Breaking my Skull as I read: How Breaking Dawn is one of the Worst Pieces of Literature Ever Conceived

I know what you're thinking--why the fuck would I read this book? It was for school; I had the opportunity to review a book published within the last three years, and Breaking Dawn just made the cut, and why wouldn't I want to really examine the absolute comedy that is this book? Here's my review, as I turned it in. Complete with pictures!

It’s no secret by now that the four books that comprise The Twilight Saga have pervaded nearly every part of our culture in a way that demands an explanation. Unfortunately, it would be impossible to actually come up with an adequate explanation that did not completely write off the entire phenomena as “who knows, people will read anything if they don’t have to think about it.” The series concerns vampires and werewolves, two types of characters with a long, rich history in fiction. However, the vampires in this series, as everyone knows by now, are completely unlike any vampire ever created in a work of literature or cinema before; they sparkle. They play baseball. They show how human they really are, pouting in their teenage angst in a way that assumes just biting people’s necks and turning into bats just isn’t as fun as everyone says it is. All of this aside, the first three books are bad, but the fourth book, the “thrilling” conclusion to the saga (as an aside, I probably should not put thrilling in quotation marks like that—thrilling does not do justice to the mind blowing events in the fourth book) reads like the fourth installment to a horrible series that has been dipped in vampire crap, pissed on by a werewolf, eaten by a whiny teenager, and regurgitated into the collective mouth of its readers.

It would be comical to think that Stephanie Meyer would write the final book in this series like Anthony Burgess did with A Clockwork Orange. Burgess’s novel is divided into three parts to draw on opera symbolism. Meyer’s novel is divided into three parts, but that’s more likely because she cannot count past three than it is for any symbolic reasons. Her choice to divide the book into three parts is puzzling, given her decision to make the first and third parts told from the perspective of annoying angsty teenager Bella Swan and the middle part told from the perspective of annoying hunky werewolf Jacob Black.

Bella’s first section begins on her way to her wedding. “Engine snarling like a hunting panther, the car jolted forward so fast that my body slammed into the black leather seat and my stomach flattened against my spine.“Arg!” I gasped as I fumbled for the brake” (6). If this isn’t a signal to put the book down now and walk away, the pain that comes from continuing to read it is deserved. Now, Meyer has made it overwhelmingly obvious that she does not know what a vampire is like, but apparently she’s not too keen on panthers, either. One would assume that a panther would hunt stealthily, refraining from noises such as snarling so as not to scare away whatever it’s about to murder, but this is Stephanie Meyer we’re talking about. Notice Bella’s reaction to this painful description: “Arg!” I’m not sure what’s going on here—either the only intelligent response Bella could come up with after slamming her body in a way that flattens her stomach against her spine is to yell “Arg!” Or, this is Meyer, completely incapable of an intelligent thought herself.

Genius.

Fast forward a bit to the key event in the novel’s opening, her wedding to the brooding vampire hero Edward, and more hilarity ensues. For context, it should be known that Edward and Bella’s irritating relationship has not included sexual intercourse, because that would be immoral to do before marriage, and the largest concern involving a whiny teenager and a ridiculous vampire should be one of morality, so Edward promises to consummate the relationship after the two are wedded. Naturally, the sexiness commences on the honeymoon. Unnaturally, the honeymoon commences on an island off the coast of Brazil that Edward’s family owns. Edward is a vampire, as is his family. They own an island off the coast of Brazil—this bears repeating. Vampires not only sparkle and play baseball in the Twilight universe, they fucking scuba dive. Perhaps most absurd, however, is Edward’s super vampire ability to speak Portuguese. Meyer must have thought better than to actually put this to the page, however, because instead it is glossed over: “Unable to understand a word of Edward’s Portuguese instructions to the driver…” (53). It only gets funnier, however, when Edward awkwardly shows how nervous he is to make love to his new bride: “It’s a little hot here. I thought…that would be best” and “I tried to think of everything that would make this…easier” (55). Those ellipses are not there to signify a missing piece of text from that quotation—that is Meyer’s uncomfortable style of writing shining through like the glistening skin of her vampire characters. He asks her to join her for a swim, a favorite vampire past time, and as he leaves, she goes through her suitcase, noting the “very lingerie-ish lingerie” as the reader’s eyes slowly start to just fall out. She joins him, the description of the two having sex in the water is again glossed over, and she wakes up the next afternoon to realize they had sex. Edward, in an attempt to prove his critics who are always harping on his angsty teenage whininess wrong, uses his amazing vampire strength, knocking Bella unconscious for a span of nearly a day, and then probably smoking an entire carton of post sex cigarettes. They try again, and this time, Bella becomes pregnant with a telepathic half vampire baby.

Caution: Do not have sex with this man.

The baby becomes trouble for Bella, kicking like any baby would, but kicking her like a vampire can kick, and thus breaking her ribs and severing her spine. Yes, the unborn baby severs her spine. In an inexplicable twist, Edward recommends Bella abort the baby; apparently his Christian morals Meyer made it such a point to give to him end at premarital sex. Bella claims she feels a connection to the baby and opts to keep it. Jacob’s perspective enters.

Jacob’s story lasts past Bella’s hilarious childbirth. In the previous novels, Jacob’s character is what Stephanie Meyer would attempt to call a foil character, competing for Bella’s love with Edward. However, he does not get the girl, and his wolf pack plans to kill the baby and Bella, because it’s clearly evil. Jacob doesn’t like this idea, however, and forms his own wolf pack, presumably while donning a leather jacket and riding a motorcycle. He shows his toughness and his appeal to young people when in anticipation over the conflict, he says “Back in the day, you could count on Paul for a fight pretty much whenever” (94). Granted, this series is aimed at a younger demographic who mindlessly speaks in this manner, but where other authors attempt to show some semblance of intellect, Stephanie Meyer chooses to reduce her characters to the mind numbing form her readers have by this point become so familiar with. To quote from anything else he says would be an affront to the English language, so instead one needs only to look at the list of chapters that comprise the second part—chapters with titles like “Why Didn’t I Just Walk Away? Oh Right, Because I’m An Idiot”, “You Know Things Are Bad When You Feel Guilty For Being Rude To Vampires”, and the brain shattering “What Do I Look Like? The Wizard of Oz? You Need A Brain? You Need A Heart? Go Ahead. Take Mine. Take Everything I Have” (3).

Coming soon to a university English class near you.

The action becomes worth mentioning again when the time comes to give birth to the wretched vampire baby killing Bella. Before she goes into labor, Bella, Jacob, and Edward are all hanging out on the couch, when Edward starts communicating telepathically with the baby: “It…he or she is…happy” (215). There is no one who could possibly read this as a beautiful moment; it’s written as awkwardly as this series was created, and the only appropriate reaction is a fit of laughter. Go ahead, laugh. The final chapter of Jacob’s section is called “There are no words for this.” Fortunately or unfortunately, there are plenty of words in this chapter, and if they do not work to make this book any better, they do work to make this book hilarious. As Bella starts erupting blood from her mouth when the baby’s placenta breaks and must be born early, Edward recognizes how dire the situation is: “I glanced over to see Edward’s face pressed against the bulge. Vampire teeth—a surefire way to cut through vampire skin” (231). This is Meyer’s subtle way of describing Edward’s c-section. Given with his teeth. The baby now delivered, Bella is dying, and to save her, Edward injects her heart Pulp Fiction style, but with his vampire venom, making her a vampire and saving her. The logic is comatose inducing. Jacob is nearly overtaken by a desire to destroy the baby that he believes has killed Bella, only to end his abomination of a story by saying it was the baby in his arms that held him in check (237). Nearly sixty pages later, it is revealed that Jacob’s murderous, vengeful desires are thwarted when he imprints on the baby. While this sounds exciting, (I guess), it’s not; what it actually means is that he has fallen in love with her, destined to love her forever. How beautiful.

I am so turned on right now.

The retarded plot aside, it is clear that Meyer also has a horrific inability to write. Jacob’s chapter names alone can turn an intelligent person stupid, and the examples outlined above barely scratch the surface of her piss poor writing that has somehow earned her the publication of four books in this series and an undying love from billions of teenage dimwits.

As stated earlier, there is no point in attempting to understand the ubiquitousness of The Twilight Saga in today’s culture; it simply cannot be done. What is more upsetting is how the stupidity of its plot is long surpassed by the horrendous writing in each book, all hundreds of insufferable pages long. A word to the wise: if thinking about reading this book, or any book from the series, consider first your own sanity and intelligence, and consider next how you would like to die, because it could damn well happen while reading this.