BOOKS: Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer

[oreggano87]

Twilight is okay, but not great. If your kid is fourteen/fifteen or above, then it’s okay for her to read it. The problem with this book, though, is how someone reacts to it later on. Most of the girls who read this book become very obsessed about Edward Cullen or Jacob Black. Some even admire the main character, which I think is wrong, since Bella is not a good role model, except for the fact that she waited to have sex until marriage. So be very careful if your child reads it. It’s a good read, but make sure your kid doesn’t go too far with it.

and it wasn’t even Bella’s desire to wait til marriage, it was Edward’s. Bella has no sense of identity except “being Edward’s”. She does whatever he wants and even then, she only does her own thing when it comes to becoming a vampire herself and being with him forever. She has no goals or anything of her own. Stephenie Meyer did a poor job not giving the girl a back bone, especially for how much of a “feminist” Bella seems to be through out the book when she’s giving her friends advice about their own lives. In relation to her mother she talks about how she thinks of herself as the parent and her mother as the child because her mother is irresponsible, but when it comes to herself, Bella throws her life only in the direction of Edward. She’s not independent at all.

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

Same with Harry Potter. While no one is actually a wizard like on Harry Potter or any other wizard show, Harry is in fact doing spells and messing with majic which is in fact very real, no matter how cute you make it.

We think that we can make these different aspects of the occultic or dark world “good” because they’re “not doing anything evil” but in reality, the Bible says not to mess with or be involved with anything occultic and it seems that all we keep doing is we’re trying to “make it okay” and put it on the same level as trying to become holy.

Fantasy magic =/= Real magic(k?)

Allow me to explain that simple formula. The word magic itself is ambiguous and even a misnomer at times. Today’s technology would be considered magic by a saint who lived in, let’s say, the medieval times.

Therefore, just because something is called “magic” in one fictional universe, doesn’t automatically make it the same as the occult condemned by the Church. In fact, even in real life, card tricks, illusion, and special effects have all been called magic. With your logic, would you condemn it as occult?

I don’t think so.

 

[quilisma]

True–the problem I have with all I’ve heard about Twilight, as I said above, is not ‘good vampires’ as ‘vampirism as good’.

Not sure I follow you. I don’t recall the Twilight series making vampirism out to be ‘good’? If anything, the Cullens (and, to some extent, their friends who appear in Breaking Dawn are shown to be in a continual struggle against the evils of being vampires. Their good intentions appear to originate in the individual human beings they were before becoming vampires, not in their vampirism, which they see as a curse.

Btw, just for background on how I came to read the series… my first introduction to Twilight was watching “New Moon” with my 13-year-old niece, as something to do together while I was spending a week at her home to help out after my sister had had surgery. I must admit I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on (probably partly because I hadn’t seen the first movie, so my very patient niece would pause the DVD frequently to explain things I didn’t understand, so it was rather a choppy viewing… LOL). So during the rest of the week I read her copies of the first three books, while she was at school and my sister was sleeping.

True, I thought the writing style a bit sophomoric, but then I rarely like the writing style of any book that was originally published during my lifetime. (Warren Carroll’s History of Christendom** series is, IMHO, a notable exception.)

However, while some of the concepts sat uneasily with me, I did enjoy the books (later checked out Breaking Dawn** from the library to finish out the series). Although I didn’t expect a faith-friendly perspective, it did come across to me as being at least not UNfriendly to faith, unlike many “modern” books geared to that age range. (I liked it a lot better than, for instance, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret**.)

In fact, there was one point (I don’t remember where exactly, except I think it was somewhere in Breaking Dawn**) when, putting down the book to go to bed, I remember feeling extremely grateful that there IS a God and He is good!

Incidentally, I’m Team Jacob… but I admit it’s mostly because the actor who played Jacob in the films is a ringer for one of my nephews, who is the sweetest young man you’d ever want to meet, so I associate Jacob with him