BLOGGING ECLIPSE, pt. 33: When The Curious Girl Realizes She Is Under Glass

When S. Meyer titles a chapter “Ethics,” you know you're in trouble. Previous entries can be found in the directory. (Also updated: JASHLEYGATE, A Directory)

Chapter 26: Ethics

Bella sits in Alice's bathroom getting a makeover in order to keep up with her alibi for Charlie's sake; Alice combs her hair with a “slow, rhythmic motion.” OKAY. Bella, Alice, slow rhythmic motions. We're off to a good start, but S. Meyer ruins any potential this scene might have had. For one thing, Bella's thinking about Jacob; he's injured and she wants to see him. It turns out she's already visited him once, an event we've skipped over. We learn about it via some incredibly clumsy flashbacks – S. Meyer will do stupid things like have Alice say something in the present and then talk about something Alice said a few hours ago, during the first visit to Jacob, without really indicating the transition. It's jarring. Later Bella will be talking to Charlie and then mention seeing Jacob “when Charlie left.” But she's referring to when Charlie left La Push earlier in the day – she's still having a conversation with him now. Recall that S. Meyer has previously used every kind of punctuation imaginable to indicate time jumps. What makes her think she can hang us out to dry now? It's some of the worst flashback writing I have ever seen, and I watched every episode of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip! (Sorry Aaron Sorkin! The West Wing and Sports Night and The Social Network are amazing!)

Alice stresses to Bella the importance of keeping up appearances. “It's more important now than ever that Charlie stays safely in the dark,” she says. As Bella gets up to leave, Alice comments how hot she looks in her new dress.

“Huh? Oh. Er – thanks again for the clothes,” I mumbled out of courtesy rather than real gratitude.
“You need the evidence,” Alice said, her eyes innocent and wide. “What's a shopping trip without a new outfit?”

It's indicated throughout that Bella is really distracted thinking about Jacob. Is S. Meyer distracted, too? Why does Alice get reflexively defensive (eyes innocent and wide) about shopping when Bella didn't even protest? The only explanation I can think of is that Alice was actually coming on to Bella and walked it back a little too hard when Bella didn't return the vibes. Or S. Meyer is just a bad writer, maybe, I don't know.

I'm struggling to find a way to write about this chapter, because the chapter itself seems to be struggling. We drift lazily back and forth from Bella's feelings about seeing Jacob the first time to Bella's feelings about sitting in Alice's bathroom getting a makeover to Bella's feelings about potentially seeing Jacob again. It's hard to know what is important, what we should be focusing on, or even what is happening when.

There are those cryptic allusions to visits to Jacob past and future. We also are meant to understand that Alice (or someone) has come up with a story for Charlie to explain why all of Jacob's bones are broken, but we don't hear what that story is for a while. Instead, Bella starts asking Alice unrelated questions. Poor Alice. At the start of every book she gets to be this fun, mild-trouble-making weirdo, and by the end of every book she's just stuck explaining plot mechanics. “There's no hurry,” she says to Bella at one point. “If you realized how much extra morphine Carlisle had to give him – what with his temperature burning it off so quickly – you would know that he's going to be out for a while.” Why do we even – ? Nicely shoe-horned in there, S. Meyer! If his body is burning it off why would he be out for a longer than normal amount of time? What in the - ?

Alice becomes even more baldly an expository device as the conversation goes on. Bella asks why Alice's and Jasper's powers work on her, whereas Jane's and Edward's and Aro's don't. Alice shares her complicated theory that Jane, Edward, and Aro all work on the mind, where as Jasper works on like, the endocrine system or something, and she works with physical outcomes. Okay, fair enough. She takes a lot longer to explain it, of course.

She watched my face to see if I was following her logic. In truth, her words had all started to run together, the syllables and sounds losing their meaning. I couldn't concentrate on them.

SO WHY DID YOU EVEN ASK? Bella brings it up for our benefit, apparently. Thanks, Bella! It's maddening that aspects of this chapter can be so difficult to understand and other parts can be so ridiculously transparent: Bella asks if Alice still sees her becoming a vampire, and Alice understands that Bella is agonizing over the Jacob/Edward decision. For our purposes in this particular quote, S. Meyer's original italics are rendered in all caps:

She put her arms around me. “I'm sorry. I can't really EMPATHIZE. My first memory is of seeing Jasper's face in my future; I always knew that he was where my life was headed. But I can SYMPATHIZE. I'm so sorry you have to choose between two good things.”

THIS HAS BEEN YOUR VOCAB MOMENT BROUGHT TO YOU BY ALICE CULLEN. Speaking of vocab, Alice is the first of two people to have “unfathomable” eyes in this chapter. Later, Jacob's eyes will be described with the same word. What is this, an episode of Mad Men?

Bella goes home. Charlie, of course, was at La Push during the battle, and thus saw the injured Jacob. Hence Alice's insistence on getting the story straight. But Charlie, like Alice, has become an instrument of the plot. “I told you those motorcycles were dangerous,” he says almost immediately. If it wasn't clear enough for you that the Cullens and the wolfpack are passing off Jacob's injury as a motorcycle accident, a few paragraphs later Charlie says, “Pretty much the whole right side of his body got crushed when he wrecked that damn bike.” OH I GET IT WE'RE PRETENDING JACOB WAS IN A BIKE ACCIDENT, RIGHT?

Alice insisted that Charlie stay “in the dark,” so she probably should have killed Billy Black if she wanted that to happen. Because Charlie proceeds to talk about what a weird day he had: Billy was on edge the whole time, and cut their fishing trip short when he heard a wolf howl. Then there was some really loud howling all around the reservation while they tried to watch the game and Billy made nervous phone calls. Essentially he recaps the entire plot of the last few chapters from his point of view. But then an injured Jacob showed up and Charlie forgot about the weird stuff until just now. OH DID HE. I would be less bothered by S. Meyer's lazy writing if she didn't seem so paranoid about her lazy writing, inserting these weird intratextual defenses like she does. Charlie also notes that Edward, who was apparently with the injured Jacob (you'd think that fact would make Charlie suspicious but magically it doesn't) seemed genuinely distraught over Jacob's welfare. Oh, that's sweet. Are they going to be best friends now? Don't we have another book to get through first?

(Hey didn't Bella cut her arm open? Is Charlie going to notice?)

Bella flashes back again to seeing Jacob the first time. He looked really fragile, and she feels really guilty about it. She says she wishes there were two of her, so one could be with Jacob and the other with Edward. Still haven't separated guilt and love, eh Bella?

As if shit wasn't fucked up enough, Charlie abruptly says that he's feeling “superstitious” after his weird day on the Rez, and he feels like he is going to lose Bella soon. We're really just laying all of it on the line, huh? Is S. Meyer really that bored with writing this book? Is Breaking Dawn just going to be A FUCKING OUTLINE?

“Don't be silly, Dad,” I mumbled guiltily. “You want me to go to school, don't you?”
“Just promise me one thing.”
I was hesitant, ready to rescind. “Okay...”
“Will you tell me before you do anything major? Before you run off with him or something?”

Or become a vampire or whatever. Thoughts?