Reading Twilight So You Don't Have To: Chapter Eight
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight: Port Angeles
Bella assuages her womanly guilt of not cooking for her father by having an equally womanly outing with the girls shopping for dresses in the nearby town of Port Angeles. "It had been a while since I'd had a girls' night out, and the estrogen rush was invigorating." That line really bugs me. I tend to think of "estrogen rush" as involving drooling over hot guys, not shopping, but maybe that's just me. On the up side, we're actually getting to see a little interaction between Bella and her classmates instead of being told "Jess did this," etc. It's not particularly interesting interaction, but at least it's something. They talk about boys, who likes whom, etc. (maybe that's what she means by "estrogen rush"?) and Jessica quizzes her about her past. Ooh, and she calls Bella out on her treatment of the Forks boys. Sorta.
"Didn't you ever go [to a dance] with a boyfriend or something?" Jess asked dubiously as we walked through the front doors of the store.
"Really," I tried to convince her, not wanting to confess my dancing problems. "I've never had a boyfriend or anything close. I didn't go out much."
"Why not?" Jessica demanded.
"No one asked me," I answered honestly.
She looked skeptical. "People ask you out here," she reminded me, "and you tell them no."
Unfortunately, this promising opening into Bella having to seriously look at her behavior since moving to Forks is quashed because it morphs into a revelation that one of her five (!!!) suitors, Tyler, has been going around telling everyone that he was taking her to prom. This leads to a revelation that Lauren likes Tyler, and that's why she doesn't like Bella (as opposed to not liking her because she's an insufferable snob.) And we never get back to the fact that Bella is too good for all the non-vampire boys in Forks.
Oh, and can we really ditch all the variations on "said" here? Another reason this reads like a fanfic or a high school creative writing assignment instead of a professional novel. There are better ways to mark dialogue than looking up different ways to say "said" in a thesaurus.
Then we go into a short bit about looking at different dresses, which Bella gets to turn into another snub against small-town Washington.
The whole process was much shorter and easier than similar trips I'd taken with Renée at home. I guess there was something to be said for limited choices.
She gets Angela alone at one point and asks her if it's normal for the Cullen's to miss school a lot, and Angela tells her that "when the weather is good, they go backpacking all the time--even the doctor. They're real outdoorsy." Reasonable enough excuse to never be in school when the sun is out, but do people really buy that a doctor can take off anytime the sun is shining (even in a rainy place like Forks) and the school doesn't question the absences for such a non-critical reason? I know attendance is HUGE at my kids' school, and absences need to be accounted for not only by a call to the school, but a note the next day. And while no one has given me grief for pulling the kids out a day or two for a family trip, I'm reasonably sure the principal would want to have a few words with me if we took off regularly for backpacking trips just because the sun was shining. So I'm not really buying this.
On the upside, she decides she really likes Angela because Angela doesn't quiz her like Jessica would have, which makes her the first person who isn't a Cullen or already a family friend about whom Bella has anything nice to say.
Then Bella goes off on her own to find a bookstore, with plans to meet Jessica and Angela for dinner an hour later, but she turns her nose up at it because "the windows were full of crystals, dream-catchers, and books about spiritual healing" and inside she "could see a fifty-year-old woman with long, gray hair worn straight down her back, clad in a dress right out of the sixties, smiling welcomingly from behind the counter." No WAY Bella was gonna go anywhere where someone was smiling and being welcoming! Actually, it sounds like the kind of stores you find in Sedona, which I love, even though I'm not into crystals and new-age stuff. When we went there this past summer, it was really fun to take the kids in and show them some of the different things people believe. Again, I'm finding Bella's condescension toward anything that isn't her idea of "normal" or interesting really annoying.
Then we get an obligatory reminder that Bella is "wrestling with despair" because Edward is not here with her RIGHT NOW THIS VERY SECOND! And, because he's not with her RIGHT NOW THIS VERY SECOND, she, naturally finds herself in mortal peril when a bunch of "grimy"-looking boys around her age start following her after she inadvertently wanders into the bad part of town. There are several pages of her trying to get away from them, only to find they'd surrounded her, and then TA DA! Edward rides in on his white horse drives up in his silver Volvo and "command[s]" her to get into the car. And now the fear is gone and she feels all safe and snuggly secure!
He continues to "command" her ("Put on your seat belt!") which she "quickly obey[s]". She feels "profound relief, relief that went beyond my sudden deliverance." Because OMG it's Edward and I don't have to despair of having an Edward-less evening and I can "stud[y] his flawless features in the limited light"!!!11
Then he "order[s]" her to "prattle about something unimportant until I calm down" (yes, every time I use quotes around words like "command" and "order," I'm quoting the book. Bella herself sees him as "commanding" and "ordering" her around and "obeys" him.) He confesses, "Sometimes I have a problem with my temper, Bella," and he wants her to distract him so he can calm down and not go tear apart Bella's attackers.
While I can see a certain appeal to someone being THAT angry on your behalf over what could have been a very ugly, ugly thing, this is another red flag. And if we put it in the context that she believes it's possible he might be a vampire, then she should be thinking that he's talking not about beating the crap out of her would-be attackers, but very likely killing them. Literally. That should be disturbing, no matter how relieved she is at having been rescued.
He takes her back to the restaurant where she was to meet Jessica and Angela, and we find that they were very worried about her. So worried, that they ate without her. But this gives an excuse for Edward and Bella to go to dinner alone and OMG it's like a REAL DATE and EVERYTHING!
We get another reminder of Edward's perfectly perfect perfection when the "unnaturally blond" hostess drools over and flirts with him, but Edward asks for a private table, and isn't it awesome that Edward is with plain, ordinary BELLA and not some blond tart???
Bella chides him for "dazzling people," and he seems surprised, then asks if he dazzles her. The server comes, also ready to flirt, but "he didn't see it. He was watching me."
So. All the girls want Edward, but he only wants Bella. And all the boys want Bella, but she only wants Edward. Isn't it beeeeyooooootiful????
He "order[s]" her again, this time to drink her Coke. (So by my count, that's two commands and two orders.) He's worried she's going to go into shock, so when she's cold from the Coke and remembers she'd left her jacket in Jessica's car, he gives her his. Thanks to the sweater that "fit him snugly, emphasizing how muscular his chest was," she notices for the first time that he has a perfectly perfect body to go with his perfectly perfect face.
::swoon::
Then she starts asking him questions. He won't tell her why he's in Port Angeles, but she goes onto ask him if, "hypothetically," a person could read minds, with some exceptions (he interrupts to tell her "one exception"), then how could he find someone at exactly the right time and know she was in danger?
His answer? "Only you could get into trouble in a town this small. You would have devastated their crime rate statistics for a decade, you know."
Because clearly these four would-be assaulters/rapists wouldn't consider assaulting and/or raping any other girl in Port Angeles. It's only Bella who causes these kinds of problems. And just as clearly, Bella needs Edward to be safe. Without him, she's a walking death trap. (Never mind the seventeen years of her life she survived without being assaulted, raped, or killed prior to her ever meeting him.)
Two insidious messages in one two-sentence statement. 1. You are the reason you almost got assaulted and/or raped, and 2. You can't survive without me. "Red flags" doesn't even begin to describe this.
But Bella, of course, is not disturbed. A little insulted, but curiosity wins out, and she continues trying to get her to confess his super-special vampireness. To which he responds by telling her, "You're not a magnet for accidents. That's not a broad enough classification. You're a magnet for trouble. If there's anything dangerous within a ten-mile radius, it will invariably find you."
And he decides this based on ONE car accident, ONE would-be attack, and the fact that his oh-so-dangerous-and-broody-self is attracted to her? SEVENTEEN YEARS this girl lived an uneventful life in Phoenix, but she is now a magnet for trouble?
How can she not loathe him at this point?
THEN he goes on to tell her that he followed her to Port Angeles. "I've never tried to keep a specific person alive before, and it's much more troublesome than I would have believed."
You know what, Ms. Meyer? WE GET IT. We got it the first time you told us he was perfectly perfect, and now we get it that she is a danger to herself and only Edward's heroic intervention will keep her alive. Could you please lighten up on the two-by-four? And why does Bella find being constantly put down like this appealing? "I wondered if it should bother me that he was following me;" (YES!) "instead, I felt a strange surge of pleasure." (NO!)
He explains how he found her, admitting that he could read minds, but not hers. He read the thoughts of her would-be attackers, and "It was very... hard--you can't imagine how hard--for me to simply take you away, and leave them... alive." Remember, she believes there's at least a strong possibility he's a vampire, so this comment is not to be taken as hyperbole. He means he would have literally killed them. At least he seems horrified by this, even if she's not.
The chapter ends with them leaving the restaurant and beginning the ride home, where it's her turn to give him some answers.
Chapter Nine
Quick Links:
Why I'm doing this | Preface & 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 16.2 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | Epilogue |
Discussion Questions
Chapter Eight: Port Angeles
Bella assuages her womanly guilt of not cooking for her father by having an equally womanly outing with the girls shopping for dresses in the nearby town of Port Angeles. "It had been a while since I'd had a girls' night out, and the estrogen rush was invigorating." That line really bugs me. I tend to think of "estrogen rush" as involving drooling over hot guys, not shopping, but maybe that's just me. On the up side, we're actually getting to see a little interaction between Bella and her classmates instead of being told "Jess did this," etc. It's not particularly interesting interaction, but at least it's something. They talk about boys, who likes whom, etc. (maybe that's what she means by "estrogen rush"?) and Jessica quizzes her about her past. Ooh, and she calls Bella out on her treatment of the Forks boys. Sorta.
"Didn't you ever go [to a dance] with a boyfriend or something?" Jess asked dubiously as we walked through the front doors of the store.
"Really," I tried to convince her, not wanting to confess my dancing problems. "I've never had a boyfriend or anything close. I didn't go out much."
"Why not?" Jessica demanded.
"No one asked me," I answered honestly.
She looked skeptical. "People ask you out here," she reminded me, "and you tell them no."
Unfortunately, this promising opening into Bella having to seriously look at her behavior since moving to Forks is quashed because it morphs into a revelation that one of her five (!!!) suitors, Tyler, has been going around telling everyone that he was taking her to prom. This leads to a revelation that Lauren likes Tyler, and that's why she doesn't like Bella (as opposed to not liking her because she's an insufferable snob.) And we never get back to the fact that Bella is too good for all the non-vampire boys in Forks.
Oh, and can we really ditch all the variations on "said" here? Another reason this reads like a fanfic or a high school creative writing assignment instead of a professional novel. There are better ways to mark dialogue than looking up different ways to say "said" in a thesaurus.
Then we go into a short bit about looking at different dresses, which Bella gets to turn into another snub against small-town Washington.
The whole process was much shorter and easier than similar trips I'd taken with Renée at home. I guess there was something to be said for limited choices.
She gets Angela alone at one point and asks her if it's normal for the Cullen's to miss school a lot, and Angela tells her that "when the weather is good, they go backpacking all the time--even the doctor. They're real outdoorsy." Reasonable enough excuse to never be in school when the sun is out, but do people really buy that a doctor can take off anytime the sun is shining (even in a rainy place like Forks) and the school doesn't question the absences for such a non-critical reason? I know attendance is HUGE at my kids' school, and absences need to be accounted for not only by a call to the school, but a note the next day. And while no one has given me grief for pulling the kids out a day or two for a family trip, I'm reasonably sure the principal would want to have a few words with me if we took off regularly for backpacking trips just because the sun was shining. So I'm not really buying this.
On the upside, she decides she really likes Angela because Angela doesn't quiz her like Jessica would have, which makes her the first person who isn't a Cullen or already a family friend about whom Bella has anything nice to say.
Then Bella goes off on her own to find a bookstore, with plans to meet Jessica and Angela for dinner an hour later, but she turns her nose up at it because "the windows were full of crystals, dream-catchers, and books about spiritual healing" and inside she "could see a fifty-year-old woman with long, gray hair worn straight down her back, clad in a dress right out of the sixties, smiling welcomingly from behind the counter." No WAY Bella was gonna go anywhere where someone was smiling and being welcoming! Actually, it sounds like the kind of stores you find in Sedona, which I love, even though I'm not into crystals and new-age stuff. When we went there this past summer, it was really fun to take the kids in and show them some of the different things people believe. Again, I'm finding Bella's condescension toward anything that isn't her idea of "normal" or interesting really annoying.
Then we get an obligatory reminder that Bella is "wrestling with despair" because Edward is not here with her RIGHT NOW THIS VERY SECOND! And, because he's not with her RIGHT NOW THIS VERY SECOND, she, naturally finds herself in mortal peril when a bunch of "grimy"-looking boys around her age start following her after she inadvertently wanders into the bad part of town. There are several pages of her trying to get away from them, only to find they'd surrounded her, and then TA DA! Edward rides in on his white horse drives up in his silver Volvo and "command[s]" her to get into the car. And now the fear is gone and she feels all safe and snuggly secure!
He continues to "command" her ("Put on your seat belt!") which she "quickly obey[s]". She feels "profound relief, relief that went beyond my sudden deliverance." Because OMG it's Edward and I don't have to despair of having an Edward-less evening and I can "stud[y] his flawless features in the limited light"!!!11
Then he "order[s]" her to "prattle about something unimportant until I calm down" (yes, every time I use quotes around words like "command" and "order," I'm quoting the book. Bella herself sees him as "commanding" and "ordering" her around and "obeys" him.) He confesses, "Sometimes I have a problem with my temper, Bella," and he wants her to distract him so he can calm down and not go tear apart Bella's attackers.
While I can see a certain appeal to someone being THAT angry on your behalf over what could have been a very ugly, ugly thing, this is another red flag. And if we put it in the context that she believes it's possible he might be a vampire, then she should be thinking that he's talking not about beating the crap out of her would-be attackers, but very likely killing them. Literally. That should be disturbing, no matter how relieved she is at having been rescued.
He takes her back to the restaurant where she was to meet Jessica and Angela, and we find that they were very worried about her. So worried, that they ate without her. But this gives an excuse for Edward and Bella to go to dinner alone and OMG it's like a REAL DATE and EVERYTHING!
We get another reminder of Edward's perfectly perfect perfection when the "unnaturally blond" hostess drools over and flirts with him, but Edward asks for a private table, and isn't it awesome that Edward is with plain, ordinary BELLA and not some blond tart???
Bella chides him for "dazzling people," and he seems surprised, then asks if he dazzles her. The server comes, also ready to flirt, but "he didn't see it. He was watching me."
So. All the girls want Edward, but he only wants Bella. And all the boys want Bella, but she only wants Edward. Isn't it beeeeyooooootiful????
He "order[s]" her again, this time to drink her Coke. (So by my count, that's two commands and two orders.) He's worried she's going to go into shock, so when she's cold from the Coke and remembers she'd left her jacket in Jessica's car, he gives her his. Thanks to the sweater that "fit him snugly, emphasizing how muscular his chest was," she notices for the first time that he has a perfectly perfect body to go with his perfectly perfect face.
::swoon::
Then she starts asking him questions. He won't tell her why he's in Port Angeles, but she goes onto ask him if, "hypothetically," a person could read minds, with some exceptions (he interrupts to tell her "one exception"), then how could he find someone at exactly the right time and know she was in danger?
His answer? "Only you could get into trouble in a town this small. You would have devastated their crime rate statistics for a decade, you know."
Because clearly these four would-be assaulters/rapists wouldn't consider assaulting and/or raping any other girl in Port Angeles. It's only Bella who causes these kinds of problems. And just as clearly, Bella needs Edward to be safe. Without him, she's a walking death trap. (Never mind the seventeen years of her life she survived without being assaulted, raped, or killed prior to her ever meeting him.)
Two insidious messages in one two-sentence statement. 1. You are the reason you almost got assaulted and/or raped, and 2. You can't survive without me. "Red flags" doesn't even begin to describe this.
But Bella, of course, is not disturbed. A little insulted, but curiosity wins out, and she continues trying to get her to confess his super-special vampireness. To which he responds by telling her, "You're not a magnet for accidents. That's not a broad enough classification. You're a magnet for trouble. If there's anything dangerous within a ten-mile radius, it will invariably find you."
And he decides this based on ONE car accident, ONE would-be attack, and the fact that his oh-so-dangerous-and-broody-self is attracted to her? SEVENTEEN YEARS this girl lived an uneventful life in Phoenix, but she is now a magnet for trouble?
How can she not loathe him at this point?
THEN he goes on to tell her that he followed her to Port Angeles. "I've never tried to keep a specific person alive before, and it's much more troublesome than I would have believed."
You know what, Ms. Meyer? WE GET IT. We got it the first time you told us he was perfectly perfect, and now we get it that she is a danger to herself and only Edward's heroic intervention will keep her alive. Could you please lighten up on the two-by-four? And why does Bella find being constantly put down like this appealing? "I wondered if it should bother me that he was following me;" (YES!) "instead, I felt a strange surge of pleasure." (NO!)
He explains how he found her, admitting that he could read minds, but not hers. He read the thoughts of her would-be attackers, and "It was very... hard--you can't imagine how hard--for me to simply take you away, and leave them... alive." Remember, she believes there's at least a strong possibility he's a vampire, so this comment is not to be taken as hyperbole. He means he would have literally killed them. At least he seems horrified by this, even if she's not.
The chapter ends with them leaving the restaurant and beginning the ride home, where it's her turn to give him some answers.
Chapter Nine
Quick Links:
Why I'm doing this | Preface & 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 16.2 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | Epilogue |
Discussion Questions