Touched by a Vampire

For my girls

Acknowledgments

I’m grateful to students with whom I’ve discussed many of the questions of this book and to Ella Myer for early feedback. Many thanks to those friends who’ve offered support during the writing process, especially to Traci, Lynn, Tiffany, Aimee, and Dana for reading parts of the manuscript. Enormous thanks also to Jessica Barnes at WaterBrook Multnomah—truly an amazing editor! And, always, thanks to my family, to my husband, Brian, and to Gwen, Sam, and Tess. When I told Sam the book was done, he cheered
.

Before we start talking about the Twilight Saga and the messages it contains, I want to point out a few helpful resources you can use to start discussion about the subjects this book covers, be it in a youth group, Bible study, Sunday school class, or just a group of friends.

First of all, at the end of each chapter, you’ll find questions for reflection. These questions will prompt thought about the way each chapter’s theme relates to our own lives, leading to discussion about what we should take away from the Twilight Saga—and what we shouldn’t.

Second, in the back of the book, there’s a book-by-book discussion guide that addresses the events of each novel in the Twilight Saga and the themes and messages they portray.

In addition to these two discussion guides included in the book, there is also a leaders’ guide online (
www.waterbrook multnomah.com
), which will give you ideas about how to use the book’s discussion guide in your group.

With these resources, I hope you’ll be able to discuss the topics we’ll cover in this book in even more depth. This is great opportunity, not just to talk about books you love, but to draw closer to God.

I love a good story.

I love the way stories electrify my children. Some days, my son is a monster out of a storybook, threatening his sisters with terrifying growls. My daughter, maybe, acts out a fairy tale and flies through the house with sparkling wings. Or they all go outside and join the neighbors in a game of
Star Wars
. Good battles evil under the apple tree in the front yard.

I love the way a story can carry us into another world, a world of imagination and mystery. When a story captures our hearts, we dive into it. We sink deep into the waters of the world the author has created for us and learn its geography. We fear what the characters fear and love what the characters love.

Most of all, I love what happens when we come out of the story world. We come up from under the water of imagination and take a deep breath of the air of our own world. But it isn’t the same world it was before we dove into the story. The story world changes our world. It helps us imagine possibilities we couldn’t possibly have seen before. It suggests new dreams to guide us, new fears to horrify us, and new hopes to inspire us. The stories we love have power. They change our lives.

The power of stories led me to write this book. Maybe you’ve read Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, and you were drawn into the story she tells. Maybe your friends have read
them and told you how much they were absorbed by the world of Twilight. Maybe you’re a parent and you want to know about the stories your daughter loves, or you’re looking for guidance about what you want her to read.

The books are massive bestsellers. The series is popular partly because it deals with issues most of us identify with. It’s about romance. It’s about finding, losing, and keeping love. It’s also about sex and desire. It’s about family. It’s even about the meaning of life. And the series is especially popular with girls and women because it’s about all these things from
a girl’s perspective
. There are important male characters in the books, of course, but it is through a girl’s eyes, Bella’s eyes, that we view the world of Twilight. It’s through a girl’s eyes that the story makes us think about these powerful subjects—romance, desire, sex, love, family, and meaning. I wrote this book because I’m passionate about the way these themes matter in our lives. Because I’m a Christian, because my life is shaped by the love of Jesus Christ, I especially care about how we can think about these issues through Christian eyes.

I want us to deal with the powerful themes that make the world of Twilight run, and I suggest we do so in a thoroughly Christian way. The themes of love, romance, sex, family, and meaning are central to who we are and how we live. That means we need to deal with them thoughtfully and biblically. In this book, I offer some tools and questions and ideas to help you do just that.

The themes of Twilight are all about what it means to be female. I want us to think about what it means to be female and to love God.

Before we dig into these interesting themes, I’ll give you a brief outline of the Twilight Saga. If you haven’t read the books and you don’t want me to ruin any surprises for you, stop right here.

Meyer’s novels are fun to read. The plots take surprising twists and turns, and the four novels come together to tell a compelling love story. Bella, the heroine, is a girl-next-door teenager. She sees herself as ordinary and unremarkable. Edward is an impossibly good-looking classmate who turns out to be a vampire. In
Twilight
, they find each other and enter into unlikely love. In
New Moon
, their love seems lost. They are reunited in
Eclipse
and build a life together in
Breaking Dawn
. Along the way, they must face the dangers and darkness of the vampire world.

Bella, whose mother wants to travel with her new husband, moves to a small, rainy town in the Pacific Northwest to live with her dad. Always one to avoid the spotlight, she isn’t excited about life at her new school. A number of local boys find her very attractive, but Bella is not interested in them. Not, at least,
until she becomes aware of the gorgeous and mysterious Edward. Once Edward enters her thoughts, he never leaves.

Bella sits next to Edward in science class, and his reaction is bizarre. He looks at her with hatred and utter hostility. Bella is frustrated and annoyed. What has she, an ordinary girl, done to evoke such a strong reaction in this beautiful boy?

Then Edward uses his body to stop an out-of-control van from crushing Bella in the school parking lot. He denies what Bella has started to believe—that there is something extraordinary about him. With a bit of help from her friend Jacob and the Internet, she realizes Edward is a vampire. She has discovered his deep secret, and the stage is set for the two to fall in love.

We learn that Edward is a member of a family of “vegetarian” vampires. They deny their desire for human blood and live instead by hunting large animals. Bella learns, though, that Edward’s strong and horrified reaction to her when they met was because the scent of
her
blood is exceptionally tempting to him. Just sitting next to him threatened to undo his years of self-control. In the context of this danger, they begin their secret romance.

That danger increases when Bella is exposed to some ordinary murderous vampires while spending time with Edward’s family. James, a vampire whose talent and sport is in tracking his prey, sets his sights on Bella, determined to hunt her down and kill her. Edward and his family craft a plan to save Bella.
They send her to Phoenix, but James lures her into a deathtrap in a mirrored dance studio.

Edward saves Bella just in time and destroys James. But Bella has suffered a bite, and Edward manages to suck the vampire venom from her blood. At the end of the novel, he refuses Bella’s pleas to change her into a creature like him so she can share his life.

At Bella’s birthday party at Edward’s house, Bella accidentally gets cut, and the scent of her blood topples the shaky self-control of Edward’s brother Jasper. He rushes to attack her and has to be stopped by his family. This incident shakes Edward to the core. Convinced that he cannot love Bella and keep her safe, he leaves her.

Bella sinks into a dark depression. Much of the novel is about the depths of her sadness and brokenness in the face of lost love.

Eventually, Bella finds some comfort in her growing friendship with Jacob. She and Jacob fix up a pair of old motorcycles, an activity her father has forbidden because he has seen so many motorcycle accidents. The thrill of riding the motorcycle causes Bella to hear Edward’s voice in her head, which motivates her to try more dangerous activities in an effort to be closer to him.

Strange happenings in Jacob’s community lead to the eventual disclosure that he has become a werewolf. In the world of Twilight, these werewolves exist for one specific purpose—to protect human life from vampires. As a werewolf, Jacob protects Bella from the vampire Victoria, who seeks revenge against Bella for the death of James in
Twilight
.

In another dangerous moment, Bella tries cliff diving and nearly drowns. Though Jacob rescues her from the ocean, Edward is misinformed. Believing Bella is dead, Edward goes to Italy to commit suicide by provoking the Volturi, the leaders of the vampire realm.

Bella and Edward’s sister Alice set off in a dramatic race to get to Italy in time to save Edward. Though they succeed, the Volturi learn of Bella’s relationship with Edward and pose a new threat to her safety. Because she knows about them, they decree that she must either be killed or become a vampire herself. Becoming a vampire is exactly what Bella wants, but Edward continues to refuse her.

Bella realizes that Edward left her in order to protect her. Their relationship is cemented more tightly than ever before.

Bella agrees to trade something she doesn’t want to do—getting married—for something Edward doesn’t want to do—turning her into a vampire.

Edward and his family suspect that a number of murders
in Seattle are being caused by uncontrolled vampire activity. Victoria’s threat to Bella still looms, as does the question of whether and when Bella will become a vampire. Suspense builds on both counts. In addition, Bella has to negotiate her love for Edward in light of the loving friendship that grew between her and Jacob while Edward was gone.

The threat in Seattle is uncovered. Victoria is creating an army of vampires to destroy Bella, Edward, and his family. We learn that “newborn” vampires, those who have only recently been turned, are especially strong and vicious.

Though they are natural enemies, Edward’s vampire family and Jacob’s werewolf pack form an unlikely alliance to defeat Victoria and her army. Bella is forced to deal with the tensions in her relationships with Edward and Jacob. She realizes her love for Jacob, but she chooses Edward. At the end of the novel, Jacob, unable to deal with his sadness over losing Bella, runs away.

Bella and Edward have a beautiful wedding at his family’s home, and they travel to an island paradise for their honeymoon. The trip is cut short when Bella discovers she is pregnant and that the baby seems to be growing at an alarming rate. Edward, concerned for her safety, wants her to end her pregnancy, but Bella, haunted by dreams in which a beautiful child who looks like Edward is in danger, is determined to protect the baby at any cost.

For the next section of the novel, the pregnancy makes Bella incredibly weak. As though she doesn’t have the strength to continue her story on her own, the narrative shifts into Jacob’s voice. Jacob and Edward are united in their horror at what the vampire baby is doing to Bella. When it seems she will die, they manage to buy her time by getting her human blood to drink. At the moment of her death—the baby’s violent birth—Edward finally changes Bella into a vampire.

After her painful transformation, Bella makes tentative steps into her new life. Her new vampire family is intent on protecting her from taking human life during her vicious, bloodthirsty newborn phase. Bella, though, surprises everyone with her self-control and her vampire skill. She is able to enjoy her relationship with Edward and their daughter, Renesmee. She even finds some peace in her friendship with Jacob.

The Volturi believe that little Renesmee is an illegal “immortal child.” Vampires are prohibited from turning human children into vampires, because the little ones never learn to control themselves and threaten the secrecy and stability of the vampire world. Like the other books,
Breaking Dawn
culminates with a threat and a showdown as the Volturi threaten to destroy Edward, Bella, and their family.

The family gathers friends around them in an attempt to make the Volturi pause long enough to listen to the truth. Bella trains for a fight and practices a “shield” power that helps protect her family. The Cullens manage to convince the Volturi that
Renesmee is not a threat to their society, and the series ends with the family able to look forward to peace and happiness together.

Now that you’re familiar with the story, this book will be your guide through some of the most pressing themes of the Twilight Saga.

I’ve heard many suggestions that Christians should embrace Meyer’s series. Because the universe she writes about is a moral universe, maybe Christians can find our own morality there. Because her couple waits until marriage to have sex, maybe Christians can draw an encouraging word about purity and self-control.

I’m hesitant about these suggestions.

I think Christians can draw plenty of goodness from non-Christian stories, but I’m doubtful about the way themes of morality and goodness work in the Twilight Saga. Meyer is Mormon, and her books paint a deeply Mormon picture of the universe. The books also reflect the values and assumptions of American popular culture in some ways that we as Christians will want to notice. I’m here to help you ask questions, to help you look at the themes of the Twilight universe from a Christian point of view.

As I said, Meyer’s stories are fun to read, but not everything that compels us is healthy. I hope you’ll use this book for
discernment. I hope you’ll learn to see what builds you up and what tears you down. As Christians, we need to develop skills that will help us to see what is healthy and what is not. Some stories will nourish us, will help us to grow strong in faith, and will encourage us to know and love Jesus better. Other stories may be less like a balanced meal and more like a can of soda and a candy bar. Junk food won’t hurt us once in a while, but it won’t help us grow strong either. Still other stories may function more like poison. They may turn our hearts away from loving God and toward other kinds of desire.

I’m not here to tell you what stories you should or shouldn’t read. I’m not going to prescribe a list of books that are wholesome versus those that are candy. But I would like to give you some skills that will help you stock the fridge for your own life of reading and imagination.

I’m also not here to give you
the
final interpretation of the Twilight Saga. Reading the stories, you may notice very different things than I noticed. You may not agree with my reactions to the characters or the plots. I am here to raise questions that occurred to me while I read, to point out the way things seem to work in the Saga, and to give some insight into how the themes of the Saga relate to the Christian life. I hope my questions will help you ask questions too.

The chapters in this book are organized around the themes of the series, which I mentioned earlier. In each chapter, I’ll talk about the way a theme operates in the Twilight story, and I’ll
give some suggestions for addressing the theme thoughtfully and biblically.

I hope you’ll use this book for personal reflection. Maybe you have a group of Christian friends who can help you reflect on the powerful themes we’re going to discuss. Maybe you can read it with a youth leader or with a group of Christians who meet together for discipleship and accountability. I’d love it if moms and daughters read this book together.