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The Subject of Twilight and the Classification of Literature |
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Anyone who may be reading this may immediately be caught by the title and think, "Twilight is blasphemous to the word!" or, if you're on the other side of the fence, "OMGEEE TWILIGHT! EDWARD/jacob is EFFING HAWT!! @_@ heart heart heart " But that is not the point of this post. I am not here to cause arguments or stand up for the series. In truth, I hate it. But I felt that I needed to write it somewhere because the thought struck me today while I was watching TV and I thought others should think about this too.
Ahem:
In regards to the subject of Twilight (the series as a whole) and it's place in literature, this deals with the concept of comedies and tragedies as defined in the dictionary. Nothing else.
The word tragedy as defined by Dictionary.com is "a dramatic composition, often in verse, dealing with a serious or somber theme, typically that of a great person destined through a flaw of character or conflict with some overpowering force, as fate or society, to downfall or destruction."
Now, to me, Twilight seems to follow this rule... to an extent. Edward is a vampire, and he wants to kill Bella. For three books, Bella is tracked by rogue vampires who want revenge for the death of their friend. The three main characters are involved in an extremely tense love triangle and the two males hate each other and fight over that bubble headed idiot. Why? I have no clue; there doesn't seem to be one single redeeming quality about her that would give anybody a reason to fight over her, but I digress. These are just a few of the "somber themes" that exist throughout the series.
However, the word comedy as listed by the aforementioned Dictionary.com is defined as "a play, movie, etc., of light and humorous character with a happy or cheerful ending; a dramatic work in which the central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstance, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion."
And here is where I become confused.
In the final installment of the series, (and the most important for proving my point) Breaking Dawn, Bella and Edward get married, but there are still hard feelings coming from the other member of the love triangle, Jacob. Bella becomes pregnant, but the baby is going to kill her. Once she has the baby, it grows very fast and may live its entire life span faster than even a normal human being. One of the other vampires sees this child and reports it to the high and mighties because she thinks its a full blooded vampire, and making vampires out of small children is against vampire law. So the high and mighties are going to come and kill them all, and there's going to be a huge bloody battle. Maybe. These are all events that fit PERFECTLY into the definition of a tragedy. Except that everyone gets what they want in the end???
Examples: Jacob becomes a ***** for Bella's demon spawn, and no longer cares about her anymore, Bella survives the morbid pregnancy and has the baby, making the transformation into a vampire to stay alive, some random jungle dwelling half-vampire appears at the end of the book and tells them that the baby is going to live for a reaaaaaally long time if not forever, the high and mighties come and talk it out with the peasants, and leave without even a trace of bloodshed. And they all live happily ever after. WTF?!
This brings me to my final conclusion which consists of two things:
A) Less importantly, Stephanie Meyer was confused and blinded when she wrote this story. She was confused because she wrote a very dramatic story, and no one died at the end. This is a result of her being blinded by her attachment to her own characters and meeting the demands of her scores of equally blind fans. In a GOOD piece of fiction, you do not create a highly anticipated climax and not deliver that climax. I know we're all tired of it by now, but compare Harry Potter. Nearly every big character died at the end of that series, and even though Harry, Ron, and Hermione all got their happy endings, the pain they had all seen through their years at Hogwarts left permanent imprints on them that lasted for the rest of their lives. And people LOVE it. People were expecting a fight and J.K. Rowling delivered. I know I was satisfied when that series ended, whereas with the Twilight series, I was sadly disappointed.
B) Twilight is not, in fact, a tragedy, but it is indeed a comedy. The characters overcame the odds set against them and triumphed, even though they... didn't really do much. Stephanie Meyer disregarded all logic while writing her final book and if something wasn't working out to her liking, she just made some crap up to make it work out. This to me is quite humorous. Like the jungle hermit that just randomly showed up when the big fight was supposed to happen and told them "Oh! My dad is a serial rapist vampire and he has a bunch of kids. And I'm at least a hundred years old, and I still look young, so your little poopsy-kins should be okay even though she's growing like a rapidly developing tumor."
In conclusion, The Twilight Series, although rather serious throughout most of the story, is not a tragedy. It is a comedy. So laugh it up people, because this s**t is hilarious.
 DarkMuse112 · Sat Jul 10, 2010 @ 06:45am · 0 Comments |
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