After reading Twilight, I was washed over by lots of thoughts and emotions, and feel that no one in the world can compete the American writer, Stephenie Meyer, in writing vampire story, who can make a trite, dull narration to perfection, and into a romantic breathtaking love story.
The fantasy novel, Twilight, is written by Stephenie Meyer, and it is also the first novel of her Twilight Saga series. This novel centers on the thrilling meeting between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen and development of their seemingly impossible love, and ends up with the Cullen's effortful protections to keep Bella safe from a coven of evil vampires.
Stephenie lays out her adventuous story with Bella's "I" narration. In the novel, the heroine, Bella Swan, is a seventeen-year-old high school student, who just moves from torrid Phenix to arboreous cloudy Forks, to live with her father, Charlie, the police chief of town, who is divorced with her mother Renée for many years.
I'd never given much thought to how I would die — though I'd had reason enough in the last few months — but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.
At the beginning, Bella's monologue drags readers into a mysterious, and even dark, evil state, as she mentions her doomed death at her young age, and of course arouses readers' curiosity to fumble their ways to advance in this intricate maze. At her new school, Bella finds herself immediately intrigued by the standoffishand angel-like Edward Cullen and his siblings, which paves the way for the unusual love between a vampire and an ordinary human.
As mentioned in previous books, vampires in Twilight are also represented with fast speed, pale skin, cold, power, immortal life, etc, but in addtion to these features, Stephenie Meyer blazes a trail and endows vampires new characters, which enable them to coexist with human community, so as to make their improbable and risky love way possible and heart-touching.
First, different from other vampires, Carlisle, Edward's adoptive father, is well educated and purified. He abominates what he is, and never feeds on human's blood. After years of struggle and self-restraint, he finds a new way to survive, in which he can finally compromise with his fate and welcomes a more meaningful lifestyle. Then he chooses to change his later wife and adopted children into vampires, and cultivates them into his kind. Through bitter training and exercises, all his family members manage to ignore the lure of human's scent, and instead they suck animals' blood for living. They have become "vegetarians", as they call themselves, half jokingly.
This advantage of Carlisle's family makes them distinguished from other vampires and also gain them access to human community, and live with people harmoniously. In Forks, the glum town, Carlisle works as a doctor, trusted and respected by all the town people, and his children, nothing far from ordinary teenagers, go to the local high school daily and stick to school routine strictly, except for sunny weather or blood type match class. They try to get involve in human beings' circle, eager to become a member of them, and totally ignorant of the barrier that their odd behavior, ill-looking but beautifully pale face, and mysterious backgroud set an invisible wall between them and the ordinary people.
In addition, though Edward and his family live into the depth of the forest, far away from the town people, but different from readers' common sense, they don't live in horrified and worn coffins, but a modern villa, whose interior decoration is up-to-date and in fashion. The Cullen's never live in the past, but go with the trends. They wear causual clothes, drive luxrious cars, and get used to breathing and blinking every few seconds, and all of these can be seen as a good disguise for vampires, but also through them we can sense their effort and resolution to get along with human beings.
Thirdly, also the most important factor is, instead of abhorring and taking revenge on human beings, or sheerly pleasing themselves by drinking human's blood, Edward and his family love and cherish human beings, even envy their limited life, weak physical condition, and mediocre ability. Although devil or immortality always go with vampires, here in this novel, the writer presents the Cullen's with noble traits, such as, passion for love and for family, integrity, intelligence and bravery, as they even risk their lives to protect a human being, which become the big charm for this novel and win over readers' hearts.
To me, another attraction of the novel comes from language usage and vivid description. Different from other novels whose languages adpoted are deliberate or complicated, the language Stephenie Meyer manages to employ is seemingly terse and causual, but indeed accurate, meaningful and imaginative, successfully protraying a 17-year-old girl's image: her low-key life style, her love-struck persistance and her struggling inner activity. Besides, the writer's description is highly skilled, while I am reading words between the lines, I can't help visualizing the picture in which every detail of the story they writer plots to reveal in public pop up in my eyes, and leaves an indelible memory in my mind.
Last but not least, the title "Twilight", is also worth mentioning. By definition, it has two distinct meanings, both of which are applied intentionally by the writer to refer to opposite prospectives from Bella and Edward. To Bella, it sympolizes an early morning, a new beginning of life, merry and joyous, while to Edward, twilight on the contrary, shows the time of dusk, implying the dark night is on its way, ready to lurk into innocent young girl's doomed life, and drive her to the endless immortality. Even the title alone is designed with multiple hidden meanings, no wonder after reading it, most readers are desperate for the other works in the Twilight Series, and certainly, I am one of them.
