I try very hard to admit when I'm wrong. I was wrong to condemn Twilight outright. I'll stick to my guns about how wildly inappropriate it is for the reader of its usual demographic, but, for me, the four-novel saga has been eye-opening.
Traditionally, good literature doesn't tell the reader anything more than it has to. It shows the reader. We all recognize that the best kinds of learning come from experience, so it only makes sense that the structure of a narrative does more for the reader than narration itself does. So often, novels that tell the reader outright what the characters are thinking and what their actions mean are just poorly written.
Just imagine, though, a novel writer who completely absorbs the reader in one character's mind. Every minute detail of every perception presented to for the reader's consideration. Every nuance of every decision spelled out for the reader to process. And every sensation of every sense cataloged for the reader to experience. It's a different kind of reading. Not learning by watching, which works so well in the best of novels, or learning by hearing, which ruins so much popular fiction. It's learning by being, by becoming a character within the novel in a very visceral way.
That is why the Twilight novels have meant so much to me in the five short days during which I have finished them. I have become a character hopelessly in love with the perfect man. I have been personally shocked, again, that the perfect man could ever love me. My own heart has beat, my own senses have been aroused, by the mere thought of the man I love. And I, myself, have again been forced to recognize the powerful love which binds us--not just me to him, but him to me.
Twilight hasn't made me enter into Bella Swan's world. Her world has been pressed onto mine, giving me a new clarity of perception about my own life through the oddly fitting analogy between her life and mine. I feel really changed, altered, in a way only writers like Alcott, Dickens, or Stevenson have left me. Bella Swan's tale might not be told as well as Jo March's, but she, too, has become part of the way I perceive myself. I see myself--my weakness and my really quite remarkable strengths--in a new light as something to appreciate. I am different, special, with things I will always do poorly and others I will always do well. And Adam, my perfect match, fits me like a key, his own liabilities and assets working with mine in a truly extraordinary way.
More than that, though, the mastery of Stephanie Meyer's portrayal of the love between Bella and Edward means that, in my eyes at least, Adam is altered, too.
As though I've been turned into a vampire myself, my feelings toward Adam are all heightened and intensified. I feel the physical distance between us in a way I never had before, a physical need to be with my other half greater than any I've ever known. I want him in a way I've never really allowed myself to before, in a way that makes me even more impatient for August. And I may even love him in a way I never have before: Twilight has given me a new vocabulary, a new framework for looking at how and why I will love him for the rest of my existence.
I've penned the words and I feel more at peace. I'm sure the heightened emotions will quiet themselves into something more sustainable, and healthy, as the venom of Meyer's novels works its way out of my system. But Bella Swan has been imprinted into my mind, into the way I see myself. I hope that--and our shared love and desire for our perfect lovers--will never completely fade.
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