I Told You I Cannot Write Short Posts

I typically avoid vampire stories. There are spiritual themes you can’t avoid in them, and, vampires being what they are, it’s a safe bet that I’ll probably have a problem with the directions those themes take. It isn’t so much that I don’t like vampire stories, exactly, because the fallen part of me actually finds them quite intriguing, but I usually find them so disturbing that I have to say that ultimately I don’t really like them. I am also not a fan of young adult romance fiction. Ugh.

So, how did I end up reading a whole four book series about vampires and teenage/young adult romance, you are probably asking. I’ve gotten to know some of my neighbors this year as we wait at the bus stop in the morning, and that has been a good thing, seeing as how I tend to be something of a hermit and am kind of quiet and find it hard to climb out of my shell and meet people. One day at the bus stop one of the ladies told another lady she had stayed up until 2am to finish a book she had borrowed and really wanted the second one, and I was intrigued. She said this book was really good, did I want to borrow it, too? I asked what it was and she told me it was Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. I remembered that I had heard something about that author and that she was becoming very popular, but I couldn’t remember what I had heard, positive or negative, so I said, “Okay.” When she handed me the book and I started walking home and looked at the back cover, my thought was, “Oh, yeah, it’s a vampire book. Ugh.”

Before I continue, I need to warn you that there will be spoilers in this opinion piece. This is not a formal book review, per se, it’s just me sharing my thoughts. Actually, it’s just me trying to work out my thoughts so I can think through it better as I interact with my friends who are enjoying discussing this book and, hopefully, to come at it from a biblical worldview and provide a different viewpoint and hopefully have an opportunity to be a good witness in the process. I don’t have the books in front of me, and I’m working off my impressions and memory of the story as it unfolded throughout four books, so I won’t have direct quotes to illustrate my points – I borrowed the books, and to be honest, I don’t want to buy them and have them sitting on my shelf. All that to say that there will be much plot spoilage in this post. If you think you want to read these books, be warned that I’m just sharing my impressions of the overall story, so if you don’t want any of the plot revealed, don’t keep reading. And if you haven’t read them and aren’t planning to this probably won’t make much sense, and I can already tell this is going to be another one of my impossibly too long posts. Basically I’m just writing this post for me as a way to hash out my thoughts. You’re welcome to look over my shoulder as I do if you wish, but if you’re one of the obsessed Twilight fans, be forewarned that I am not one also. I’m also going to link to another review that pretty much nails my concerns much better than I could have stated them. So, is that a fair enough warning? If you don’t want spoilers, stop now.

Anyway, when I got home with the book I read the front flap and was interested enough to start reading it and as I did I realized I was enjoying the story. It’s a different twist on the vampire story, and I did become intrigued by Bella’s (the main character) experience as a new student at her high school and the angst that goes with that. In a nutshell, the books are a story about a 17-year-old girl who moves from Phoenix to the town of Forks, Washington to live with her father after her mother remarries and moves to Florida with her new husband. Most of the books are written from Bella’s point of view, as we follow her first days at her new school and as she meets new friends and tries to find her way in her new surroundings and reconnecting with her dad. Bella’s world is drastically and forever changed when she meets Edward and the Cullen family. As it is gradually revealed that the incredibly gorgeous guy (Edward) that Bella begins to have a crush on is actually a vampire, the tension mounts. This revelation comes about slowly and, that is one reason the books are so hard to put down. Of course, from the time she meets Edward, we are drawn into the ever unfolding story of their growing romance, and the obstacles that surround it. The strength of the books (at least the first three – I REALLY didn’t like huge parts of the fourth but I probably won’t get into all of that in this post) is that as I read I found it very difficult to put them down once I started, because I did want to know where the author would go with these characters, even though I didn’t really like Bella all that much after she got more and more obsessive about Edward. .

If you’ve suffered through this post to this point, I suppose you’re still reading because you want to know, did I like the books? Here’s my honest answer. On one level, I found them very entertaining. It has been a long time since I’ve read a book that was so hard to put down. I found myself reading while I cooked and running over to my friend’s house for the next books once I’d finished the first, second and third, and once I was done with the series, Drew was pretty glad because I finally was able to quit reading. The story is interesting and there are a lot of interesting plot twists and, I’ll admit, the ending ties things together very nicely (well, most things….I found the father’s acceptance of what happens to Bella – or his acceptance of the suggestion that he just not ask too many questions - in the end just plain odd. I don’t know any sane father who would just say, “Okay” to the idea that he just take a “need to know” approach to the fact that all kinds of very strange and unexplainable things have happened to his daughter which make no sense at all to him). The book ends just the way the reader has been conditioned to want it to, and I suppose most people consider it a blissfully happy ending.

However….you knew I’d have a ‘however’ didn’t you? Here’s where I tend to get flak from people who often tell me that I tend to over think things and read too much into everything. But, as a Christian, and in the case of this book, as a mom, I can’t hang up my worldview and just read it as entertainment and leave the spiritual elements out of my evaluation. And that is because the author herself brought some of those things up in the story and because I filter everything through my worldview, even entertainment. This leads to people often thinking I am too serious or that I can’t just enjoy myself. This is not true. As I told my neighbor when we were discussing the series once I’d finished it, I don’t have to like the ending or everything in the book to find it enjoyable, and I actually have found lots of things to think about from reading them, and it has been a platform for me to share a little bit about my faith with my friends, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to share more as we continue the conversation. So, don’t hear me saying that I think a Christian should read only ‘Christian’ books. What I am saying is, be careful and pay attention to everything you read and know that an author’s worldview will influence how and what they write and it will influence you as you read, even if it is just entertainment. On a certain level, I did like the books, but I also have to honestly say that there was A LOT about them that bothers me, and what bothers me most is that I am not at all sure they are appropriate for the target audience of young girls who are gobbling them up and loving them so much. There is a lot in there that I would have a very hard time feeling good about handing over to my daughter (or son) to read without any caution. I think, as a mom, I would want to be sure my daughter was spiritually mature enough to be able to discuss the things that bothered me about these books, and I would be sure to discuss them with her. And I don’t think they are books I would recommend that teenage girls read. That will get me in trouble with a lot of fans and moms, but it’s my honest opinion.

Here’s some of why I think I would be very hesitant to recommend these books. First of all, when I first heard about these books, I thought that since the author was a Mormon, how smutty could they be? So, I thought they would be okay. Well, on the surface, they are pretty clean, compared to many of the young adult type of books. The high school students are all pretty clean-living – no drinking, drugs, or sex before marriage is portrayed among any of the kids Bella hangs around. Kissing is pretty much as far as anything goes, and even as the romance between Bella and Edward grows, he refuses to consummate their relationship until she marries him, in spite of much temptation from Bella. So, again, on the surface, the first three books are pretty clean. However, there is a lot of flirting with the line – Edward very frequently stays all night in Bella’s room without her father’s knowledge, and his reasons for protecting her purity seem to be more that he is afraid he will hurt her because vampires are so superhumanly strong and he is so attracted to the scent of her blood than for more noble reasons, though that is hinted at, too.

And the way Bella becomes literally obsessed with Edward is disturbing in the extreme. She gets to a point where she just about cannot function or breathe if he is not in her sight, and that is just creepy. Both of them decide that if the other is not living, then life is just not worth living. Bella basically makes an idol of Edward, at one point saying that she doesn’t need Heaven if Edward is not there. And she also is very self-absorbed and pretty much just uses her human friends and isn’t all that concerned about them. In fact, something I found to be a glaring weakness in the books was the flatness of the ‘extras’ in Bella’s life. The human friends were boring and not fleshed out at all, while all the supernatural characters, the vampires and her shape-shifting wolf man friend Jacob, as well as Bella herself, were much more fleshed out. Basically, the human friends function to move the story along and Bella calls on them when she needs them, but she discards them when she doesn’t, and, in my opinion, it makes her much less likable as a character. Her world quickly revolves around Edward, and Edward only, and she has no concern for her other friends. This is not a message I think we ought to be giving our teenage girls. Her attraction to Edward is portrayed as true love, but looking at it as a mom, I would be so concerned and grieved if my own daughter were acting like this.

This gets us to some more serious issues I had with this book. Edward is not sure if he has lost his soul when he became a vampire and he does not want Bella to change because he doesn’t want to be responsible for her losing her soul, too. Another character says that he just can’t believe that God would not do anything for someone like Edward because he is so ‘good.’ And here we get to the problem of worldview. Edward and his family are seen as good because they do not feed on human blood. But they still drink blood. This is what vampires are. And I have a problem with that, but for the purposes of this very long post I won’t go there at the moment. There are enough other concerns with these books without my going into the obvious ones associated with all vampire legends. Anyway, good as opposed to evil is presented as relative goodness. Edward is good because he is not as bad as the bad vampires. He is good because he loves Bella and protects her and tries to live inconspicuously and not let the humans know he is a vampire. But the problem is, relative goodness is still not good, in the ultimate sense. They may be better than most, but the characters are still sinners, as are we all. They need salvation, atonement. And, of course, this is not part of the story. Instead, Bella increasingly comes to see everything human as boring and not to be desired and to desire to be like Edward and his family. The vampires are painted as impossibly beautiful, strong, and desirable. Even when they tell Bella that they would not have chosen this life and that she should stay human, she wants to be as they are, even if it means it will cost her soul.

Bella increasingly makes unwise decisions, going against the counsel of her father, mother and others who she should recognize are wise enough to know that she is acting dangerously. In fact, Edward himself tells her he is dangerous and she should stay away. Throughout the book, Bella’s mother is presented as scatter-brained and that Bella is the responsible one. There is a very, very subtle disrespect of parents portrayed throughout this series that I found disturbing. Even though the author seems to want us to think Bella really loves her father, Bella’s attitude is more one of patronizingly tolerating him and mothering him than it is of respecting her father.

Also, the ‘good’ things that the main characters do are only good to a point. Almost every one of them, once you examine the motives, are done for selfish reasons. Edward is constantly saving Bella because he cannot live without her. That’s his real motivation. I kept thinking throughout the novel that the way he could have shown true love would have been to leave her alone. That would have been the only thing he could do for her that would truly be in her best interest. But, of course, then we wouldn’t have much of a story, would we? I also kept hoping that Edward would find some way to become mortal. To me that would have been a better ending than what actually happens with Bella finally becoming a vampire in the final book. As I told my friend who asked how I liked the ending, eternal life left in a sinful state without Jesus is just not a happy ending to me. And for all the talk of Heaven and hell during the discussions about whether or not they had souls, I got to thinking. Heaven is NOT just the opposite of hell. Heaven without Jesus is not Heaven. It is all about Him. So, for Bella to say that just being with Edward is heaven enough gave me the creeps. Big time.

And another thing….the love that is portrayed between Bella and Edward is not real love. It is obsession and lust, pure and simple. I had a hard time figuring out what it really was that they loved about each other besides the draw of the mysterious – for Edward the fact that she was the one person whose thoughts he could not read and for Bella the whole immortal thing – and the ad nauseum obsessing about Edward’s physical beauty. And once they were married, a huge big deal was made about the physical nature of their relationship – especially once Bella was immortal, too. Sorry, but there is just more to love than only that.

One thing that came out of reading these books for me was that I got to wondering just how much of an impact the fact that Stephenie Meyer is a lifelong Mormon might have made on what she has written. I did some research and realized that it actually made quite a lot. Though the books are by no means evangelizing for the Mormon religion, Mormon thinking is all over them, as you would expect from a Mormon author, whether she intended it or not or even whether she is even aware just how much is there even. And that helped me to better understand the subtle things that bothered me all throughout the series and which I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The research I did also made me even more appalled that certain evangelicals are willing to embrace the Mormon faith as Christian. The more I learned, the more I realized just how tragically far from orthodox, biblical Christianity their teaching actually is.

So, bottom line is, I would not feel comfortable recommending this series without strong cautions. On the surface, sure it’s entertaining. But there are deeper issues and they are serious, and I’ve only scratched the surface in this too long post. I could have said a lot more. What came to mind when reading them and digesting them and thinking about them, was that throughout the series, as it is written you find yourself wanting Bella to be with Edward and that the immortality he has is to be desired. The vampires are beautiful on the outside, strong, gifted, talented, intriguing and desirable, and honestly, the dramatic climax in the final book was fun reading, on a strictly entertainment level. But that's why it bothers me. Really, they are dead on the inside. Their hearts stopped beating when they were transformed. And isn’t that an apt description of false, works-based religion? It may look shiny and good on the outside, but apart from faith in Jesus Christ, there is only death on the inside.

I think what I am saying is that what makes these books so disturbing to me is that they are so very likable, and that in being so, they are more subtle in how disturbing the disturbing things actually are. I guess I would say, “Moms, know what your girls are reading. If you have a teenager reading these books, be prepared to help her see the deeper issues and help her think through them.” As my neighbor and I were discussing, we think one reason these books have become so popular is that Stephenie Meyer has hit on the kind of thing that teen girls can really relate to in her Bella. A lot of us felt a whole lot like she did in high school – kind of awkward, not really fitting in with the ‘in’ crowd, having a secret desire to protect those we love and to be the heroine in a great story. That’s why it’s so easy to get so very involved with the story. You find yourself really liking and relating to the characters. These are just some of the things that struck me, as a Christian, as I read these books. If you liked them, okay. I’m not going to argue with you. If you have something to discuss regarding the issues of concern that I raised, good, I might interact with you. If you just want to rave about how great these books are, there are lots of fan sites devoted to that. This isn’t one of them. If you want to lambaste me for not liking the books, I’ll probably delete the comment. And that’s my very long-winded opinion.

Oh, yes, and here is a link to a review that sums up my concerns way better and much more succinctly than I just did here. Thanks for the link, Barbie!