Starflower
Twilight – A Quick Guide for Adults
We haven‘t written about Twilight before. That is because we are not teenage girls. At least that‘s what I thought until friends, adults I know to be perfectly reasonable human beings, began to confess to being Twilight fans. And some adults who aren‘t Twilight fans at least take an interest because they have kids who are Twilight fans.
Between the huge hype about the Twilight novels, and more recently, about the films based on those books, it‘s time for an adult‘s quick guide to Twilight:
In 2003 the mormon housewife Stephenie Meyer had a dream about a girl and a vampire. The dream lead to the writing of the first book in the vampire saga Twilight. There are four books in the Twilight series to date:
Twilight
New Moon
Eclipse
Breaking Dawn
The first book, Twilight, tells of a young girl and a vampire that meet at an American high school and fall in love with each other desperately. The idea of the love story is not brand new, but it has struck a chord with teenagers worldwide.
Each of the books is influenced by literary classics: Jane Austen‘s “Pride and Prejudice” influenced Twilight, Shakespeare‘s “Romeo and Juliet ” provided a Leitmotif for New moon, Eclipse mentions Emily Brontë‘s “Wuthering Heights ” and Breaking Dawn draws on Shakespeare‘s “The Merchant of Venice” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
The Twilight novels have been criticised, amongst other things, for being overly conservative, demonising physical relationships, being anti-feminist and condoning domestic violence.
Twilight Plot summary
Isabella Swan (who prefers to be called Bella) moves to live with her father in the small town Forks. She learns about the strange Cullen family from her new classmates. Edward Cullen arouses her interest the most. His strange attractiveness and seeming loneliness draw her towards him. She learns from the local Indians, who are old friends of her father‘s, that the Cullens are the “cold ones” who made a treaty with the Indians a long time ago. The treaty forbids them to hunt humans on the Indian territory. However, unlike the other vampires, the Cullens are “vegetarians” – they prefer to hunt animals and to live in civilized society.
Edward confesses to Bella that he is a vampire and that he can read the thoughts of other people but that her thoughts remain unreadable to him. Edward understands the danger that his love for Bella poses.The casting and setting of the „Twilight“ films builds up a strong contrast between the human world and that of the vampires.
When another vampire family comes to Forks and finds out that Bella knows their secret, they want to kill her. The Cullens do their best to keep Bella safe, but a vampire from the hostile clan finds a way to attack Bella and bites her. The Cullens come just in time to kill James and to suck the venom from Bella’s blood to prevent her from becoming a vampire.
The official site of the author of the Twilight series.
Twilight soundtrack
