Guest Post: In Defense of the Twilight Saga

When the Breaking Dawn trailer was released last month, we posted that news here and a ‘troll’ jumped in to say how pathetic the writing in the Forks series is, how juvenile the readers, and how sad it is that we take Mrs. Meyer seriously as an author. S/He was slapped down, of course, but like the mole he popped back up a few times to invite more attacks (see the definition of internet troll).

As a rule, I don’t like it when readers ‘feed the trolls’ by responding at length. When the webmaster at TwilightNewsSite offered his opinion, though, I asked if I could put it up as a guest post. Enjoy!


I, too, am troubled by your argument, [Troll name].

You suggest that Twilight has no value because it is so popular, and then assert this argument is valid because it is so popular.

The example where you equivocate the popularity of Twilight and Transformers, which relies on “spectacle” over other elements (presumably including plot, meaning and character) is not an accurate comparison.

It’s true that just because something is *momentarily* popular doesn’t necessarily mean it is offers great value, and thus most things of that sort come and go quickly — like many pop songs, for instance.  Yet, the popularity of Twilight is enduring quite a bit more, longer, and pervasively, than a catchy pop song, however, which suggests it does offer real value.  I suspect that as computer graphics improve, Transformers will be forgotten, like the early “talkie” films.  Twilight, however, will endure.  Like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, I am quite confident we will be watching all sorts of Twilight-branded entertainments into the far future.

As for your distaste for spectacle, I agree, but I think Aristotle covered that topic pretty well, so you can take that up with him (see: “Poetics,” eg., http://www.english.hawaii.edu/criticalink/aristotle/terms/spectacle.html).

Regardless, Twilight does not rely on spectacle for its popularity, or its enduring value, so again, that’s a poor comparison.

On my own blog, I have written several posts over the years about current criticisms of Twilight.  It’s been a while since I have updated that, even though they are very popular.  So, right now, the current arguments against Twilight having much value — the “any” value arguments have mostly died off — are usually based in:

(1) A lack of understanding of Twilight itself (as in, they haven’t read it, carefully), so they hate it;

(2) A distaste for what Eugenides calls, “The Marriage Plot” (see http://www.npr.org/2011/10/11/140949453/a-marriage-plot-full-of-intellectual-angst), where the characters’ marriage is sort of the be-all-end-all choice of life;

(3) A repugnance for religious allegory, specifically, a disagreement with anything that suggests that people can and/or should become more “godlike,” (like Edward, for instance), and;

(4) Sadly, and increasingly, religious bigotry, specifically anti-Mormonism.

So, this is the part where I break those arguments down.  Sigh.  Here goes:

1. The allegorical aspects of Twilight are so obvious and profound to the careful reader that those who don’t see them should try, you know, actually reading the series.

Bella’s trying to become “immortal” with her “perfect,”  “angelic,” and “godlike” Edward, for Christ’s sake.  How much more obvious could it be?!  I mean, people freak out about all the many wondrous epithets ascribed to the Cullens, like the Greek gods of Homeric epic poetry, and never stopped to think about *why* they were there, and *what* they actually mean.

So to those critics, I have one word: “Duh.”

And because I am being generous, here’s another: “Godlike.” Think about it.

If you have only seen the movies, then you don’t know “Twilight” either, as our dear friend, the screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg, oh-so-helpfully changed the thematic structure of the books for the films as much as she could sneak past Stephenie Meyer and company, partially negating the films’ impact.  I think Rosenberg would have more enjoyed writing a screenplay about, say, a young girl who becomes self-actualized through meaningless choices and sexual profligacy, just like Jessica suggests in her graduation speech as valedictorian(!); Twilight, it should be noted, is not that story.

And Jessica, it should also be noted, is far from the valedictorian of her graduating class, in the Twilight books.  Anna Kendrick is wonderful on screen, but that speech about the discovering the meaninglessness of your life to find meaningfulness in your life (and maybe score some hotties on the way), perhaps was not the best way to increase her screen time, as the entire thematic impact of “Eclipse” is about the monumental importance of Bella’s choices, including chastity.  But I digress.

If you have read Twilight and didn’t see the metaphorical meaning of the work, then you probably don’t understand what allegory is, or can be.  To test that, for comparison, you probably don’t like reading scripture much either — something like, “It’s just all these old stories.”  As Chief Swan would say, “Well, good luck with that.”

OTOH, if you’re still in school, and are looking for meaning in Twilight/life, be sure to tune into the whole allegory/metaphor thing when it comes up in class.  It’s a much bigger deal than your teacher may realize, because if you can interpret stories, then you can interpret life.  As in: Your life.  Which is a good thing.

As my old pal Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  So, you know, make your life worth living, and paying attention in English class may help you to do just that.

For people already out of school, um, maybe you can give some thought to the potence of allegory and metaphor in your life.  For instance, you could start with your wedding ring.  And notice how it continues around and around, without end, which is a very Twilight-y thing to consider (and is relevant to our next point).  What does your wedding ring mean to you, in the broadest sense?  In the deepest?  What does the meaning you find in your ring say about your marriage?  Now, apply that same approach to other elements of life; rinse, repeat.

2. The “marriage as important issue” issue.  Meyer has created a rich “marriage plot” by tying marriage to eternal life — the immortality of her “angelic” vampires in the Cullen family.

Um, marriage is still an important decision.  It has a great deal of impact on life, even if you could get divorced.  For example, try getting divorced and/or married; then get back to me on the whole “low impact marriage” thing.

I am sorry if getting married is a frustrating challenge for you, personally.  I suggest facing that challenge, with effort and patience.  I don’t know why girls can’t ask guys to marry, but I see a world full of anxiety due to that single issue.  I am not suggesting a solution, necessarily, just stating my sympathy.  It’s hard enough to face the many issues of “getting married” when you are the guy, and actually can ask someone to marry.  How to face it when you can’t ask anyone…  well, perhaps Bella has some allegorical advice for you, that might help.  In any case, hating the “marriage plot” of Twilight won’t help eliminate your concerns, and may worsen them besides (see Bella’s frustrations over her mom’s griping about marriage, for an allegorical example).

Meyer’s source for this topic, no doubt, is LDS beliefs that marriage can endure beyond “til death do us part,” which posits that mortal life is a time to gain experiences which will help ennoble a person for lives to come hereafter.  Despite the overt Mormon-ness of that point, I don’t actually know many people (with good marriages) who relish the thought of “til death do us part;” it is a serious concern to many, regardless of personal matters of faith.

The point here is that lessons learned during mortal life are very important, so it is crucial to examine one’s life carefully and learn as much as possible along the way, so you can make the most beneficial choices in the future.

Whether you see that happening in the lives of prominent Mormons, including presidential candidates, is irrelevant to Meyer’s point.  Bella learns a great deal from her experiences, and from her carefully interpreting stories of all kinds — films, folktales, and books (hint, hint) — ennobling herself, and helping her to make insightful choices, thereby overcoming the world(s).

So I don’t see a lot of problems beyond those issues with Twilight discussing marriage in a positive light, or in suggesting that marriage can even be seen in a positive light.  If you disagree with that point, I don’t really know what to tell you, except that maybe you and Melissa Rosenberg can get together sometime and discuss.  Here’s a topic:  “Men/women!  Who can stand them?!”

3.  “A repugnance for religious allegory.”

A lot of people just don’t like religion.  So considering religious allegory is distasteful for them.  I suspect that many of these people really just don’t like God; after all, why is He so mean to them?

I say this because why are so many be adamantly atheist people out there not-believing in something that they don’t believe in?  I mean, if you don’t believe in God, don’t.  There aren’t anti-Martians, or anti-Narnians, or anti-Jedi.  Because they don’t exist.  Yet there are anti-God people everywhere.  So thereby, in a sense, they acknowledge God’s presence, if not his actual person, undermining their own arguments.  (I concede that being aggravated by religious people, rather than God Himself, is another matter, but Bella is specifically not a religious person without being atheist or antagonistic toward religious beliefs in general, so there you go.  As a result, there are plenty of other, secular ways to look at Twilight so, you know, why get upset with Twilight over religious concerns?)

Briefly, there are two types of religious beliefs:  those rooted in mysticism (what I call the “open sesame” approach), and those rooted in cause and effect (the “get off your butt” approach).  That said, it’s not an either-or proposition.  Regardless of what an official religious group teaches, folk beliefs run the gamut between these two sides of the spectrum, and extend deeply into secular society: Is life magic, and stuff just happens, or is it rooted in cause-and-effect, in which case you should really get busy?  So this spectrum can be kind of a vague thing to identify out there IRL.  FWIW, IMHO, Mormonism is, in general, to a certain extent, kinda-sorta… firmly and adamantly on the side of cause and effect (and so is Bella/Twilight).

So, from that point of view, why is God so mean to you?  Because you haven’t gotten off your butt and done something better with your own life.  God doesn’t sit on His hands; you shouldn’t either.  You have choices; make them.  Respond.  Choose.  Act.  Don’t, just, bemoan.

This is something that is expounded upon greatly in Twilight.  Bella bemoans things at first, but ultimately saves herself, saves the Cullens, saves the vampire world from the evil Volturi.  Because she does something about it.

Yet, lots of feminist criticism centers around Bella being a doormat.  In short: See point #1, above.

Bella endures a lot, to be sure, as do the women and men throughout the series.  Everyone is in pain, one way or another.  They suffer.

Yet Bella cures them all; the end.  She finds a path from clumsily stumbling through life to on-the-path-to-perfection “immortality,” she helps the Cullens get over their hang-ups, helps Charlie move on past his divorce, helps the Wolfpack get beyond their bigotry and fear-based lifestyle, and she convinces the Volturi to acknowledge that they aren’t the arbiters of all truth and dispensers of ultimate justice for everyone on the planet so, you know, relax Volturi.

Note that Bella doesn’t replace the Volturi in leading the world (or at least, isn’t trying to), hence her embarrassment at the end of BD when she acknowledges she is the superhero “of the day,” only.  That’s all.  So in the end, there is no ultimate arbiter of truth and justice who lives on this Earth.  Which is significant, because of criticism number four.

4.  This is the anti-Mormon point.  What with the accolades of the Broadway play, presumptuously titled, “The Book of Mormon,” and the two LDS candidates (Romney and Huntsman) for President of the United States, the topic of anti-Mormonism (as it is called) is a big deal of late (see http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2011/10/mitt_romney_s_mormon_cult_controversy_anti_mormonism_is_the_prej.html ).

An aside: I don’t attend any church, but I’ve lived among many religious communities across America, and now live in lovely rural Utah.  IMO, religious social groups have all of the same problems that other social groups have.  Plus, gather a few million people together and, dang, you’re bound to have a few “winners” in the group — the nuts, crackpots, and wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing who make things difficult for everyone else.  Religious groups, especially, seem to attract people who are having especial difficulties in life, so they may wind up with a subset of nuts that is larger than most social groups.  I don’t know that for sure, because I haven’t counted, but I’ve seen it all.  That said, the Mormons do as well as any other religious/social group I’ve lived with.  And to be honest, better than most.  Which is why I live here, greedily devouring the pleasantly sociable Mormon ambiance without having to actually go to 17 meetings each week (or whatever) myself.

On hypocrites:  People outside of religious groups often get aggravated at them, because they don’t like their worldview (which is one thing) and accuse them generally of hypocrisy (which is quite another).  Aspiring to live better, when you aren’t already living better, makes you a hypocrite, they say.

But to actually live better, you have to aspire to do so, first.  Accordingly, what some call hypocrisy, I would call “trying.”  Nothing wrong with that.  So, I don’t think that “trying” means religious folks are hypocrites.  If they don’t seem to be  genuinely trying, well, maybe they are and we should just be glad they aren’t as bad as they used to be, and (God help us) hope they continue to improve.

And I don’t think fears of hypocrisy should result in people not trying hard to live better in their life (which I have actually seen people do, far too often).

That said, everyone seems to know that Mormons believe their church is true.  *The* true church, in fact.  Shock and dismay among non-believers follows.

Um, just want to point out that in my experience, most churches believe they are true.  In fact, pretty much all of them.  Hence, the whole “church” thing.  So, you know, get over it.  Churches believe themselves to be true, or the true-est thing out there.  Nothing to see here; move along.

What many assume is that for Mormons to be right, that must make everyone else “wrong.”  I’m certain some LDS people get their backs up with other religions along those lines (and most certainly toward polygamist splinter groups, who go on TV claiming they are “Mormons,” who annoy actual LDS people no end; so, you may be annoyed by “Mormons” but nowhere near as much as LDS people are).

Officially, however, LDS beliefs state that all churches (and belief systems in general) have truth.  Maybe not all, but certainly some.  And that people will be judged on the Last Day not by LDS beliefs but by their own, personal, genuine beliefs.  If you’re Catholic; great, say the Mormons, be a good Catholic.  If you’re born again, wonderful, then act like it.  If you’re Shinto, new age, nature worshipper, whatever; knock yourself out.  Go for it.  Whatever you believe, do it (see number 11 here: http://lds.org/library/display/0,4945,106-1-2-1,FF.html).

Mormons don’t seem at all surprised if others think their beliefs are pretty stringent and occasionally surprising, they just don’t know why you’re so upset about it, when it’s not your burden to bear.  Even when they are a little chagrined to have it pointed out specifically, as all religious groups do.  And they probably feel like they could use a cup of coffee, too.  As very-not-Mormon, pro-skater Tony Alva once said, “Go for what you know” — a pretty good sum up of Mormon beliefs.

So, ease off on the Mormon thing.  They got their own problems, like 17 meetings to get to this week alone.  They sure like to meet.  And besides, Twilight isn’t *that* Mormon-y anyway.  So relax.

And go read “Twilight” again.  You might learn something along the way.

Now, John’s book, “Spotlight,” contains what some Mormons would consider intelligent, well-informed, non-Mormon analysis of Mormon theology and influence in the Twilight Saga, as well as Mormonism’s likely impact on Stephenie Meyer personally (which is a little presumptive, if I may say so).  Meanwhile, other Mormons would consider it anti-Mormon propaganda.  And they probably have, I suppose.  Personally, I think the critics, and John, should have eased off a bit.  Which John and I have talked about personally before, as I recall.  If you could offend potential readers/buyers, why include it?  (John has some strong and well-laid out reasons why, but I’ll leave that argument to him.)

Regardless, there is a lot of great stuff in there (yes, John, I just referred to your one of your master works as “stuff” 🙂 ).  Even if you’re Mormon.  Or even merely Mormon-friendly, shall we say.  So, if that could/would offend you, be prepared to skip over a few pages, like a ten or so, out of the 250-page book.

And to Mrs. Meyer, I suggest you don’t read “Spotlight” at all, even if much of it may be addressed towards you; just go work on “The Host” sequel, or any unfinished books-which-shall-not-be-named instead.  Please.

Comments

  1. ReadTwilightSeries says

    Very nice explanation..I can say, just another interpretation of the saga..but you’ve great points..

  2. CleverCrookshanks says

    Okay, I’m not exactly a fan of Twilight, but I did read it. I’m with you on a lot of this — I think people are too hard on Twilight for the most part.

    But the whole argument that people don’t like religious allegory because they’re anti-God, which is silly because being anti-God is a tacit acknowledgement that there IS a God blows your credibility right out of the water.

    Atheists aren’t anti-God. They just don’t believe in religious doctrine, which doesn’t mean they hate religion, although some do.

    I’m an atheist, and I picked up Twilight before it was famous, but I knew Meyers was Mormon and that the books were YA, and so I could expect no extramarital sex, an emphasis on dominant males and submissive females, a marriage plot, and, unfortunately, a pregnancy, no matter how improbable.

    I didn’t dislike Twilight because I’m not religious, or because I have a problem with paranormal romances for teens. I don’t mind submissive female protagonists, and I did understand that I wasn’t really Meyers’s target audience.

    It just wasn’t very well written. The dialogue was stilted and too much time was spent angsting about relationship statuses rather than being proactive in the narrative.

    To dismiss distaste for the books as a possible bigotry on the part of non-religious readers, and then to go on and reveal your own ignorance and bigotry about atheists weakens your whole argument, which is unfortunate, as you seem to have spent a lot of time on it.

  3. revgeorge says

    Well, and even quite a few of us religious folks weren’t too keen on Twilight… 😉

  4. John, I wrote a long and scathing post elsewhere about Twilight, and I hope it’ll pass muster as not merely being a “troll” post. I dislike Twilight and explained why, but critiquing something with vigor isn’t the same as trolling–unlike the Maddox character who you reference above. I don’t think Twilight is well-written or inspiring, and I think its messages about love and sex are just awful. Awful! But I LOVE Harry Potter and Hunger Games, so I’m not one of those trolls who bashes something just because it’s popular. When it comes to Twilight, I can lay out a reasoned case, informed by having actually become familiar with the subject matter, about exactly WHY I think it’s terrible. So for the record, it is absolutely possible to bash Twilight…and be making good points in the process.

  5. Dear Matt,

    Thank you for this note.

    I have three questions for the rational Twilight basher:

    (1) Are you familiar with the defining genre characteristics of popular romances to the degree that you recognize stories in which the author’s conformity or departures from said standards work or fail? Do you know popular romance, in effect, well enough to have favorite authors and those you dislike?

    If the answer to either of those is “no,” you are more than likely critiquing Mrs. Meyer’s genre more than her work.

    (2) How do you explain the effect Mrs. Meyer’s work has had on millions of readers if it is a failed work?

    Please note here that the answer “because they’re stupid” is a self-serving and lazy response obscuring the failure to get at what obviously is working in her supposedly incompetent and regrettable writing.

    (3) Have you read my book, Spotlight: An Up Close Look at the Artistry and Meaning of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga?

    If not, I urge you to do this. You are asking me to take seriously your opinion while neglecting the work I have published that explains the popularity of the books in the quality and effectiveness of Mrs. Meyer’s writing. Your approach — explaining how bad they are – is a logical non-starter because it ignores the elephant in the room, namely, how readers respond to the book.

    Forgive me if this seems like impatient dismissal of your ideas, but, frankly, I’m not sure the backwardness of your approach when tied to the “I know better” posture Twi-bashers assume deserves much more than that. Read my book and critique it; please don’t ask me to take your point of view on merits because you tell me you’re a thoughtful type when your position a priori is lacking.

    “Bad books” may sell very well but not because they’re poorly written or because they have no contents that resonate within readers. Unless you are dismissing all popular romance, linking the S&M pornographic best selling Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy and Twilight because they are both focused on male-female relations, you haven’t much to stand on.

    Again, my apologies for the unveiled rebuke; I am not asserting that you are not a thoughtful reader or one that would not respond more kindly to a charitable response (I certainly prefer those!). You seem hardy enough, though, to be grateful for plain rather than dissembling speech and to have my opinion ‘straight up.’

    Thanks for writing — but please do not feel obliged to respond, especially if your answer is anything other than, “I’ve read your book and still think the Twilight saga is a failed effort.”

    Respectfully,

    John

  6. Matt:

    Telling us that you can “lay out a reasoned case” without telling us what it might contain, nor giving us the address so we can find it ourselves, is a waste of commenting space. If you posted such a “reasoned case” elsewhere here on HogPro, you’ll still need to give the link. There are lots of Matts out in cyberspace. And while John reads extremely widely, you can’t expect him to have read every single critique on the web or in print. I could write here that I have a doctorate in Twilight Studies, but unless I provide documentary evidence (for example, a link to my alumni listing on a college website and a photo of my graduation ceremony on my blog) my claim is unfounded and pointless. It also happens to be untrue. So you’ll need to forgive John and the regular readers of this site if we presume your unverifiable claim to be similarly untrue.

    From your short comment, it seems that you have three basic points that you describe as “critiquing … with vigor”. You state (without providing evidence) that you do not think these book/s (possibly you have only read or skimmed the first of the saga, your comment is unclear) are “well-written or inspiring” and that “its messages about love and sex are just awful.” I will consider each of these in turn.

    John has here, and in his book Spotlight, argued very convincingly that Twilight has a well-crafted narrative, even if the vocabulary was limited and repetitive, the sentences simple, and … [insert here any other criticism you or others care to level at Meyer’s writing.] Considering only one element of writing, without considering the others, will lead to one-dimensional criticism. If a book has competent plotting and uses sophisticated rhetorical devices such as complex allegory, yet uses simple language, does that make it a literary failure? If so, strike off Animal Farm and The Old Man and the Sea from your Great Modern Classics list, along with your rejection of Twilight. I don’t agree that Twilight was badly written. Even if we were only to consider the evidence of sales, it is blatantly obvious that Bella’s story was well-written because it was perfectly crafted for a positive reception by its market audience. Whether you believe this audience should be allowed to choose their own books to read is another, totally different, question.

    You state that the books are not inspiring. They certainly seem to have inspired millions of people to spend money on books and movie tickets, not to mention inspiring book editors and publishers to grant book contracts to more YA authors, to more Mormon authors (eg Allie Condie), and to more YA gothic romance authors. Is that not an awful lot of inspiration? The books cannot possibly be critiqued for failing to provide inspiration to scads of teens to hold out for Mr Right (you’ll know him by his sparkles). Personally, I was inspired by reading Twilight to read more novels in general, a habit I had largely allowed to lapse with the birth of my children. But there is a deeper level of inspiration than any of these basic rebuttals consider. As an allegory, Twilight encourages people to seek out the One who can provide eternal life. It points out (in New Moon) the devastating loss one would feel if the promise of immortality was to be revoked. It clarifies the choice between a simple life with a hole in the heart and a sanctified life with a holy heart (in Eclipse – the choice Bella faces metaphorically between Jacob and Edward). And, in Breaking Dawn, Meyer gives us a picture of the hope that LDS people have, that they will one day be gods who can rule their own worlds with power. Uninspiring? Only if you choose to ignore the message Meyer has embedded allegorically and anagogically in her tale.

    You might not like nor appreciate the messages about love and sex in the novels, but that doesn’t make the books terrible. It just means that you disagree with the way Meyer handles those themes in her books. I disagree with the way The Hunger Games portrays mental illness as something that one should be hated for (cf Katniss’s relationship with her mother), but that doesn’t make for a terrible trilogy. It is hard to guess which particular element that you object to about the way love and sex are dealt with in the books with only your objection that they are “awful” to go on. Repeating your statement with an exclamation mark does not make it necessarily true, either. John has, on his ForksHSPro website, dealt with the issue of sex, femininity and gender roles in Twilight, arguing that Meyer’s writings are far more feminist than militant feminists admit on their superficial reading. In his book Spotlight and in his websites he and others have discussed the use of the Bella-Edward romance as an Everyman allegory, a picture of the relationship between man and God. If you object to the way Meyer relates Bella to Edward in the books, perhaps your real objection is to the way the LDS religion relates the two, because that’s what Meyer has really written about. And if your objection is to the fact that Edward watches Bella sleep, which so many objectors describe as “creepy”, I have to say, get over yourself! I watch my children – and my husband – sleeping all the time, and it stirs deep feelings of love in my heart when I see the peace on their faces that sleep brings. It isn’t creepy at all. What is creepy is the way so many people seem to think watching someone sleep is worth vilifying someone for. If he raped her unawares while she was unconscious, now that would be creepy. But all he does is watch her and wonder what she is dreaming about, make plans to protect her – and perhaps wish that he too could dream. Not such a creepy thing to do, given his chronic insomnia. Bella and Edward remain virgins until they marry, with far less fooling around than (I suspect) the average couple in high school nowadays. Not only that, they are monogamous within the marriage relationship. What’s not to like? Perhaps you object to the novels’ conservative portrayal of love and sex belonging within marriage. In that case, you need to consider John’s first point above. Meyer chose to write within the genre of romance, and in this matter she played straight by the Mills&Boon rule book. If you don’t like the way romance authors write about love and sex, that’s a problem you have with the genre, not with Meyer’s writing itself.

    And by the way, loving The Hunger Games and Harry Potter doesn’t stop you being a book-bashing troll. It just means you can read and live in the 21st century.

  7. Jordan Rapp says

    I love to be able to analyze both sides of an argument, I believe opinions on the literary worth of Twilight have credibility regardless of the support. When I first tried to read Twilight I put it down after 30 pages, I hated Bella’s internal obsession with Edwards eye color. After a while I decided I would give Twilight another chance and get over the seemingly pointlessness of Bella’s thoughts; I got hooked and had finished the whole series after 3 weeks. The problem with any argument is when people state their opinions with no support and expect other people to agree with them, and then get angry over the effect they cause.
    On the comments about atheists, I think people should be careful about being overly general, I have met atheists who hate God and think people who believe in a religion are crazy; but I have also met atheists who accept that people believe opposite them and live a life in a orderly way. If you are religious realize that we are all made in Gods image and people are made with the ability to understand a higher power exists, atheists just decide not to believe, this is the same as believers choosing to believe. atheists have reasons not to believe and it is not anyone’s function to face an atheist to believe, I have told all my friends who do not believe in Christianity about my religion and that is the extent of what I am supposed to do Gad will do the rest; shouldn’t we let God do his job?
    Back to the Twilight argument, I believe it is a great story, and so do millions of other people, but there are always people who think differently, which is the whole point of publishing. what fun would it be to publish a book if people didn’t analyze it?

  8. Aaron Loyd says

    I’ve only read the first book and The Short Life of Bree Tanner. I’m sort of in the middle of the debate. I thought the story was okay. I had more problems with the writing — I’m not a snob but I thought some of the descriptions given about Edward were over-the-top. I’d say there was a similar problem with the writing in general throughout. I’ll probably finish the rest of the saga eventually but I have a lot more respect for J. K. Rowling and Suzanne Collins. If not master stylists themselves they’re a lot more consistent and effective IMO.

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