the Twilight Series. Even the evil characters commit crimes of passion filled love. The actions of the book all revolve around the character’s love for each other. Without love, the Twilight Saga would be full of characters letting other characters die. This is especially shown in Breaking Dawn when the Cullens are viewed as a family rather than a coven, unlike the other vampire groups. They love each other, and so they lead stronger lives with harder bonds. 
 
These themes, I think, are much more prominant and also more important than the other “themes” which reviews of Breaking Dawn focus on. Love, good, and happiness are promoted in this series. Unless readers are open minded, there is no way they can enjoy this book. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

all article copyrights belong to Annabelle Bonebrake; all photo credits belong to Diana Bonebrake