Twilight

Twilight

First impression:

Yeeeey! Our theme this week: ‘First Love’. Throughout this course I have realized I am still an adolescent myself; as I can still blame others if they make me feel bad, I still do not really know what I really want to do with my life, and I can still fall in love with movie stars. That is probably the reason why I already read all three books when they came out and many others alike.

The book starts with the death of the protagonist and this is described in such a way that you want to keep on reading. I did not read that part of the story until I read the last book, but by then I had already forgotten that that’s why I started reading at the first place. I now wanted to know everything that was going to happen and, of course, I was madly in love with Edward…

First impression vs. class discussion: 

This is the kind of love that every girl dreams of, to have a boy who would ‘kill’ to protect you, somebody you would ‘die’ for, figuratively speaking of course. But the ‘of course’ is not that obvious in this story and that is what actually came up in class. This kind of shocked me because I never looked at the story in this way. Yes, my first impression indeed was that it is a super romantic story, when we looked deeper into the story, there is a different layer in the story, with a total different feeling to it. Bella and Edward are hopelessly in love with each other. Their feelings become so strong that they almost appear to be obsessed with each other, they completely loose themselves in one another and cannot seem to think realistic anymore. This is what attracts teenagers, going through puberty they feel everything very intensely and two things stick out, their interest in love and in darkness, and that is exactly why these kind of stories appeal to them that much (Scheller, 2012). They understand these feelings, because they have them as well, in real life maybe, but in their fantasies for sure.

Class discussion / theory:

We discussed a lot of theory in class, most of  which sprouted from the theories of Erikson. Erikson describes the phase which the main characters are in as stage five, Identity vs. Role Confusion. In this stage adolescents are discovering how they fit in and what they want to do with their lives. (symplypsychology.org). Piaget says that, whilst thinking about these matters, adolescents will start to consider possible outcomes and consequences of (their) actions (About.com, n.d.). Naturally these two aspects bring along pressure and therefore it is a very insecure and confusing period in a teenager’s life. They believe all their thoughts and feelings and problems to be unique and they believe they have to face all their problems alone. This is what you see in Twighlight as well, Bella has nobody she can confine in, because nobody understands her. There is role confusion, Bella is desperately in love with Edward and does the craziest things for him, but she also wants to be a good daughter, it is very hard to be both. This is what teenagers encounter daily, they want to do good in school, but that is not cool. They want to be the cool football player, but they also want that particular girl to see that they can be sweet. How to be all? What do they really want, and what is merely pressure from the outside? In this stage they struggle with questions like what is good and what is bad. This is literally one of the themes in Twilight, the forbidden fruit (hence the apple on the cover), is it good or is it bad (Stephenie Meyer, n.d.)

Age suitability / theory:

Looking at the theory above you can see why this book could be suitable for children age thirteen to eighteen (or in my case, thirty-four). They encounter the same problems in life. They develop a sense of self (psychology about.com). Personally I would recommend this book to students, but to girls, because it just obviously is a girlish book, seen from a girlish perspective. For a girl it is easy to imagine she is Bella, as the only thing we know about her is that she has brown hair, is clumsy and insecure. Not every girls has brown hair, but, especially at that age, they all feel clumsy and insecure.

As said above, adolescents are very sensitive in this phase of their lives, they experience every emotion very intense. They can have the feeling their heart can explode when everything comes together at the right time at the right place with the right people, but at the same time they can feel extremely lonely, sad and insecure. That is why Twilight will appeal to this age group that much.

Teens are obsessed with romantic relationships, but because a lot of teenagers do not have their own personal experiences yet, they read stories that tell them about it. They get sucked into it and experience the whole story as if it were their own. Besides that, they often feel insecure in their own lives, a bit trapped and helpless, they do not have the feeling they are in control and through these stories they are, they suddenly have the power to do as they like and what feels right. Around this age children start to explore the dark side of their personalities, they might for example get ‘interested’ in things like suicide and the less colorful sides of humanity. Bad things might happen around them (friend gets pregnant, loved ones die) which make them realize they have to deal with these happenings, this is reality. So these children love to read about love, but they are very well aware of the fact that the world around them isn’t all rainbows and unicorns and they like to see that reflected in the stories they read. This way they feel like they are not alone and somebody more or less goes through the same as they do (Scheller, 2012). This of course is the story in Twilight as well, there are so many obstacles Bella and Edward have to overcome and they feel like the whole world is against them. These are the same feelings a lot of adolescents have to deal with.

Nowadays, a lot of young adult literature is edgy, it pushes the limits of socially acceptable content in teen books, especially regarding drug and alcohol use, violence, abuse, suicide and social norms in human sexuality (Morrissette, n.d.). Obviously Twilight touches a lot of these subjects (the abuse, violence, sexuality) and challenges these boundaries. 

In class we discussed three important elements for a book to be attractive to this target: identification, realism and thinking. 

Identification: as opposed to the theme of the imperfect world, the plot is subordinate to the unfolding of the characters, which we see in the book. There is an intense emotional involvement, you can see the inner struggles they have. The attraction to each other is the impossible love, which is one of the strongest. They are trying everything to stop it… and they will do anything to see each other. Life is so hard and we are feeling every moment of their pain.

Realism: it is real enough, even with vampires and werewolves. The reader must be able to relate to the characters and I believe a lot of girls can relate to Bella, being clumsy, feeling ugly and being in love with the most handsome guy in the world. Life in the book is not fair, just like the average adolescent’s life. Bad things happen, wrong decisions are made and the characters struggle, just like the readers do.

Thinking: Girls reading this book will recognize the feelings Bella has, utterly-and-totally-head-over-heels-scale5plus in looooove. They will understand most of the decisions Bella takes, even if they are wrong, but on some occasions they will realize that they would have reacted differently. Besides that they will start thinking about why certain things happen, but unfortunately they will not get all the answers in the end.

Some people might say this week’s books are not suitable for children of this age. We discussed in class that “Cal” for example had a love with a big age difference and a lot of violence in it. “Forever” was very controversial for its time and may still be with its detailed descriptions of sex. Twilight might be seen as controversial, because of the age difference between Bella and Edward. Besides that, the vampires and werewolves might stir people who are religious. Apparently there is a lot more controversy to be found in Twilight, like pedophilia, the abusive relationship between Edward and Bella, women having no choice in life, sex being bad and abortion being worse. (sarahgetscritical, 2012). I can agree on some things, but personally I think if you look hard enough you can even find controversial things in Sesame Street. 

Nice to know:

Stephanie Meyer based her novel on a dream she had about a girl and a vampire falling in love. Choosing a name for them took them ages, but she named Bella after the daughter she never had, Isabella. She actually googled for the most rainy place in the States and a small town named Fork came up, with a beautiful rainforest nearby. When writing the story she just could not stop and therefore, could not sleep. Edward and Bella were in her thoughts (and actually having conversations) 24/7. In the end, from dream to print, it only took a total of six months (Stephenie Meyer, n.d.).

(Quinault Rain Forest)

Sources:

About.com. Psychology. Retrieved 4^th of October from http://psychology.about.com/od/psychosocialtheories/a/psychosocial_2.htm

About.com. Psychology. Retrieved 4^th of October from http://psychology.about.com/od/piagetstheory/p/formaloperation.htm

Francine Morrissette. Retrieved the 27th of October from http://suite101.com/a/what-is-young-adult-fiction-a135786

Rachel Scheller. Retrieved the 27^th of October from http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/writing-for-the-young-adult-audience

Sarah gets critical. Retrieved 4^th of October from http://sarahgetscritical.com/2012/11/13/a-feminist-critique-of-twilight-emotional-abuse-child-grooming-and-pro-choice-plots/

Simply Psychology. Social. Retrieved 4^th of October from http://www.simplypsychology.org/self-concept.html

Stepheny Meyer. Twilight. Retrieved 4^th of October from http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilight.html