Destiny vs. Free Will in 'Twilight'In Stephanie Meyer's vampires-meet-humans universe, one trumps the other.Sandra L. Gravett | posted 11/16/2011 01:40AM
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As the Twilight juggernaut gets into gear again this week with Friday's release of Breaking Dawn, Part 1, the frenzy about this story and these characters continues to fascinate millions while baffling others. For many Christian fans, this saga relates more than a tale of teenaged love and all of its trials and tribulations. These narratives raise issues related to faith, redemption, and hope as well as demonstrate positive values with regard to family, friendship, building community, and the expression of sexuality. But many overlook one of the more interesting religious themes: The idea of human free will and the importance of the ability to make moral choices stand out as central topics throughout the Twilight saga, although they are often confused by the idea that these characters exist in an eternally fixed and determined universe.
The core story of the series revolves around the obsessive love of the vampire Edward Cullen and the human Bella Swan. As the saga unfolds, each repeatedly asserts the inevitability of their bond; in their world, it really is destiny. Edward, for instance, believes he spent many of his 100-plus years (he was born in 1901, and turned into a vampire during the 1918 influenza epidemic) searching for something he could not find because Bella did not yet exist. He further determines that when he first meets Bella, the unique scent of her blood mystically drew him in and that his inability to hear her thoughts demonstrated her unique nature in relation to him. Bella, likewise, figures out relatively quickly that Edward is a vampire. While she understands the danger that represents, she also asserts that she cannot help but love him no matter what. Indeed, when he separates from her in the second book, New Moon, she loses the ability to function normally. In her mind, her life depends on being with him.
Edward and Bella, a love story of destiny?
While one might claim these are merely the feelings of a young love, Edward and Bella also appear to exist in a world that they understand to operate under unchangeable or inevitable conditions. Edward contends that vampires have no options other than damnation. In spite of the Cullen family's unique diet of no human blood, vampires represent a soulless species having lost the precious gift of their humanity. As amoral blood predators, they can only produce death, by feeding on victims—human or otherwise—or turning them into powerfully animated corpses. Edward's sister Rosalie makes this point clearly when she expresses her anger toward Bella for her willingness to transform into a vampire and give up the possibility of having a child.
Similarly, Bella's friend Jacob Black, a werewolf, lacks control over his nature. In his reality, the presence of vampires forces his tribe to shift from human to wolf form. Additionally, as both a man and a wolf, he must respond to the commands of the pack's alpha. Further, like many others of his kind, he can "imprint" on another person, creating a bond that can neither be resisted nor broken. Like Edward, he sees his world as circumscribed by the conditions of what he is.
The human world, to Bella, seems equally fixed, but also mundane by comparison. While she feels trapped by her aging (in comparison to Edward's eternal 17-year old self) and faces a different kind of peril due to her mortality, she fails to see that these features actually offer her a world of options that serve as the most important aspect of her humanity. Instead of human life being determined, it is actually marked by choices.
Mormon tradition, moral choicesThe author of the Twilight series, Stephanie Meyer, comes out of the Mormon tradition. As Latter Day Saints understand the world, humans pre-exist with God in the divine realm. Incarnation as mortal beings happens in this world as a testing ground to demonstrate a person's worthiness for life eternal. Of most significance, God does not control humans, and salvation is not inevitable. Rather, in Mormon theology, God looks to humans to develop the ability to make moral choices and thus to find their way into eternity.
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