Mark Reads 'Eclipse': Epilogue
In the epilogue of Eclipse, Meyer mysteriously decides to switch to Jacob's point of view for the final few pages of the novel. In just 8 pages of text, she commits the ultimate character assassination of Jacob Black, confirms that the werewolves are all misogynist wastes of space, and makes sure that Jacob also calls an inanimate object "retarded." IN 8 PAGES. Intrigued? Then it's time for Mark to finish reading Eclipse.
EPILOGUE-CHOICE
Twilight: An Act in Multiple Parts
Act 14
Scene 1
[JACOB BLACK stands on a cliff overlooking the very ocean where he saved BELLA SWAN from committing suicide. Standing alongside him is his female wolf companion LEAH CLEARWATER.1 She is staring at JACOB pensively, with determination. She is the first to speak.]
LEAH: Seriously, how much longer are you going to be? This is annoying.
JACOB: You are really, really annoying and I want you to jump off this cliff and die in the water below.2
LEAH: I just want you to know that your sorrow over Bella, which is completely unfounded, is affecting the whole pack, including myself.
JACOB: You have to be the most self-absorbed person alive, Leah. I'd hate to shatter the dream world you live in--the one where the sun is orbiting the place where you stand--so I won't tell you how little I care what your problem is. Go. Away.3
LEAH: Will you give me a chance to explain why I'm here and why I'm concerned?
JACOB: If I pretend to listen, will you leave?4
LEAH: I can hear your thoughts, dude. Remember? So I know that you once thought I was beautiful, but I've since turned into a bitter harpy, so you hate me.5
[JACOB scowls at this and steps closer to the edge of the cliff.]
LEAH: Look, all I'm saying is that the more you obsess over her, the more the rest of us feel exactly what you feel. We are connected. We feel your pain. She's gone, Jacob. You need to move on. It's so bad that she's appearing in my dreams and I'm actually making out with her.6
JACOB: If you're upset about gender confusion, Leah...How do you think the rest of us like looking at Sam through your eyes? It's bad enough that Emily has to deal with your fixation. She doesn't need us guys panting after him, too.7
[LEAH, hurt by the words of JACOB, spits at him and then storms off into the forest. JACOB stares after her for a brief moment before turning back to the cliff, to the ocean.]
JACOB [thinking aloud]: Glad she's gone. I'd do that again if I had to.8
[JACOB takes a quiet moment to think, staring out at the ocean. He doesn't speak, but his face belies the words in his head. We can see the sorrow he is feeling from the truth that Leah spoke. He doesn't cry, but he looks as if the moment is mere seconds away. He stares down at the awkward brace covering his right arm.]
JACOB: This sling is retarded.9
[JACOB limps to a tree just a few feet away and picks up the dirty crutches leaning against it. He takes one last look at the ocean before he sticks the crutches under his arms and hobbles into the forest.]
Scene 2
[We see JACOB BLACK walk into his home. His father, BILLY BLACK, sits at the dinner table, fidgeting in his wheelchair. He looks uncomfortable and anxious. JACOB senses this immediately.
BILLY: Hello, son. I know that you just had an awkward, angry moment with Leah, since we all know each other's thoughts, so I'm going to bring up her mother and her so that I can make this situation even worse than it already is.10 Her mother is so awesome, though, because she's really tough. Too bad Leah isn't. She makes a shitty werewolf.11
JACOB: I HATE YOU, FATHER. I'm going to ignore you and shovel food into my mouth in the most manly way possible.
BILLY: By the way, I'm acting so weird because you got a letter. It's a wedding invitation from Bella. I'm going to give it to you and sit right here and be awkward some more.
[JACOB snaps the letter from his father and reads the personalized letter inside the invitation. It is from EDWARD CULLEN.]
JACOB: Jacob. I'm breaking the rules by sending you this. She was afraid of hurting you, and she didn't want to make you feel obligated in any way. But I know that, if things had gone the other way, I would have wanted the choice. I promise I will take care of her, Jacob. Thank you--for her--for everything. Edward.12
BILLY: Yeah this is awkward. Don't break the table, Jacob.
[JACOB glances down to see that he's gripping the table so hard it's splintering. He releases his grip, one finger at a time. He looks at his father one last time and bolts out of the door.]
Scene 3
[JACOB continues to run through the forest, quickly transforming into his familiar wolf form, picking up speed as he transitions. We see trees blur by as he continues to push harder and harder. The voices of his pack can be heard, but the bodies they belong to cannot be seen. This is the communication of the pack.]
EMBRY: So sorry.
QUIL: Wait for us.
JACOB: Leave me alone.
SAM [His voice is calm, noble.]: Let him go. Phase back. I'll pick you up, Embry.
JACOB [to SAM]: Thank you.
SAM: Come home when you can.
[With these final words, JACOB disappears from view as we hear his thoughts aloud.]
JACOB: If the silence in my head lasts, I will never go back. I won't be the first one to choose this form over the other. Maybe, if I run far enough away, I will never have to hear again...
[We hear one last howl from JACOB, heartbroken, full of sorrow, full of regret, and full of a desperate cry to rid himself of the pain he feels.]
JACOB: I will push my legs faster, letting Jacob Black disappear behind me.13
To be continued....
Author's Notes:
1) I don't know what's more baffling: The events that follow in the Epilogue or the fact that Meyer gives absolutely no context or reason for why Leah decides to pester Jacob. And I use "pester" loosely, because, since I don't know why she's there, I don't know if it counts as pestering. My only thought? Meyer hates that Leah is a woman without a companion, so she must be made into a miserable person. Just wait for it. The worst 8 pages in literary history.
2) LITERALLY. LITERALLY. HE SAYS THIS: "'Jump off a cliff, Leah.' I pointed to the one at my feet." WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.
3) Direct quote, word-for-word, from the book. You are a horrible person, Jacob Black. I'd ask you to jump off a cliff, but your author has decided to completely contradict your entire characterization for...I don't know the reason. I don't get it. It makes no sense. So...go die in a fire anyway.
4) Another exact quote. DIE. IN. A. FIRE.
5) Further evidence that Meyer believes that any female without a companion is a horrible, no-good, incomplete person: "I remembered back when I used to think that Leah was pretty, maybe even beautiful. That was a long time ago. No one thought of her that way now. Except for Sam. He was never going to forgive himself. Like it was his fault that she'd turned into this bitter harpy."
NEWSFLASH, STEPHENIE MEYER: IT IS DIRECTLY HIS FAULT THAT SHE TURNED INTO SUCH A "BITTER HARPY." HE DITCHED HER FOR HER FUCKING COUSIN. WHAT THE FUCK. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU.
6) I have no idea why the makeout detail is important to anything or included at all. What.
7) And there it is. 100% the most offensive, absurd, and infuriating quote from all of Eclipse. In just three to four sentences, Stephenie Meyer is sexist, misogynistic, AND homophobic. All at once. Right there. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST HOW.
But seriously, think about this. Leah is "confused" about gender here, implying that there's a specific role that each gender must abide to. In this case, the men are meant to pant after the women and vice versa. But when Leah dreams of kissing Bella? Or the pack feels Leah's lust for Sam? It's "confusion." And it's worse than Emily, a female, having to deal with Leah's heartbreak.
Absolutely abysmal and fucking dangerous. FUCK YOU if you support this bullshit.
8) Quote: "Sam was going to give me hell for that, but it was worth it. Leah wouldn't bug me anymore. And I'd do it again if I had the chance." ARGH I WISH I COULD MURDER FICTIONAL CHARACTERS.
9) Jacob's narration is identical to that of Bella's except in this one instant: He refers to his sling as "retarded," a word that's probably too crude for Bella's thoughts. It does make him look 6, so...there it is.
10) Literally!!!!! SERIOUSLY!! What is wrong with all of these people?
11) Billy's exact words: "Amazing woman. She's tougher than grizzlies, that one. I don't know how she deals with that daughter of hers, though. Now Sue, she would have made one hell of a wolf. Leah's more of a wolverine." Again, Leah is a terrible person. I hate this. I hate all of this so so so much.
12) I included the full text of Edward's handwritten letter to Jacob because I wanted you all to see exactly how much condescension and gloating was dripping off the pages of this book. You are an asshole, Edward. An asshole.
13) As best as I could, I left the final scene of Eclipse exactly as it is in the book, aside from leaving out a few descriptions and changing the tense of Stephenie Meyer's original words. I find it odd that, in the final moments of the book, Jacob returns to the characterization that we were introduced to. His actions finally make sense. In those final moments, he becomes the emotional being we'd come to enjoy in New Moon, the kid who once had hope for the world, despite the terrible hand he'd been dealt. And regardless of the ridiculous character assassination Meyer gave him throughout Eclipse, I still think there's some small sliver of hope that this isn't the way Jacob was ever supposed to be. Perhaps Meyer couldn't control the popularity of Jacob after she'd written him to be such a loving and empathetic person. This was her way of assuring her readers that Edward was indeed the right choice: by making Jacob an even shittier character than him.
This final moment of Eclipse is possibly the one part of the entire series that I actually enjoy. I don't have any complaints about it; I think it's written intelligently and with a bleak poetry. Jacob's rejection of his human form is a rejection of what Meyer has turned him into, in my mind, though I'm sure Meyer would club me to death over that assertion. But as his pack feels the intense and genuine pain that Jacob does when he reads Edward's letter, there's something very endearing about their unspoken pleas to help and Sam's amazingly sympathetic response to Jacob. Come home when you can, he thinks. It's a moment that's rare in this series, when characters understand each other and act out of respect for their individual feelings and emotions.
And yet, despite this, I can't help but feel that this one moment of clarity is completely overshadowed by the previous 7 pages of the epilogue and the 27 chapters that precede it. I couldn't imagine that there would be anything worse than the dependency themes presented in New Moon and the complete disdain for female independence that reared its head time and time again.
I was wrong. Throughout Eclipse, we're presented with some of the most damaging, dangerous, and utterly offensive themes I have ever seen in popular culture. Women need men to be whole people. Marriage is an institution that demands respect, not because it is an act of love, but because it is a necessary transaction to complete the soul. There are distinct roles that men and women must follow or there is something deeply wrong with who they are.
Racism. Transphobia. Misogyny. Sexism. Xenophobia. Homophobia. Classism. It's the worst of the worst. It's like a buffet of all the terrible things that hurt this world and directly affect those who are oppressed by these institutions, by the minorities who lack the privilege that a rich, white, Mormon author exerts on a daily basis. And, at heart, that's what a lot of this book felt to me: A person who holds nearly every privilege in the world (no male privilege) rubs this in our faces at every single moment she can.
You aren't a real woman. You aren't a real man. You aren't worthy without a nice car. You aren't worthy unless your skin is white. You aren't worthy unless you believe in God, in marriage, in traditional gender roles, in the subjugation of the woman to the man, in everything that makes ME a worthy part of this world.
Fuck you, Stephenie Meyer.
Because on top of all of this wankery and bullshit, you cannot fucking write. If we remove every bit of wank you've subjected us to in the 629 pages of Eclipse, you have one of the most poorly written novels ever committed to paper left over. You lack an invigorating vocabulary. You have multiple errors that any amateur editor should have caught. You cannot develop and maintain interesting and consistent characters. You have no idea how to introduce a plot in any of your novels and, even if you were trying to experiment with an alternative narrative technique, you absolutely can't do that well either.
I've finished Eclipse. And I know this fits so well and is poetic brilliance, but I honestly feel this way. I'm not doing this just for the sake of it. But I can say this with 100% certainty:
As of right now, Eclipse is infinitely worse than Twilight and New Moon combined and is the worst piece of fiction I have ever had the displeasure of reading.
Breaking Dawn starts Monday. Surprise tomorrow. Have a wonderful New Years, y'all.
