Muser, good point about Bella skipping over the newborn vampire stage. It was never entirely clear whether that related to her vampire super-gift or not. Maybe the reason Meyer dropped the ball on that one is that she can’t write well about the “vegetarian vampire” struggle convincingly from first-person. It certainly doesn’t work well in her chapter draft of “Midnight Sun,” which she writes from Edward’s perspective.

Thanks,

Mark

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I too was pacified by Bella becoming a vampire only as she was about to die anyway (I had a lot of qualms about her choosing immortality for one person and potentially having to give up all the rest of her connections and commitments to other people. It seemed a decidedly unethical choice.) But I was also a little annoyed that Meyers had found such an “easy out”–a way to resolve all of the ethical dilemmas. I felt the same way about Bella skipping the “newborn” vampire stage. On the one hand I really liked the character Meyer created and the way she made self-control and self-discipline attractive and strong. On the other, it felt a little too convenient and I felt cheated out of a really interesting story–being able to be inside the mind of someone so blood-thirsty and yet so good desperately working to overcome baser desires. I think that could have been a truly terrific story, a powerful metaphor for the religious and ethical life. But, then, that’s the story I would have written and perhaps it’s unfair to fault an author for choosing to write a different story…

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