Final Presentation on Meyer’s Twilight

Tabitha Lewis

Fate of the Novel

Final Presentation

December 4, 2008

 

Primary Text: Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer

 

Argument: It is through investigation of teen girls’ relationship with the text that some particular truths become evident; Twilight’s popularity stems from its ability to fulfill social needs for its readers, as well as the psychological needs of love, sexual exploration, and the sense of belonging that aids in adolescent identity formation.

 

Ø       Part I-Social Needs: The act of reading Twilight is a social event.  It stems from the recommendations of one reader to another and extends to the conversations that follow.  Of the sixty-two eighth graders that I surveyed at the Broadalbin-Perth Middle School in Amsterdam, New York, anyone who had read the book did so because a friend recommended it to them or because “everyone was talking about how good it is.”  “Adolescents choose books that their peers have enjoyed, and which validate reading as a peer group cultural experience” (Hopper 118). 

 

Ø       Part II-Psychological Needs: Meyer’s writing creates a venue for her teen girl readers to slip into situations they can relate to, while extending those situations that much further so that the reader can ride along vicariously through the characters in the passage to experience new things as well.  It is through these situations and experiences that Twilight appeals to psychological needs of the readers.  By psychological needs I mean love, sexual desire, and a sense of belonging.  The novel is able to play into their insecurities and provide an outlet for reassurance by reminding them they aren’t alone in their feelings. 

 

Why does it matter?  As a prospective teacher of English, I hope to provide students with texts that provoke them to ask questions of the world, their peers, and themselves, ultimately enabling them to take charge of their own learning.  This book is extremely popular right now.  I wanted to work towards finding out why.  I feel that listening to and validating the stories that girls decide to make meaning from will help teachers know what is important to them and what they are eager to explore. 

 

Key Sources:

 

Interviews and Surveys of Teen Readers, ages 13-17

 

Bennett, Tony. “Texts, Readers, Reading Formations.” The Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association 16 (1983): 3-17. JSTOR. 7 Nov. 2008 <http://www.jstor.org/search>.

 

Bereska, Tami M. “Adolescent Sexuality and the Changing Romance Novel Market.” The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality 3 (1994): 35-44.

 

DeBlase, Gina. “Acknowledging Agency While Accommodating Romance: Girls Negotiating Meaning in Literacy Transactions.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 46 (2003): 624-635.

 

Hopper, Rosemary. “What Are Teenagers Reading? Adolescent Fiction Reading Habits and Reading Choices.” Literacy (2005): 113-120.

 

Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.

 

Tolman, Deborah L. “Object Lessons: Romance, Violation, and Female Adolescent Sexual Desire.” Journal of Sexual Education and Therapy 25 (2000): 70-79.

 

A Cloudless Sky: The End

I’m not sure what to think about the end of Cloud Atlas.  All I know is that I was getting to the point with the novel that by the end I was just trying to read faster to be done with it.  Can you appreciate something without having to really enjoy it?  I mean, I appreciate the novel, what it does and what it works to do…but it was just okay for me.  Not so much to say it was a disappointment, but it never “climaxed” like Myra did.  Why?  Well, that’s what I’m trying to sit here and consider.  Like Karen said in her blog, the six different narratives created kind of disjointed feel for me.  Though they were all somehow connected, the time periods, plots and styles in which some of them were written didn’t directly appeal to me.  The two stories that I enjoyed most were Luisa and Sonmi’s, (as I’ve said before) but I just realized that both of them have a female narrator.  Could it be perhaps that I identifed with those characters more?  I could appreciate their positions and struggles and sympathized with what they were trying to accomplish. 

Thinking about the text as a whole, I like some of the ideas that were brought out in class about the colonizer and the colonized, the oppressed and the oppressor, the self-serving and the selfless–good and evil if you will-human nature.  Mitchell’s aim to get us to consider “the Other” is more subtle to me in some sections that others.  I didn’t even pick up on the elderly in the Cavendish story at first.  And I feel like this is one of those books that a second read through would be really beneficial for.  There are probably so many connections and foreshadowing between novellas that you may miss on a first read.  I don’t think I have the time or the will power to read this again (at least not any time soon)  but I’m sure that if I did, I’d be sitting there with the book going “Ohhhh!  I see!  Ohhh!!  Wow!  I get it now!!”  Or something like that.  As it is, just like each novel before it in this course, this one provoked worthy discussion points and points for consideration.  I couldn’t ask for anything more.  At this point, I’m just glad to be done with it so I can focus on our monster papers.

Twilight—the dawn of a “cultural phenomenon”

• My anchor text will be Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
• I hope to decipher what its popularity says about our culture and what sparks its appeal via studying a particular subset of Twilight’s fan base i.e. suburban white female teens from Upstate NY ( I may also contrast this with an adult female fan base)
• I will have to close read responses from readers of the text for trends, expectations, and desires and contrast them with critical research from Radway, Armstrong and studies on fan cultures by Matt Hills as well as additional research. 
• Some of the appeal I will be exploring may be: the “relatability” of the characters, the romance between Bella and Edward, the “realism” the author is able to create through the setting, our cultural fascination with vampires, etc.

Any observations, input, or additional ways to focus/narrow my arguement would be greatly appreciated.

Cloud Atlas continued…

As much as I appreciate this book for its form and even some of its content, I can’t wait for it to be over.  I need some time to focus on this upcoming paper without Sloosha sloshing in my head.  I don’t know why, but despite Kim’s warnings to read past the language…I could not get through the Sloosha section.  I tried on multiple occassions, but I just felt like it was tripping me up and slowing me down so I eventually skipped it and moved on.  I’m sure I lost some major pieces of the puzzle by doing this, and even keep thinking of trying to go back again…but I can’t–for the sake of time and patience.  I have very little of either at this point in the semester unfortunately.  Why couldn’t I read it?  I don’t typically skip chunks of novels that I read–in fact, I don’t think I ever have before now.  Hmmm…does it say something about the form that I was able to do that and still get back into the novel at the next section?  I actually have come to enjoy the compilation of novellas and getting the opportunity to switch from one narrative to the next, knowing we will eventually get a conclusion to the stories. 

Sonmi-451 is my favorite, followed by Luisa Rey.  As far as the rest, I could take it or leave it.  I think that Mitchell comments alot on the ideals of society in each piece.  For Luisa and Sonmi, more than for the other pieces corpocratic ideals reign over the good of the individual, even though the corporations are formed on the backs of the little people.  Capitalism anyone?  Kinda makes me sad.  Can I just say, I’m glad Obama is our next president.

An Orison of Somni-451

1. Plot Summary:

This section of the text is formatted in the form of an interview between Somni-451 and an Unanimityman(comparable to the FBI?) seeking to archive the experiences of Somni from the point she is as fabricant server at Papa Song’s up through her ascension and aquisition of knowledge when she is residing as an experiment in Boom-Sook Kim’s dorm at a University.  At the University she is discovered through her use of downloads onto the “sony” and is placed in other quarters to be investigated/researched/interviewed by the highest bidder. 

2. How does this section characterize/position reader’s/writer’s/writing?

This section is an interview-interviewee format of writing where the information that is exposed is dependent upon the questions asked and the participants willingness to answer truthfully and fully.  There is a mix between casual and interrogative questions and prompts to get the participant to reveal her story (very much like a therapist).

3. Characterization of “civilization”

This section is representative of dystopian fiction in that it centers around a negative image of the world’s future.  Clones, class system, lack of individualism (people have become just numbers), use of brainwashing, curfews, memory-removing drugs, and slavery (12-year star system) are among many of realities in this future world.  Also technology and common consumer items of today have new names labeled for their brands, i.e. “sonys,” “nikes”  Food (and pretty much everything) is genetically engineered.  There is a cure for all deadly diseases from cancer to diabetes, and companies bid for the opportunity to project their ads on the surface of the moon.  The ultimate goal is to become the consumer and once you reach that class you have to spend your allotted quota.  Fascaping (plastic surgery) is commonly done among cerain classes and evidently it’s chic to have facial features of the Somni-451.  To look like other classes defeat the purpose of being genetically predetermined in the first place.  Consumerism and corpocracy are satirized to the fullest.

4. Other questions, themes, leit motifs that are interesting.

Is there any death?  How do you die in this world?   Is Neo So Corpros a country or the world?

Clouds, II

For this next reading of the Cloud Atlas, I enjoyed the Luisa Rey Mystery.  Sixsmith returns from the previous section, but instead of being an anonymous receiver of letters, he’s a central character avoiding being murdered (and doesn’t succeed).  I like how the plot thickens with this section and there is some suspense and mystery.  Luisa acts as our little detective and she does a good job until the end of the section–which frustrated me as much as it did some of you.  I couldn’t believe after all that, it could just end with her car going over the bridge!  (Although, I should have known it would be something like that…a “to be continued” segue). 

The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish was slightly less memorable or interesting to me.  It was like one of those movies with a twist ending you never saw coming even though all the information was there to tell you what was going to happen all along.  I didn’t get it though–was it really a sick joke on his brother’s part, or was Timothy such an unreliable narrator that we don’t know that he really needed to be in the nursing home?  Or is that the point–to make us wonder?  All I know is I would be freaked out if I was trapped in there too.  He would have been better off going to visit his old girlfriend instead of being a peeping tom.  *sigh* There’s no telling what’s in store for us next…

What do I see in the clouds?

Well, to start off this book did not impress me.  The language was very dense and the plot line seemingly sporadic and random.  It was difficult to get into at first.  After the first few pages I wanted to cry thinking about trying to get to page 86 without having anyone to talk to about it yet.  I NEED class discussion today!  After about the first 25 or 30 pages I got more used to the language and the tone and started to make some connections between characters and it got more managable.  However, I can’t help but feel like I missed a lot.  I didn’t feel like sitting there with a dictionary to look up all the words I didn’t know in every other sentence–so I probably didn’t maximize my experience here.  By the time I got to the end of the first section I literally flipped back and forth between the few pages that seperated sections looking to see if pages were ripped out or if I missed something.  It stopped mid-sentence!!!  It jumped from page 39 to page 43!  What?!  Then I took a deep breath and kept going, knowing that for Kim, this novel is most definitely some major evidence in our investigation of form, and there will no doubt be a reason for this sudden switch between time and narrators etc. 

The second section, as Karen mentions in her blog, has a much easier narrative style and a much more interesting pretense.  I mean, there’s nothing like a little hitch hiking and some adultery to spice up a story line right?  Also, in contrast with the beginning of the first section that intimidated me and almost turned me off from the book, the beginning of the second section immediately drew me in.  The language was so much different, and so poetic in its references to music.  I don’t know the first thing about music, but the metaphors that the author/narrator drew upon created some beautiful imagery.  The characters in this section are also much better developed than the first.  I feel like I get a much better sense of Robert’s character as opposed to Adam, and we are also introduced to Arys, Mrs. C, and Eva, as well as Hendrick, and the numerous guests of Zedelghem.  And that’s another thing.  The first section used the ampersand to indicate “and” as an abbreviation, and alot of use of italics to deliniate emphasis and foreign words.  In the second section, the narrator/author uses v. for very, and first letters of names to abbreviate different characters names in the letters he’s writing and so forth.  

From diary to letter writing.  Hmmm.. And in a small connection between the two sections, Robert discovers Adam’s unfinished journal in Arys’ library and wonders (like I do) why the last passage stopped mid-sentence.  I’m guessing we may find out in subsequent sections, and those section will make connections to each other somehow as well.  To what end…I don’t yet have any speculation.

Oh, Literary Theory-why are you such a necessary evil?

Well, Kim, as you mentioned on my facebook, it is a great feeling to be done with my theory presentation.  I agonized over having to read lit. theory from the day you assigned it.  Thanks to Lukac’s abstractness I also had to read criticism on the theory.  My head was swimming.  Working through it with Cathy and Melanie brought a lot more to light though, as I am the kind of person that has to talk about things to work through them.  Lukac’s notion of the originiation of the novel as a genre and his comparison to its characteristics in relation to the epic does create a fascinating arguement and perspective that could prove to be useful.  However, I was more fascinated by Armstrong and Bahktin’s theories as they seemed more accessible and a little more aligned with my own thinking.  It seems from reading other classmates posts that Bahktin and Armstrong are the favorites of the day.  Bahktin’s concept of the novel as having no canon was awesome.  I like that.  I like that it can stand on it’s own, and I believe that it does as well.  I also agree with his term of heteroglossia.  Armstrong is girl power all the way, and the arguements that Kellie and Meagan presented in their presentation seem to fit perfectly into parts of what I want to get at in my final paper.  Jameson, as Brandon stressed, sounded like his view point was just a little to narrow to be useful, and although Hutcheon’s ideas were cool, I think I’d have to do a little more reading of her myself to find out if I could apply her theory to my potenial thesis on the novel.  All in all, I have to admit that this was a worthwhile experience (not that I ever doubted it would be!) and I think I gleaned some powerful new insights on the theory of the novel.  Great job everyone!

The Novel prompt response

I. A [good] novel should make the reader…

want to turn the page and keep reading, for better or worse, till the very end.  The Uses of Enchantment was kind of a let down in this respect.  I was so close to the end, for days, and when I stopped to think about it, I realized that I never felt absolutely compelled to pick it up and finish it.  Last night when I finally got home, after doing a half dozen things, I settled down to read.  Reading novels, unlike some other assigned texts in classes, is not a chore for me, and I look forward to curling up and devouring the words on the page.  It’s not that it was a chore to finish Enchantment but I wouldn’t say it was a necessity for me either.  I knew I had to get up at 6 am for field experience this morning, and it was already getting late so I just told myself I’d read for an hour.  I told myself this, knowing full well that I might end up with only a few hours of sleep because I’d stay up to finish it.  I didn’t.  I put it down after an hour and went to bed.  Why am I telling you all this?   For me, Enchantment, was not fundamentally a “good” novel, because it didn’t hold me till the end.  I got bored with it!  Bored!  I am shocking even myself as I come to this conclusion, because while it spawned some great class discussions and gave me some food for thought, and there’s something to be said for the form of it, I feel like I could have lived if I never knew how it ended.  I might sound like I’m contradicting myself, after all the whining I did in class about wanting a conclusive ending from this book and just wanting to finish it.  But yea, I got bored.  Julavits lost me.  She drug it out for too long.  I can’t seem to think of a good analogy to compare this let down to–maybe watching a really good movie on tv, only to find that an hour is added to it by annoyingly frequent commercial breaks, so you just give up and turn it off.  I got annoyed, and my interest was turned off, and the ending no longer seemed important because it was taking too much to get there.  I can’t marvel at her brilliance the way I could with Morrison and Vidal’s novels (sorry, Kim).  And the ending itself…hardly seemed worth all the trouble.  I guess it’s as good as I could have hoped for, but nothing to rave about.   If you ask me tomorrow I might change my mind though, just like Mary said, you can find evidence for any thesis you are trying to prove. 

II.  William Lyons Phelps (1916) said the novel is “A good story well told.”

I would have to agree, and by this qualification, Enchantment doesn’t work.  A good story?  More like a bizarre unreliable disjointed story, told in fragments–not really my thing.

Enchantment: Another Close Reading (pg 166)

“I began our next session, our fifth, with a game.

What kind of game, Mary said.  She arrived again in a hostile mood.  Her complexion had improved, however; she even appeared, to my eye, prettier than I’d ever given her credit for being.  She admitted that she’d been to a tanning booth on a lark with her sister Regina, that she hadn’t worn underwear and thus didn’t have a tan line.  She offered to show me this lack of tan line, and even stood up and began unbuttoning her jeans, expecting me to stop her.  She slowed her fingers, watching me intently, waiting for me to object.

I did not object.

You’re such a pervert, Beaton, she said, rebuttoning her jeans and dropping back to the couch.  What would your colleagues say?  Encouraging a patient to undress in front of you.  Next you’ll be begging for a striptease.”   -Uses of Enchantment, Heidi Julavits (page 166)

SUMMARIZE:

From the doctor’s perspective we learn that Mary looks more attractive than usual during this particular session and wants to flaunt the results of her recent underwear-less tanning session with her sister by showing him her lack of tan lines.  When he does not react or object to her lowering the zipper of her pants, she gets disgusted, rebuttons her jeans, and flops on the couch accusing him of being a pervert. 

ANALYSIS:

The tone of the doctor in this passage seems amused.  He’s checking her out, and going along with her wanting to expose herself to him.  He says that she “offers” to show the lack of tan line, but that she “expects” him to stop her.  She “slowed her fingers” and watching him “intently.”  She wanted a reaction out of him.  He knows that she is just doing it to toy with him and tease him, and I don’t think that he expected her to go through with it, any more than she planned to. 

SYNTHESIS:

This passage shows Mary’s desire to be looked at sexually.  She wants to be noticed as attractive and to have an outlet to express her sexuality.  The safest place for her to do this, is with a doctor that she knows she supposed to have a professional relationship with.  She was waiting for an objection, because she knows it is wrong to expose herself.  However, her need for sexual attention is so great and has most likely been suppressed for so long that she uses this venue and lays blame on the doctor for not objecting, calling him a pervert and admonishing him for what his colleagues would think if he had a patient undress in front of him.  Additionally, she projects her desire to striptease on him as if it is his.  It’s easier for her to accuse him of wrongful thoughts and wishes than it is for her to acknowledge them as her own, because she has been taught for so long that they are unacceptable behavior.