This article will contain spoilers regarding Stephenie Meyer’s twilight series.
As Thomas Nagel and specifically Bernard Williams judged Kantian ethics to be at minimum “repulsive,” so has there been a damnation by literary critics of the twilight series penned down by S. Meyer. This article will bring some balance to a prententious audience that delights in snobery for abstraction for the sake of abstraction is nothing but direct foolishness.
The main character of the series is Isabella (Bella) Swan. A young women who moves in with her dad in an unexpected course of action chosen by Bella in the eyes of both her father (Charlie) and Bella herself. The unexpected move to Forks (an area that can be likened to England in atmosphere) from the sun-ladden environment of her mom’s is the first question that the book posits.
Then the story continues in typical coming-off age style with Bella preparing for her first day at her new high school which raises her anxiety level and makes the reader wonder once again why she even decided to move in the first place. Her expectation of utter doom with regards to her anticipated new environment of high school is lightened by the gift of her father, which is a truck with which Bella can drive to school, removing the need of an embarassing drop-off by her father.
Bella falls into essentializing her new schoolmates based on high school cliches but it is not entirely unforgiveable since she is later described as being gifted in academia. On a more intensified study of essentialism read Dostoeyevski’s crime and punishment. From here on out the story cannot be studied seriously from a critical point of view since the story is taken over by vampires, paranormal gifts and brilliantly horrific character names.
The introduction of the vampire theme is interesting though since the investigation sequence is written entertainingly and there is a lot of rereadability after the realization of the true substance of some of the characters.
The movie depiction of Bella is even more obviously infatuated with Edward to such a degree that it is understandable that jokes are made. The book is a little better.
Bella’s choices are difficult to understand unless her self-description of “having a broken brain” is deemed both correct and interpreted in a vast sense meaning that the eventual transformation of Bella into a vampire is to a certain degree guided or destined. Hints to this fate are given early on in her ability to accurately describe the smell of blood.
Also given Bella’s previous physique as fragile and prone to falls, from a literary perspective it makes sense that she eventually fully integrates in the vampire community.
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