The Twilight Series: Not Just For Teenage Girls

Twilight.

The very word incites thoughts, memories, or feelings of love or hate, disgust or adoration, bliss or loathing. Whether you want to admit it or not, the 4-book series by Stephanie Meyer is a cultural phenomenon. It has changed pop culture and society much in the way that Harry Potter (but don’t freak out on me, I know not to the same extent) did a few years earlier and the way that Lord of the Rings did during its day. Edward, Bella, Jacob, werewolves, and vampires have left their marks.

I was out of the country when Twilight first hit and really had never heard of it, but the minute I landed in America in May ’09 I started hearing opinions about it. The most common phrases I heard basically alluded to the idea that if you liked Twilight and were not a junior high female then you were girly or misled or should have your “man-card” taken away from you. Bella’s character has been constantly called “weak and whiny”, and Edward’s, “creepy and stalker-like”. It appears to be the “popular” thing to do to criticize Twilight, because that’s what everyone else is doing. Much in the way that it is “popular” to think Wicked is the greatest thing since sliced bread (see two entries below). It’s so much easier to follow the crowd rather than really look at something and see what value it has.

The kicker though, is that most critics, willing to admit it or not, base their judgments solely on the first couple Twilight movies (which really do not do the books justice, and are admittedly tacky), maybe the first book (which I’ll be honest- took more self-motivation to finish than the other three by far), and what they’ve heard on the street. Ignorant criticism is childish and annoying. IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE WHOLE SERIES, or at least a couple of the books, then how in the world can you criticize them. That’s like saying I hate the country of Luxembourg because of things I’ve heard about it, even though I’ve never been there.

So I decided to read them. No matter what the genre, if something is going to cause this big of a stir in the most powerful country in the world and it’s not super morally-backwards, then it deserves a shot. So for the past week and a half or so, I sucked (no pun intended) it up and read the series.

My observation: Twilight deserves most of the praise that it gets, and very little of the criticism. Here’s why.

-Above all, Stephanie Meyer creates a world and invites us in. I call it Harry Potter-izing us. The reason people loved Harry Potter so much is because JK Rowling painted a beautiful picture of the wizarding world and we all felt like we were a part of it. We got to go inside. And she based it on the premise that it truly is possible that wizards are here living among us and we were simply oblivious Muggles. Meyer did the same thing. I felt like I knew the city of Forks, the La Push Indian reservation, and the woods surrounding the little Washington town. It felt like Bella and Charlie, the Werewolf tribe, and the Vampire clans really existed. Meyer made it possible for mortals and these mythological creatures to co-exist. She created a world and made it easy to step inside it and lose ourselves in it.

-When I turn on “Terminator”, what should I expect? Fluffy bunnies and a cute little love story? No. I expect a bunch of shooting, action, and destruction. Stephanie Meyer did not falsely advertise. She made it blatantly clear that this was mostly based on a love story, much in the way that Romeo and Juliet is blatantly a love story. So it was not disappointing or gross or weird when Bella fell for Edward. Or when Edward did everything he could to protect her (hence, the stalker comments). Or when Bella lost a big piece of herself when Edward left (hence, the whiney Bella comments). It’s a love story, and a good one. What do you expect? Edward to not be protective when he’s so accustomed to killing things? Bella to just pretend like nothing happened when her first love dumps her out of nowhere? No.

-That being said, there was a lot more action and non-love story parts to this story then I think anyone expected. I did not expect the international Vampire council to rip someone’s limbs off and set them on fire, nor to consume 40 something tourists in the city. I did not expect detailed descriptions of Edward ripping two Bella-hunting vampires to pieces or of him being tortured to convulsions by the psycho vampire Jane. I did not expect the sweet action of Indian boys transforming into Werewolves, thinking as one body, and pursuing and killing newborn vampires by the dozens.

-This story has some amazing character development. Particularly in Bella. As many are so quick to mention, Bella can come off as annoying at first. But I think that’s the point. In the first book she is still a high school girl, although much more mature than most. She doesn’t fit in to school because she has already grown up and gotten past the unimportant high school drama, as demonstrated by a comparison of her to her friends Mike and Jessica. But yes, in the first few books she is a little selfish. She thinks of herself and of ways that she can be with Edward to please her. But she changes. She develops friendships with Jacob. She learns to help other people and sacrifice. At one point she nearly kills herself in an attempt to save the others. She learns what it means to be married and committed. And eventually she learns to be a mother. She is willing to die so that her child can be born. Her obsession with Edward becomes real love and she learns to share that with her daughter. In the ending battle it is Bella that saves everyone. She learns to develop an inner power to shield others, not worrying about the effects it will have on herself. I really came to respect Bella and the changes she made. Sure she was sometimes irrational, but for the most part I think she’s a good example to young people about helping others and learning what real love is.

-Meyer’s characters are believable. She creates such real characters, I’d venture to say even more believable than JK Rowling does. Bella’s father Charlie has such a distinct personality of the slightly-awkward father who loves his daughter but doesn’t know exactly how to raise her. Bella’s slightly emo attitude is, let’s face it, very common in today’s society. Jacob’s bright attitude and gradual infatuation and love for Bella make it feel like we really know who Jacob is. Alice Cullen is quirky and hilarious. Mike is every bit of the over-exuberant high school senior as I met every day at my own high school. Jessica is described perfectly in her focus on the tiny high school drama. And the Cullen family is remarkable. The wise and truly good Carlisle, the motherly Esme, the jealous beauty queen Rosalie, the self-evaluating Jasper, the perfectly described big brother Emmett. Even the nomad ex-Revolutionary War solider Garrett is like someone you’d find off of “The Patriot”. Part of the reason we can enter into the Twilight world is that the people in it are so real.

-Twilight is full of really clever humor. There were many a page when something really funny would come out of no where and I’d find myself reading it again, asking, “really? Did that just happen?”. Three of my favorites were in the movie theatre when Bella finds herself between Mike and Jacob, both of them with their hands on the arm rest facing up, ready for Bella to make any kind of movement so they could grab her hand. I love in the last book how people keep calling Bella’s kid Nessie, even though it’s not her real name. And when the narrative is coming from Jacob’s point of view it is hilarious. Some of his chapter headings include, “Good Thing I’ve Got a Strong Stomach”, “The Two Things at the Very Top of my Things-I-Never-Want-To-Do- List”, and “Sure as hell Didn’t See that one Coming”.

-The whole Team Edward vs. Team Jacob thing is not baseless. You really find yourself rooting for one or the other for most of the series. I didn’t realize that Jacob played such a huge role in the series. I love how he is there the whole time, playing different roles and always part of the story. Definitely my favorite character. Although, for the record, the 4th book landed me into Team Edward.

-Some of the vampires have special abilities and two of them provide a different view into things. Edward can read everyone’s thoughts. So all of a sudden we can know what each character is thinking. It’s a psychologically interesting observation. And Alice sees the future based on when people make decisions that affect the future. It was cool to see how one decision made now will affect what happens days or weeks or months down the road.

-There are many intricate symbolisms involved in the story. The most prominent one is that of overcoming our desires in order to do the right thing. They demonstrate this by Edward and eventually Bella overcoming their desire to murder people and drink blood and instead doing the morally correct thing. It takes sacrifice but it’s worth it.

-As a Mormon, I recognized many of our beliefs written in the pages of Stephanie Meyer’s own Mormon ideologies. Two of the most obvious being that we believe sex should be saved until after marriage, which I thought was very well portrayed. And the other being that we believe that if done right, a married couple can live together forever, even after death.

-My favorite part of the story was the werewolves. I loved the Indian legends, the genetics, and the technicalities of how they became werewolves. In the wolf form, they all shared each other’s thoughts. This book is full of people entering each other’s minds, which adds a whole new dimension.


Well that was by far the longest blog I’ve ever written, but I felt like it needed to be said. The Twilight series is excellent and now I can clearly see why it has had the impact that it did and continues to have. Sure, it’s not perfect. Sure, there’s romance. But there’s a lot more to it then people sometimes give it credit for. It’s worth the read and there’s a lot in there to enjoy, discover, and mull over. The ending is great and I left feeling like it was time well-spent reading those thick books.

Kudos to you Stephanie Meyer. Well done. If you write another series I’ll go and read it.

In the words of the vampire Garrett, “I came to witness. I stay to fight”. Twilight is seriously worth a shot.