If you’re familiar with the Twilight series—and you sort of can’t help but be these days, unfortunately—then you might know a bit about its author, Stephenie Meyer. Meyer, a mother of three boys, is a graduate of Brigham Young University and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She claims that her religious beliefs have had no impact whatsoever on her novels, but we all know that such a thing is sort of impossible.
Every author’s beliefs and past experiences tend to come through in their work at some point, right? And Meyer, a first-time author, certainly didn’t have the experience or skills to edit such personal details out of the text. Even seasoned authors create their works with underlying themes that they don’t originally intend. Many researchers and reviewers are coming forth, claiming that Meyer’s novels all contain material heavily influenced by Mormonism.
Several good examples exist across the web, but one of the best ones that I’ve come across is Angela Aleiss’s “Mormon Images About in Twilight.” Aleiss cites several examples of Mormonism and its symbols present in both the novels and, subsequently, the films.
Take, for example, Bella’s straight-laced lifestyle. She doesn’t drink (tea, coffee, or alcohol), smoke, have sex, or do anything else that so many other teens do. She also cleans and cooks in nearly every chapter—again, something that many teens her age would likely need some nudging to do.
While these might just be based on Meyers herself—who says she lives such a lifestyle based on her faith—they are still stemmed from her religion. And I bet that many—if not most—of her fans do not subscribe to a similar lifestyle. Of course, she could have done all of this just to make Bella the bland, boring character we all know her to be—something Meyers seems to have done so that readers could put themselves in her place easily. We have a purposefully boring main character here, folks; that’s not a great backbone for a story.
Aleiss goes on, providing several other allusions to Mormonism—the concept of the eternal marriage, the kinship with Native Americans, views on pregnancy and abortion, human divinity, Edward as an angel, etc. Some of these, I’ll admit, seem a little stretchy. For example, Bella saying that her relationship with Edward is “fowever” doesn’t have to be an allusion to the Mormon concept of eternal marriages—that could just be lame teen girl speak (writing). Still, when you add them all together, it does make a compelling case.
So what do you think? Could Twilight sell religion to people as well as The Shack seems to be doing? Though I think it’s much more subtle than that, it’s still a very influential book on female youth, which makes it an important question.
Printer-friendly version
