Book Review: Breaking Dawn

Book Review: What's Broken about Breaking Dawn
by Camille Turpin

Before I begin to tell you what I think about the Twilight series, and specifically Breaking Dawn, I must set the stage. When I first read Twilight, only two people I knew had read them. Both were readers I trusted. I enjoy reading young adult fiction, fantasy, and romance (and by romance, I mean a romantic story, not romance novels), and therefore I felt like this book was just for me.

I enjoyed it. A lot. I had never read anything that so amazingly captured the spirit of high school stupidity and youthful love. It was fun. It was fluffy. It appealed to the high schooler in me. A trip down memory lane, you might say, but one I wouldn’t want to take too often. I am, after all, glad I grew out of some things. I enjoyed New Moon as well, not as much as Twilight, but it brought in new aspects of teenage life that I related to. It was fun. It was fluffy. I was a huge fan. I recommended them and leant out my copies. And somehow they were both clean.

Let me explain what I meant by “clean” in the context of the first two books. (I say meant, because I have since changed my mind about them.) For the most part, there was no mention of sex in them. The entire idea of the books seemed to be avoiding and resisting temptation. All Edward had to do was stroke Bella’s cheek and somehow our hearts were racing and our faces flushing—just like it was in high school. To me it seemed innocent.

Here’s where Stephenie Meyer gets sneaky. Over the course of New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn, she slowly begins to take away what I liked in the books and replaces it with exactly what I was glad was missing from them—sex. The characters seem less developed, the plots seem more convoluted, the discussions on morality become all but non-existent. Suddenly, these books went from supernatural romantic young adult to teenage romance novel. What happened? Readers did one of three things: 1. became disgusted at the direction the books took, 2. didn’t like the sex stuff but excused it for the fun plot, or 3. reveled in the physical stimulation and wished for more. Remember, girls as young as nine and as old as 50 are reading these books and loving them.

One other thing I’ve noticed about Twilight fans—they read these books over and over. I’m all for rereading, but I usually read books over because there is more to be gained from them during each read. Fluffy books are great fillers in between more intense literature so your brain can have a rest, but living in the fluff can be pretty consuming in its own way. So now we’ve got girls and women of all ages reading these books 3 or 4 times a year. My question is, what are they getting out of it? Could some of them just be really interested in an innocent way? Sure. Are some of them reading it because they like the reaction of their bodies? Absolutely. And pretty soon some of them will look for something else to satisfy that growing desire until they are reading serious romance novels. That, my friends, is called pornography addiction.

I know, I know. You think I’m crazy for calling these books porn. I’ll get back to that in a minute. Right now, let’s move away from the whole sex thing and look at the rest of the fine qualities that make these books special . . .

Oh wait . . . I can’t think of anything.

I want to know something. If we took away all the romantic stuff, how many readers would there be? How many Twilight readers are actually fantasy/sci-fi/supernatural fans? I’m going to be generous and say half. That half would have been happy with the first two books, a little annoyed at the third, and completely BORED out of their minds at the last one. Besides that, this book could have been written about any two people. They are no longer Bella and Edward to me. They are nondescript supernatural people who don’t seem to need to do anything but enjoy each other physically.

Exactly three actual things happen in the final book: 1. they get married, 2. they have a baby, 3. they save the baby. Ok, Jacob imprints on the baby. So four. The rest is a lot of what ifs, close calls, introductions to who-cares-characters, and amazement of how easily one becomes a vampire and discovers really cool but hardly used powers.

There are exactly three reasons I can think of that Stephenie Meyer did not condense this book into one chapter and put it at the end of Eclipse: 1. she wanted to write about vampire/human sex, 2. she wanted to write about vampire/vampire sex, and 3. she wanted to set up a series about Jacob. Oh wait, money. So four. Good thing it was so easy for Bella to become a vampire and discover all her cool talents. It would have been pretty boring if we’d had to wait a year for Bella to mature so we could read about sex.

Also convenient: oh look, Bella’s baby will rapidly mature to the exact age that Jacob stopped maturing, making them both immortally perfect for each other. Good thing he imprinted on her!

I won’t even discuss her name.

I could write all day about the things I didn’t like about the novel, but those are what make me roll my eyes. What makes me angry is that sneaky sex stuff. That’s why I’m a Twi-hater. All I could think while I was reading them was two questions I often ask myself when presented with something I want to read/watch but I’m not sure I should:

What good can come of it? And what bad can come of it?

At the very best, the good that can come of the Twilight series is the idea that people actually CAN wait until marriage to be sexually intimate. Also, maybe a fun story.

At the worst, in can introduce to girls of every age unhealthy ideas about sex and marriage. In order to illustrate this point, I made a list of all the ideas about love and sex that are presented in the entire Twilight series. Here it is:

Dangerous people are sexy
Love should be enduring no matter how unhealthy or dangerous it is for you
Some people think it's not a good idea to have sex before marriage, but it's fun to see how far you can go before you cross the line
If you use self-control, you can go really far before actually having intercourse
Even if you think premarital sex is wrong, sleeping together and sneaking around behind a parent's back is ok
Parents don't know what's good for you in terms of love
Marriage is something to be feared, and which may ruin your enjoyment of sex.
Sexual intercourse is the best part of love, marriage, and human life.
If sex is good, it will probably be violent.
If sex is violent, it will not hurt you as long as you are really into it.
The more violent and out of control the sex is, the better it is. You might destroy things, but that just means it was great.
In a perfect world, we would desire and be able to have intercourse all night long, and wish it would go on longer. The best possible scenario would be for our bodies to never wear out and for our desire to be constant.
Sex is more enjoyable if our partner's body is perfect.If you really love your partner, you won't mind if they are in love with someone else too, or that they want them around all the time. In fact, if you really love them, you won't mind if they have sexual intercourse with someone else.
Sometimes people might desire a child to be their mate. It's innocent as long as they don't act on it till they are older.
When you love someone, you desire them physically every moment of your life. You will have to distract yourself with daily life in order to keep your mind off of sex, but it always there, in the background, and can be turned on at any moment, blocking out everything else.
It is normal and good to picture a person you love naked before you are married.
As long as the actual motions of sexual intercourse are not described in detail, it is ok to write and read about a physical relationship between a married man and woman--including where they are, what they are wearing, how long it went on, the positions they end up in, that certain motions of their bodies will stimulate sexual desire, and how they felt during the process.
If you really desire your partner, you might tear each other's clothes off, destroying them in the process.
You have absolutely no control over who you love and how long you love them. Once you find that person, it is easy to love them and you will do anything for them. If you really love each other, you won't have any real problems.
The pain of losing someone you love is so painful that death is better in comparison. If you really love them, you'll never ever get over losing them.
Sexy people are tall, muscular, perfect. Normal people just seem so childish.
Sexual intercourse is the most important part of marriage.

Other concerns:

Images of a child drinking blood from a bottle and the mother drinking blood while pregnant.
A horrific childbirth scene in which the mother vomits blood, is cut open, the baby is cut out with teeth, the baby bites the mother immediately after birth, and the mother dies in the process of the birth. Pregnancy was equally horrific, involving broken ribs and pelvis, huge bruises on her abdomen, and the baby sucking the life out of her from within.

You may have read these books and not seen all these things I listed in what you read. Remember, Bella has bruises all over her body which she does not remember getting after her first night with Edward. He bites pillows and rips apart furniture. These things are not realistic, not healthy, and representative of sadistic sex. I guess, if your husband hurts you during sex, you don't say "Ow," instead you are so transported in erotic ecstacy to notice. The pregnancy and birth was gruesome, bloody, and frightening. Even Entertainment Weekly calls Bella masochistic and horrifying. Plus, Bella says the sex she had with her husband was the epitome of her life. They make love all night and are oblivious to everything else. They can only think of sex when they look at each other. It is not only giving our daughters unrealistic expectations about sex, it is teaching them that marriage is 95% sex. Sure she doesn't describe every detail, but she includes the fact that they talk while still connected and that their laughter causes physical reactions. That's enough for me. Pornography does not always have to be explicit descriptions of sex, but can be anything that gives us unhealthy expectations and ideas or anything that incites lust. I have a feeling that we don't want to believe an LDS person would write anything remotely like pornography, and therefore we accept what she writes as innocent. Entertainment Weekly even thought it was "bloody bizarre," and sado-masochistic. I doubt their writer is LDS.

I heard somewhere that Stephanie Meyer had concerns that her story was too mature for some audiences and tried to have a warning put on the book, but the publishers wouldn’t allow it. There is actually another remedy for that problem, Stephenie—just tone it down. She knows how young her readers are, but she chose to write unnecessary details anyway. And besides, what is a warning going to do? There is no way an 11-year-old is going to STOP reading after investing heart, body, and soul into three of the most popular books ever written, just because they talk about a little sex.

You can also see where Stephanie Meyer has given some justification for what she has written. She has some enternal principles that are worth discussing, but they get totally lost in her eagerness to keep us pleased. Bella suddenly thinks marriage and motherhood are wonderful and beautiful, which is totally out of character. All sexual relations happen within marriage, so it’s ok. She throws in a quick thought about how scary it would be to do this without a total commitment. Oh good. Morality! Let’s move on to the sex!!

Sadly, none of the scenes in Eclipse OR Breaking Dawn had anything close to the emotional effect that those cheek-touching scenes in Twilight had on me. So really, she defeated her purpose for me. Sometimes less is more.

Before you think I only read books completely void of any mention of sex, I'll tell you that I’ve read a LOT of books with content much worse than these books. I watch movies with more adult themes. So what makes the difference for me? The way it’s presented, why it’s there, and who it’s written for. Books and movies can include physically moving scenes that don't incite lust, but a healthy romantic longing. My very favorite book in the world, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, alludes to much more sexual and adult themes than Breaking Dawn, but is presented in a tasteful way. I thoroughly enjoyed The Grand Tour by Wrede and Stevermer, which is a YA fantasy book about honeymooning magicians—it alludes to their newly budding physical relationships in an innocent, realistic, and romantic way. It can be done. It should be done.

Unless you are just trying to write a romance novel, which I guess she was.

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