Bella becomes a bad role model.

[kippurbird]

Chapter twelve pt. 2 Bella continues to lie to people she calls her friends and family. She calls up Jessica to tell her than she canceled her date with Edward to go to Seattle. Apparently she can't tell them -her, Mike or Charlie- that she changed her plans. They now think that she's going to be staying home instead of going out to Seattle, as opposed to what she's really going to be doing, which is going out somewhere with Edward. So if something happens to her and as she has no cell phone, they won't have any idea on how to find her. It's nice that she cares about their well being and happiness. As opposed to Edward. Or what she thinks will keep Edward just to herself. Actually, now that I think about it, this is what Bella is trying to do. Keep Edward to herself. Or Edward is making her think she wants to keep him all to herself.

After dinner, I folded clothes and moved another load through the dryer. Unfortunately it was the kind of job that only keeps hands busy. My mind definitely had too much free time, and it was getting out of control. I fluctuated between anticipation so intense that it was very nearly pain, and an insidious fear that picked at my resolve. I had to keep reminding myself that I'd made my choice, and I wasn't going back on it. I pulled his note out of my pocket much more often than necessary to absorb the two small words he'd written. He wants me to be safe, I told myself again and again. I would just hold on to the faith that, in the end, that desire would win out over the others. And what was my other choice — to cut him out of my life? Intolerable. Besides, since I'd come to Forks, it really seemed like my life was about him.

She hasn't signed a legal document. She's not getting married. Technically she's just going out with a friend. Admittedly this friend has threatened her life on several occasions and is utterly stalking her, but still a friend. Still a lot is off here. She has to keep on repeating to herself that Edward wants her to be safe. -Not that he loves or cares for her - but that he wants her to be safe. And mostly from what he's said, safe from him. Also, you have to wonder why she doesn't think about how come he keeps on telling her to be safe. And it can't be because of her "fatal" flaw of being clumsy. We haven't seen her really do anything stupidly clumsy despite what she says. She's able to cook and not kill herself in the kitchen after all. Remember when I said a few chapters ago that something made me really hate this book? I found something else that makes me hate it even more. If possible. Meyers encourages drug use.

I was relieved when it was late enough to be acceptable for bedtime. I knew I was far too stressed to sleep, so I did something I'd never done before. I deliberately took unnecessary cold medicine — the kind that knocked me out for a good eight hours. I normally wouldn't condone that type of behavior in myself, but tomorrow would be complicated enough without me being loopy from sleep deprivation on top of everything else.

If you love someone, it's okay to try and kill yourself. That sounds horribly Shakesperean. But really, she admits that she's doing things that she would normally find morally objectionable just so that she'll look good for the guy. It's for Edward, so it's okay. This sort of reasoning makes it seem like if you were to give Bella a gun and say, "Edward wants you to kill someone," she'd do it. Perhaps I'm being a little over dramatic here, but she's actively admitting she's doing something she finds morally objectionable. It's unnecessary and it's done deliberately. The message Meyers here is sending is that for a guy, it's okay to do something you don't think you should normally. And is this one step away from having sex when you're not ready? Perhaps. It could seem like that. Sure, they don't want to have sex until they're ready, but for this guy, well they want to make him happy because he's their one true love, so it'll be okay. And of course nothing bad happens as an after affect of her "gratuitous drug use." Which must mean it's A-Okay! To quote her fully, I woke early, having slept soundly and dreamlessly thanks to my gratuitous drug use. Though I was well rested, I slipped right back into the same hectic frenzy from the night before. Usually when I take cold medicine I end up all foggy and groggy in the morning. I am not well rested. But! Bella is special and so it's okay for her to use the medicine without any bad side effects. And not only that, but her reaction is not one of guilt for having taken it at all, but a sort of shrugging off, indicating that she would do it again. She's willing to shuck off her morality for Edward. And when Edward finally shows up, "

Comments

[brightrosefox.livejournal.com]

I'd heard a story somewhere about a teenage girl running around a shopping mall, biting people on the arms and saying she was a "vampire from the Twilight books." She was eventually taken in by local police.
If the story is true, it proves how incredibly influential these books are -- and now I wonder how many teenage girls have started taking unnecessary cold medicine to sleep through a night when they only feel stressed or anxious.

[amamelina.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't suprise me. Those rabid fangirls are psycho.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you have a source? Or is this a friend of a friend type of story?

[brightrosefox.livejournal.com]

Friend of a friend of a friend. Which is why I don't know if it's true. I only wish I had a source. This type of story seems common.

[amamelina.livejournal.com]

Dear Bella:

The next time you can't sleep, take the whole bottle of cough medicine, plus a handful of sleeping pills and a bottle of wine. Trust me, you'll sleep like the dead.


Ok, that was mean of me.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

But funny.

[indongcho.livejournal.com]

*smiles* Do you think Bella might do it?

[lemon-m.livejournal.com]

Oh, she'd totally kill someone if Edward told her to. He'd probably tell her that the victim is an evil person or something, and just that would make them evil in the characters' and readers' mind (kind of like with Mike- a totally sweet guy who gets the short end of the stick because the author says so). I can see it happening.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I don't think he'd even need to tell her that the victim was an evil person. Just that if she didn't do it, he couldn't be with her anymore.

[gjohnsonkoehn.livejournal.com]

Erm... Does this post just sort of stop at the beginning of a quotation for anyone but me?

[berseker.livejournal.com]

It does for me too.

Naaaaaaaaaaah.

[dove-cg.livejournal.com]

Clearly when he shows up, there are suddenly dragons, which Edward then describes in such detail the publishers just pasted little tiny dragon images in to save space. And the world was made right again. Yaaaay! XD

... c.c 9_9 6_6

*clicks little dragons* XD

[anarchicq.livejournal.com]

She doesn't say she finds it morally objectionable, she says "Something I've never done before." not "Something I normally would never do."

I sometimes to cold medicine to help me sleep. Usually it's before I have to see doctors though....

[dove-cg.livejournal.com]

I've done the same thing once or twice before (but very rarely) so I personally have nothing against it. I mean, she could easily drink a lot of alcohol and get the same effect but wouldn't that be even worse?

As for how Bella feels about it, the entire paragraph that was quoted from also contained this half of a sentence --> "I normally wouldn't condone that type of behavior in myself,"

So, yeah, she does find it objectionable on some level.