A guy reads Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (2009-2011)

Reading Eclipse: Chapter 27 (Needs)

The song for this chapter is What I’ve Done by Linkin Park

[audio:https://twilightguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/whativedone.mp3]

What a glorious feeling it is to finally be on spring break. I realized yesterday that I spent the entire weekend doing absolutely nothing. I also realized that while spring break is only for 7 days, summer break is multiple times that length — though much to my annoyance, I have no time machine to take me there posthaste. Still, due to this wonderful break, I have finally reached the last chapter of Eclipse!

I feel so sorry for Bella, for even though I knew this was coming I didn’t want to see it. The longer she stayed with Jacob, the harder it would be for her to leave him in the end. It’s like drawing a poison out of her veins, dealing with the fact that they really are over: every good memory with Jacob has to go at once. Thankfully, Bella still has Edward, like an ever-present rock she can cling to, no matter how many times she has beaten up his heart in the past months. I certainly wouldn’t want to see the mess she’d be in if Edward had gone as well.

But, as with all times such as this, it soon passes, and Bella is back in her room clinging to Edward: just like before. It’s hard to tell who is to blame. Is it Edward, for letting Bella act the way she did, and staying around while she continued to hurt him? Was it Jacob, for trying to steal her from Edward and manipulating her heart? Or was it Bella, for causing them all pain? I think that a bit of everyone is at fault here.

As soon as Alice mentioned Perrine Bruyere, the designer of Bella’s wedding dress, I did as I’m sure many of you have also done and immediately Googled his name. I expected to see this person as one of Stephenie’s old friends or something, getting a gob of publicity from being mentioned in the book. Unfortunately, despite there being 20,700 mentions of his name in a search, nearly all of them are from Yahoo Answers (saying he is fictional) or fanfiction. I don’t exactly know how Perrine Bruyere merits a fanfiction, but obviously someone is curious.

perrine1
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Then, Alice whisks Bella into her closet, which is described as being as big as Bella’s bedroom. This reminds me of perhaps the worst scene in what could easily be the worst sequel of all time, Princess Diaries 2 (I won’t even begin to explain how I saw this, but suffice it to say that it was unwilling, and my little sister was involved). It’s the part where the diary-writing princess goes into her own closet, which just happens to be a shopping mall built into her dinosaur-sized home. I take it back: the scene with Julie Andrews and Raven Symone jumping on a mattress and sledding down the stairs to hip-hop music and an improv dance number was actually worse. No, I am not making this up.

The biggest question now is how I got onto that tangent, but I’ll leave it alone while I wonder exactly how much Alice paid for that dress. I’m sure if she can see the future though, she might have already foretold that Perrine Bruyere will be vastly famous one day, and she actually got a good deal whilst he’s a nobody.

I enjoyed this paragraph most of all:

“I guess I don’t have to hide out anymore, do I?” [Bella said.]

“No. The danger is behind us.”

Because finally, the danger has disappeared, at least for now. And not only the danger of Victoria and her red-eyed minions, but also the danger of somehow, Bella and Edward being broken apart. I know that Jacob didn’t intend it, and if Edward hadn’t been there, things would have been so much easier for him. But for a while, it was hard to tell which way Bella would go.

The resolution of this story is short and sweet: though there is still the epilogue, in which anything can happen, so I won’t say for certain yet. This post is perhaps the shortest from Eclipse; not because fewer things happen here, but because anything I say will draw from my final thoughts after the Epilogue: which will be posted very soon!

Question for the comments: do you think it is a good idea for Bella to keep the bracelet from Jacob, or do you think it might end up hurting her more with the memory?

——NOTES——

– Depending on this week, I will either write my final thoughts on the book and post them late Thursday, or on Monday as soon as I get back from the DVD release in California!

– Keep voting on the song for Eclipse! I’m only having the voting go for a few days so I can get to reading the epilogue sooner!

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118 Responses

  1. I think it is alright for Bella to keep the bracelet because no matter what Jacob Black will always be her best friend and I wouldn’t want to forget that.
    TEAM SWITZERLAND!

  2. She should keep it, he was and will always be her best friend, and she should keep it as a memory of him.

  3. I don’t know about whether she should keep it or not. I think that if she doesn’t, and she’s fine with it. Then that’s that. But if she does. It still doesn’t matter. Because she can’t be with Jacob for she chose Edward. So it’s good to have a memory of Jake, or a symbol of him there with you.

  4. You’re right.. all of them are at fault… I won’t use the word blame, but somehow I feel like Bella is too busy wallowing in self-pity to even consider Edward’s feelings.. and her whole friendship thing is something I’ve always had a problem with. Renee was her “best friend” but yet it sounded like a visit to get her teeth pulled out everytime she had to contact Renee. Alice was her next “best friend”. She lied to her own husband and risked her own life for Edward and Bella, but Bella never seemed too appreciative of that either. And ohhh.. Jacob. It’s not even about him anymore. Most of the time she was with him she was too busy chasing Edward’s voice. He didn’t even GET to know the real her… and suddenly she’s like “OMG Jacob is my best friend I need him.” They never even had any meaningful convos or shared interests. He came off more as a distraction and their friendship seemed sooo shallow, only a step abov Mike Newton. Even in Twilight when she and Edward were getting to know each other and open up to eacher… that felt more like friendship to me.. but yet she never considered him her best friend… she doesn’t see them as equals… she has a skewed vision of him and I’m just quite annoyed at her at times. Her “friendship” tunes are very irritating to me.

  5. Ack.. gotta stop hitting submit before I’m done… The other point I had was the Tanya issue…Rosalie barely mentions that Tanya expressed an interest in Edward and Bella freaks out. Edward has to convince her nothing happened. If she can become so irrationally jealous over the simple mention of some other woman….can she not take a moment to see how Edward must be faring when she’s off running around with his mortal enemy who also sends him images of what he’d like to do with her??? I’m not suggested she had to cut things off for him, but she never considered things from Edward’s perspective yet expected him to completely understand everything from hers including her views on sex, marriage, becoming a vampire etc….. That girl got away with everything under the moon in those books.

  6. No one is completely faultless in this, but I do wish Bella accounted for more of her actions. She didn’t even get a slap on the wrist!
    Edward already felt extreme guilt over leaving Bella and not being there to protect her. Bella also fed into that guilt – not only insisting Jacob was her “Best Friend” (extremely questionable) but by putting herself in more danger by trying to sneak off to see him. Edward’s only solution was to allow her and try to control the circumstances but frankly, it had to be killing him the entire time. And Bella ignored it.So did SM.
    Jacob was also playing into it, using Edward’s guilt against him. I wished Bella had really taken the time to understand THAT. Imagine Edward begged Bella to marry him (practically) and then went off to kiss Tanya Denali to save her life because she did so many things for him. Would that be ok? No, I’m pretty sure at that point Edward would be a cheating scum and Bella should leave him. She really never offers Edward any comfort. After that kiss and seeing her cry over Jacob, did she really think that telling him “I know who I can’t live without” would really ease the insecurities? Come on!

  7. I totally agree. She was totally unfair towards Edward. What’s worse is that she voiced her feelings of love to Jacob. It’s one thing to realize that you have feelings for someone, but then to tell them. It ruined the book for me. I understand that SM did it so Bella would have a real choice between living a full life with children or living with Edward. I just found Bella didn’t have to express her feelings out loud for her to acknowledge the choice.

    On a side note, does Edward throw the “crystal” from Bella’s bracelet at Victoria? If so, why doesn’t Edward or Bella try to find it once the fight is over? I thought that maybe at the end of the book, when Bella decided to have a formal wedding, Edward would have presented it to her again. This question has been eating at me for months.

  8. I totally agree with Penny’s and Luisa’s comments above.

    Moreover, Bella’s should have been more considered of Edward’s feelings when he proposed to her. It was something important to him. He says it all in one sentence “I would have been that boy”! (when Bella says she didn’t want to be that girl who marries right out of high school). To me, it sounded like not only that it would have been important for him to get married when he was human, but also that it was part of the human experiences he misses so much.

    So, if Bella loves him the way she says she does, she could pretend to be touched by his proposal, if only for his sake!

    And when he gives her his mother’s wedding ban, she could show more feelings. She was more touched when she got the carved wolf from Jacob for crying out loud!

    And all that from a girl who is supposedly selfless!

    I feel that in this book (Eclipse), Stephenie Meyer lost momentarily touch with Bella’s character. It seemed to me that for the last half of the book, Bella was out of character!

    Maybe I am too old (44 years old), but I can’t see what the problem is with marrying the one you “can’t live without”, especially if you are willing to be damned to spend eternity with him! Doesn’t that make sense?

    Having said that, I LOVED the next book in the series, Breaking Dawn, Bella seems her own self again! And not to spoil anything, but the ending, however surprising, is good!

  9. And I would like to add something:

    Did anyone notice that no matter how many “Please” Edward says, or how nicely he says it, Bella NEVER gives in, never listen to him, never pleases him? But she only needs to say Please once and Edward does anything she wants? I bugged me a little…

  10. I'm sorry to say that I have to shun edward for putting his heart on her bracelet. That was a special bracelet thing between Bella and Jacob and he kinda shoved himself into that by putting his own memento on it, and it doesn't seem to match the rest of the bracelet but I'm sure that won't bother bella…

  11. hey you you know you are so dumb you dont what happened in the movie ya whatever your mama face

  12. hey you you know you are so dumb you dont what happened in the movie ya whatever your mama face

  13. I know what you mean. I think that Bella is quite annoying in this book. I also think that she should more obviously show Edward how much she really loves him, and that everything she does, she does for him….Because it's causing him pain and I think he is still not sure does she love Jacob or him. And Edward would do anything for Bella, but she is just so…Uh. I am so angry because of this.

  14. Bella is really out of her character in this book. It seems that she doesn't love Edward as much as she says she does.  I think that this opinion is strongly supported by her acts. We all know that she isn't physicaly cheating on Edward ( still questionable), but she is emotionaly doing it, with Jacob. And I think that's the worst way of cheating on someone for every living ( or undead) creature. Poor Edward. Bella completely ruined this book for me!!! —sooo mad at her—  !!!

  15. oh  my god honey i love absolutely love twilight i mean stephenie is amazing! she totally makes everything sound realistic and easy to understand! i love how she uses bella as a girl who can't live without her boyfriend, and has to stick  with her own personal sun (jacob black) at the same time! shows how strong love and friendship can be <3 <3 <3 stephenie better pulish midnight sun

  16. Hello! I could have sworn Ive been to this blog before but after checking through some of the post I realized its new to me. Anyways, Im definitely delighted I found it and Ill be bookmarking and checking back often!

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