Foundation of Absurdity (the Twilight Walkthrough Pg. 410-421)

One of the things that is important when writing long papers for graduate school is to build the argument off of sound premises. No matter how good the writing itself can be, it doesn’t work if the argument itself has a catastrophic flaw. I learned this the hard way about a month ago. The professor remarked that he felt the conclusion and the latter half of my paper was well organized and well thought out, the only trouble was that in the beginning a made an error involving the reversing of two terms. No matter how well the paper turned out (even the first part was well done he said) the error negated the entire thing. It was one of those mitigated compliments, “I liked the paper a lot but…” That ‘but’ dropped the paper all of the way into the low B’s. Not good at all.

This week’s section is quite similar to that paper. It’s well done, in fact, extremely well done if not for the absurd situation that brings Bella, Jasper, and Alice into the dank motel room by the airport in Phoenix. The idea that our heroes would have to run all of the way to Phoenix is laughable, the fact that their adversary would be able to follow them is equally so, and this whole shielding Bella’s father from what is going on is half-ridiculous, but it’s a pretty big half.

The half that isn’t ridiculous is that Charlie has to be kept in the dark because to tell him everything would mean confessing the secret of the Cullen’s nature. The fact that one person seems to want to murder Bella would have an easy cop solution–guard her with firearms, that won’t work here and Charlie’s cop brain is going to need to know why. I get that part, it’s the other part that doesn’t make sense. James, the “tracker,”* doesn’t know who Charlie is. Furthermore he doesn’t even know who Bella is! He just knows her by the errant scent that he picked up when the wind blew in his direction and then placed that on her person. He could pick her out of a lineup but as for her name, where she lives, etc. There isn’t much that he knows. They could have driven to Seattle and hid in that population once they were sure he wasn’t following them, but we need the mother/daughter conflict I suppose.

Thinking that all of their actions make perfect sense Bella and company wait for Alice’s phone to ring. They wait and wait. Bella wants to know why they are going to all of this trouble for her, “Do you think any of us want to look into his eyes for the next hundred years if he loses you?“

Jasper is claiming that the rest of the Cullens are being altruistic in regard to Edward. The problem for them is that in a hundred years they are going to have to look into his eyes and see it. I mentioned this two weeks ago so I won’t spend more time rehashing it. Unless they are planning on turning her into a vampire then this might be an issue but that raises a whole host of new issues,** I still side with Rosalie. She might be Edward’s girlfriend, but that’s it for now, it’s a cold way of looking at things but this is a lot of trouble just to make sure that Edward doesn’t get sad(der).

They wait, and wait. Here is where the writing really steps up. Meyer describes the passing of time and the boredom that Bella experiences, “Sometimes I stared at the abstract prints, randomly finding pictures in the shapes, like I’d found pictures in the clouds as a child.” This, and others like it, convey the feeling of being bored in a motel. Those paintings are the most innocuous things in existence, they aren’t designed to be looked at–like muzak, they are there to be ignored. Their non-meaning is so pungent it’s offensive to the taste which is why no one ever steals them. Get bored enough and you begin to wonder what it is and why it was painted. I really love the whole scene here.

Finally the phone rings and Alice jumps up. We also finally get the full description of the plan. Edward and Carlisle headed North to draw James North and then they were going to turn and trap him. Esme and the remaining Cullens were to head West to draw away the feral woman vampire, then return and keep vigil over Charlie’s house. It’s a stupid plan because Esme had donned Bella’s clothes thus part of her scent so shouldn’t both vampires be tracking Esme? Apparently not, because Carlisle and Edward lured James all of the way to Vancouver, where he got on a plane and headed back to Forks…they assume, although I guess they could have checked on that.

After the phone call, Bella tries to call her mother to warn her of danger. Which is stupid, because while it is possible that James could have determined who Bella’s father is by following them to his house, there is no way that he could determine who her mother is, given the different last name, different city. Bella thinks about James checking the school records but how? You can’t just walk in and ask for a child’s school records, there are forms to fill out and while James has some vampire powers in that vein, Edward couldn’t even use them to change classes in the beginning of the book. Obviously bureaucracy has grown to meet the needs of the bureaucracy just enough to make sure the vampires can’t override the schools.***

Alice has a flash. I love these sections as Meyer is really at the top of her craft here. Alice sits up straight and then stares off relating her vision, “Just the mirrors, and the gold. It’s a band around the room. And there’s a black table with a big stereo, and a TV.”

It’s not a good description of a room, but it’s a good description of a dream about a room as it’s happening. It reminds me of Ashley Judd in hypnosis during the movie “Kiss the Girls”–a panicked description about a vague memory. The whole rest of the section is about them trying to divine the room, and where James could possible be. The only trouble is that we haven’t seen the room in the book so far, or if we have we haven’t been told we have. This whole section would be great, if it weren’t for the foundation of sand it’s all built on. And don’t even get me started on the aside about how to create a vampire, that’s for another time.

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* Which by the way we have no idea what exactly a “tracker” is yet.
**For example: what if they can’t cure her of the blood lust?
***I’ve always suspected that teacher’s unions were too powerful.