Eclipse Chapter 11 – Racially Uncomfortable

Previously: Meyer tries to explain why her werewolves are totally, seriously not naked right now, okay?
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Catherine: So after Bella was handed off for partial custody from vampire to werewolf last chapter, she starts this chapter at a bonfire with all of the werewolves.

They’re eating hotdogs and talking.

Kirsti: More accurately, they’re eating hot dogs that were cooked on wire hangers. I’m still not sure why that level of detail was necessary.

Catherine: Unsanitary. 

Paul asks Jacob if he’s gonna eat the last hotdog and Jacob says, even though he’s already had 10 hot dogs, that he wants to. Paul gets so jealous and mad that he actually balls up his fists and almost wolfs out. Then Jacob laughs and says he was messing with him and gives him the hotdog.

So… this was included. I guess to show us that Edward was right and remind us that the wolves are prone to fits of unnecessary temper. But I remember a time when it was the vampires getting mad about dibs on noms.

Marines: Right, right, where the “nom” WAS ACTUALLY DIRECTLY BELLA. So, same, same but different. 

Catherine: Bella marvels at how easy it is to be with her ‘Quileute friends’ and how she was worried that they would think she was a traitor for robbing the grave and getting that sparkle peen.

Actually she says:

“I’d started to worry about showing up with him at the bonfire, wondering if the werewolves would consider me a traitor now. Would they be angry with Jacob for inviting me? Would I ruin the party?”

You ruin every party, Bella. No one wants some asshole sitting and reading Wuthering Heights in the corner while they’re trying to get their freak on.

Annie: A+ assessment.

Catherine: Thanks! But anyway they didn’t treat her like garbage, even though they totally could’ve and it would’ve been hilarious. Thanks, werewolves.

Apparently she got ‘Hey, vampire girl!’ and high fives and a hand squeeze from Emily. I guess they’re all really happy to see that her boyfriend hasn’t kill her yet. Not a red flag at all.

Bella says that alongside the ‘kids’ (like Emily and Sam who are like 10 years older than her?) the parents are there as well. Billy is there and Quil’s grandfather, ‘Old Quil’. I wonder if Quil knows that they call him ‘Old Quil’. Also, Harry Clearwater’s widow and Leah and Seth, who are her kids.

Hey you guys, you ready for Bella to throw out some more ableist bullshit? (M: No.) (K: Seriously. NO.)

No? (M: Still no.) Get ready. (M: Cot dammit.)

“I wondered how horrible it was for Leah to sit across the circle from Sam and Emily. Her lovely face betrayed no emotion, but she never looked away from the flames. Looking at the perfection of Leah’s features, I couldn’t help but compare them to Emily’s ruined face. What did Leah think of Emily’s scars, now that she knew the truth behind them? Did it seem like justice in her eyes?”

That is word for word. You cannot say that we are projecting anything problematic or ableist on this book. LOOK AT THAT. THAT IS WHAT IT SAYS.

She literally compares Leah’s ‘lovely’ face to Emily’s ‘ruined’ one and then wonders if Leah thinks that Emily’s life-threatening wounds were ‘justice’.

Is Bella a sociopath? No, seriously, all jokes aside, does she understand human emotion and feelings at all? Or are we all just confusing meat bags to her? Remember when Bella was supposed to be a blank slate that we could project ourselves onto so we could pretend to be in an abusive relationship too? I think this book is where that officially ends. She is such an asshole, it’s mind-blowing. Who thinks like this?

Annie: Stephenie Meyer, apparently. I’d like to say I’m surprised that absolute bullshit like this slipped past her editor, but once ‘grown men fall in love with babies’ got the green light, I guess all of this racism, sexism, ableism is fair game.

Mari: It’s great, too, that Bella thinks Emily deserves some kind of JUSTICE for Sam dumping Leah. It’s sexism 101 to blame the woman involved and leave the guy out of it. So, Bella can go all the way to hell at this point. 

K: If I hadn’t borrowed this book from work, I’d probably be ripping these pages out and setting them on fire. I’m kind of tempted to do it anyway.

Catherine: It’s the only way to get rid of the evil that is this book.

Another wolf named Jared is there with his girlfriend, whom he has imprinted on. Bella thinks she’s ‘plain’ at first but then takes that back when she sees the way that Jared looks at her. She talks about how ugly this girl is for a paragraph and then goes ‘well, this guy thinks she’s hot so I guess she’s okay’.

“The way he stared at her! It was like a blind man seeing the sun for the first time. Like a collector finding an undiscovered Da Vinci, like a mother looking into the face of her newborn child.”

I can’t believe I have to say this but… mother’s don’t normally want to fuck their newborn children, Bella. That’s not how dating someone works. Please stop pretending to be human if you’re only gonna put in the minimum effort.

Bella watches these two thankfully age-appropriate kids and thinks about Jacob telling her that imprinting works because it’s hard to resist that level of commitment and adoration. Or, in other words, because you can stalk someone into dating you, apparently.

Annie: I get dry heaves every time I read the word ‘imprint’ now. Also stalking should never, ever be consider a cute or sweet or romantic method of courting. Stalking is a crime. Not a way to get a date. Wrong message, Stephenie.

Catherine: Bella starts to ask Jacob to take her home but he tells her that she can’t leave yet (she should be used to that by now) because the best part is coming. This isn’t just a bonfire, it’s a Quileute council meeting and OG Quil is gonna tell some stories. Sure. This is probably something Native Americans do. Don’t bother researching. (M: If OG Quil sheds a single tear, I’m MF out of here.)

“Jacob scooted back beside me, where I rested against the low ridge of rock. He put his arm over my shoulder and spoke even lower into my ear. “The histories we always thought were legends,” he said. “The stories of how we came to be. The first is the story of the spirit warriors.”

Jesus, here we go.

The following is an incredibly boring, endless Quileute story that will somehow make you both bored and racially uncomfortable at the same time.

It does actually have something to do with the plot later on, so there’s that. But it goes on for 17 full pages (M: WTF.), so I’m gonna sum it up as best I can and hope that you guys will grade me for effort.

K: Apparently Past!Kirsti (the one from like 6 weeks ago who actually read this freaking chapter) was more concerned about the fact that Emily is scribbling everything down as Billy talks, because “surely someone could just record this on their phone?” OH WAIT, IT’S THE NINETIES.

Catherine: They had video cameras in the 90’s though, for sure.

Billy tells the story and starts out by saying the Quileutes are an old people and have survived this long because of magic werewolf powers, obvs. I imagine that’s helpful. But before the tribe was werewolves they were ‘spirit warriors’. This basically meant that they could separate their spirits from their bodies and fight by using ghost powers like kicking up storms and convincing the animals to do their bidding. I swear to god I’ve read this in a DC comic. (A: #TeamMarvel.)

Anyway, the men of the tribe could do this but the women had to stay home in the spirit kitchen during ghost battle time. And now our women are Ghostbusters. We’ve come such a long way, guys.

There was one Spirit Chief (Meyer’s capitalization, not mine) who was named Taha Aki. Taha Aki had an old school beef with a guy in the tribe named Utlapa who thought he was shit at running things. Taha Aki finally had enough of this dude’s nonsense and cast him out of the tribe. One day when Taha Aki was in spirit mode to patrol the perimeter, Utlapa returned and murdered Taha Aki’s body while his spirit was out of it. Utlapa killed him and then went into his body so he could pretend to be him.

Taha Aki had to watch helplessly as Utlapa body snatched him and took his place as chief. Then Utlapa forbid his warriors from leaving their bodies because he knew that Taha Aki would be waiting for them as a ghost like WTF GUYS?

After this, Utlapa started living it up and taking on a bunch of extra wives and shit. So Taha Aki decides to inhabit the body of a big ass wolf to kill Utlapa. He went down the the village and tried to communicate with the warriors who were attacking him. They saw this big ass wolf trying to talk to them and were like, oh shit, that wolf is trying to talk to us? Maybe it’s not a wolf.

K: My favourite fucking awful part of this? “Taha Aki… retreated slowly from them, speaking with his eyes and trying to yelp the songs of his people.” TRYING TO YELP THE SONGS OF HIS PEOPLE, YOU GUYS. Mostly, this is funny to me because memes. 

Catherine: I can’t.

So this one warrior decides to go into the spirit world to talk to the wolf and when he does, Taha Aki talks to him and tells him about what went down.

But before this dude could get back into his body, Utlapa realized that he was about to be snitched on and sliced his throat. So Taha Aki get’s pissed and tries to go back into the wolf again but he’s SO pissed that the wolf can’t contain his rage and he transforms into a human again.

Only not just a guy but a hotter version of his normal self. Because sure. You have to have something to masturbate to in this boring chapter, right?

Taha Aki crushes Utlapa’s spirit or whatever and everything goes back to normal. Except now Taha Aki was a werewolf who didn’t age and had a bunch of sons who could become werewolves, too. At this point, the story pauses so that Bella can realize that the wolves around her are all descended from Taha Aki.

So some of Taha Aki’s sons became wolf warriors like him and some didn’t and the ones that didn’t found out that they could age normally if they gave up their wolf spirit. Taha Aki married twice and outlived two of his wives. Then he marries a third time and I guess he imprinted on her because he realized that she was his soul mate. Somewhere his first two wives are like:

So Taha Aki decides to give up his spirit wolf so that he can age with his new sidepiece.

Anyway, that’s only the first half of the story. I KNOW. WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?

Mari: I’m not even offering commentary. SORRY.

K: I have a post-it stuck to the page at this point that says “I care about literally none of this.” Picture me as April Ludgate and you’re really not far off.

Catherine: Yep. Told you. 

So, after Taha Aki gave up his spirit wolf and grew old, some shit started with another tribe over the fact that they were scared of the giant wolf-men in the next town over. Some daughters in the other tribe, the Makahs were going missing and they blamed the Quileutes for obvious reasons (the giant wolf-man thing). Taha Aki didn’t want to fight so he sent his oldest wolf son, Taha Wi to figure out who was taking the girls.

Taha Wi gets a posse together and starts searching the wolves and wouldn’t ya know it, they came across a sweet, sparkly smell that burned their noses. The posse decides to track it and find a ton of blood and then go missing. Taka Aki told the Mahah chief about the fuck up and the chief believed him and the tensions between them eased.

But a little while later more Makah ladies started disappearing from their homes. The wolves tried hunting them down again and only one came back. He was the oldest son of Taka Aki’s third wife, Yaha Uta.

Still with me? No. Whatever. I’m gonna keep going. You’ll catch up.

So, Yaha Uta brings back a vampire corpse to the tribe. He tells them that they happened upon this creature with the corpses of the girls and he killed two of Taha Aki’s sons before Yaha Uta brought him down. He figured the vampire was dead but when the tribe started examining it it started to try and reassemble itself. Like Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas remember?

The tribe then set fire to the vampire’s remains and then buried the ashes super far away from each other so there was no chance of it coming back like a Chucky doll again. Then it turned out that the creature had a mate who came looking for him. Meyer takes a second to remind everyone that vampires are beautiful primarily because of their whiteness:

“The stories say that the Cold Woman was the most beautiful thing human eyes had ever seen. She looked like the goddess of the dawn when she entered the village that morning; the sun was shining for once, and it glittered off her white skin and lit the golden hair that flowed down to her knees. Her face was magical in it’s beauty, her eyes black in her white face. Some fell to her knees to worship her.”

Natives, amiright? What with the being so surprised by white skin that they automatically see you as a deity. It happens to me all of the never because that’s incredibly racist and not a thing.

Mari: I can’t believe she has the Native Americans bowing down to the pretty white woman in a chapter that is bastardizing Quileute legends. This is so many levels of not okay. 

K: I don’t condone burning books, you guys. But it’s really cold in Melbourne at the moment and this book is just so thick and burnable…

Catherine: Dooooo it! Give in!

So, the vampire lady asked where her mate was and no one could understand her so she started killing people. Vampires are looking worse and worse here, Bella.

A few people managed to escape and ran to see Taha Aki and tell him about the crazy lady. At this point, Yaha Uta is the only spirit wolf left, because everyone else gave up on that shit when they realized that it made them into pedos. So he transforms and goes to fight the women with Taha Aki, his sons and his third wife following behind.

The vampire started fighting Yaha Uta and ended up killing him. Taha Aki gets pissed and transforms into a wolf himself. He starts to fight the vampire while his wife watches. The third wife, who is only referred to as ‘the third wife’ and never given a name, decides to distract the vampire by shoving a knife into her heart. This made the vampire lose focus because of all that tasty human blood just going to waste. And this gives Taha Aki enough advantage to kill the vampire, with the help of his other two sons who magically hit puberty and transformed into wolves that very second. (M: Whuuuut.) (C: IDK I’m just the messenger.)

After this, Taha Aki was so depressed about his wife’s death that he stayed as a wolf for ever and never rejoined the tribe. His sons took over leading the tribe and protecting it as wolves and their sons took over after them and so on till you get to this mouth breathing group of adolescents we’re stuck with now. At one point they went without a vampire attack for a few generations and, as a result for some reason stopped transforming into wolves. I don’t get it either.

But then a big coven of broody vampires moved into town. GUESS WHO?

The Quileutes were ready to fight the Cullens on first sight but Carlisle spoke to them and told everyone to be cool.

K: The wording of this is suuuuuuuuper weird: “But the leader spoke to Ephraim Black as if he were a man.” Um. As if WHO were a man? Ephraim Black? If so, RACISM SHOTS. Because at no point does it say that Black is in wolf form. 

Catherine: Yeah, it’s super weird wording. I’m not sure what Meyer was really implying there.

They made a deal with the tribe that they wouldn’t bite anyone and everyone shook on it or whatever. I don’t think they actually signed anything so ‘treaty’ is kind of a strong word for it. ‘Agreement’ might be better. Lots of loopholes for Bella to swan dive into there if she was smart and mean instead of dumb and mean.

Also, the Cullens coven size has created a larger pack of wolves than the Quilietes have ever seen.

That’s the end of the story. Still with me, guys?

Annie: You are a champion. That was an awful 17 pages of mostly filler. 

Catherine: *tears up*  Thank you, Annie. I did it all for the people!

Of course, the only thing Bella takes away from this story is the sacrifice that the third wife made. Of course! She has to find something that reminds her of herself and her relationship with Edward in everything she possibly can.

Annie: Because she is self-absorbed and is only all about Edward (her first priority), or it’s about her. Otherwise, she doesn’t care.

Mari: Wait, so Meyer is bastardizing Quileute legend, so the white female protagonist can see her #firstworldproblems reflected in the story? 

WHO DEFENDS THIS STORY? I WILL FIGHT YOU. 

K: My favourite thing to come out of our New Moon recaps is that I said in a class that I hated the Twilight series, and ended up having a conversation with a group of horrified teenage girls that ended with them being like “Wow, yeah. That IS super abusive and racist. HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS BEFORE???” I can’t wait until a student asks me why I hate Eclipse…

Catherine: For the record, I have been firmly in the ‘HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS BEFORE???’ camp since we started these recaps. I am very sad and ashamed of my teenage self now.

Bella thinks about how the third wife was a human woman who was not a supernatural being but she ended up saving the day. Ah, the sweet clang of clumsily handled foreshadowing. As she’s thinking of this she drifts off to sleep and next thing she knows Jacob is waking her up. Somehow he managed to get her into his car and bring her to the treaty line to hand her off to mom.

Bella panics for a second thinking that she has missed the appointed time and she’s gonna get SO grounded by her boyfriend but she hasn’t and it’s fine. I mean, it’s still a shitty relationship. But it’s fine.

Bella says goodbye to Jake and crosses the boundary line and of course Edward runs up and gloms onto her like she’s running over the border into South Korea.

“Bella,” he said, relief strong in his voice; his arms wound tightly around me.”

She’s been gone for a few hours, tops and he had no reason to believe she was in any danger. In fact, Jacob actually called him on the way there to let him know that she was okay.

‘Bella, you were gone so long and no one else will put up with my bullshit’, –that’s what that is.

Mari: “Bella, I was worried that any amount of time away from me might make you realize that I’m abusing you. But you are back, PHEW.” 

Catherine: Edward suggests they get ‘home and in bed’ like he’s gonna even lie down next to her, which he isn’t. He’s gonna watch her from his creep chair in the corner, turning the lamp on and off beside him.

He asks her if she had a ‘nice time’ and offers to carry her into her house, just to up the ‘Bella is a child and Edward is her mom’ vibe that this book is bringing home for some reason.

Tell me this doesn’t read like a conversation we’ve all had after being picked up at a friend’s house, post-sleepover:

“Let’s get you home and in bed. Did you have a nice time?”
“Yeah—it was amazing, Edward. I wish you could have come. I can’t even explain it. Jake’s dad told us the old legends and it was like… like magic”.
“You’ll have to tell me about it. After you’ve slept.”

Aw, M-oooo-mmmm! But I want to play video games! Dang it! Dad always lets me stay up late.

Then he puts her in the car and buckles her seat belt for her. I’m not making this up, guys. This is real baby fetish stuff.

Annie: 

Nope, nope, nope.

Mari: I’m expecting a bottle of milk to appear. Maybe a blankie.

K: Hell, why stop at that? I’m anticipating a pacifier. She already has a lullaby.

Catherine: Ew! Why is this happening?

Edward takes Bella home and she ‘gets past’ Charlie without a lecture (since, remember, Edward is the one that gives her lectures, not her real life actual father) and goes upstairs to wait for Edward to climb through her window.

When he shows up he tells her that Esme is just ending her Bella-protection shift outside the window and Jake is starting his. To Bella’s credit (that asshole) she points out that them patrolling her yard like this is silly and it’s freezing and wet. Edward tells her that it’s only cold to her. So that settles it? I guess?

That night, Bella dreams that Rosalie is fighting a wolf-version of Billy on the beach and she tries to stop them and then realizes that she has a knife in her hand. Bella’s dreams are the fucking weirdest, have we mentioned that yet? It’s like they’re prophetic but… not really? It’s like she can’t even have psychic dreams right.

Mari: Well, let’s follow this logic around. There is 0 reason for Bella, not a psychic, to be having psychic dreams. It’s cheatery writing from Meyer that I think is to blame here. But Meyer is not a good writer. Thus, the dreams are also bad. 

Basically: EVERYTHING IS BAD.

Catherine: All roads lead back to that in this series. 

Bella wakes up and immediately buries her face in mom’s chest because she had a bad dream. Edward asks her what her dream was about and she says she’ll tell him later if she remembers. But she notices that he’s reading something and he tells her it’s Wuthering Heights. Called it. I also sort of just remembered but CALLED IT.

Bella says that she thought he didn’t like that book.

“You left it out,” he murmured, his soft voice lulling me toward unconsciousness. “Besides… the more time I spend with you, the more human emotions seem comprehensible to me. I’m discovering that I can sympathize with Heathcliff in ways I didn’t think possible before.”

Look at Mr. Robot over here with his incomprehensible human emotions. YOU USED TO BE HUMAN, EDWARD. IT HASN’T BEEN THAT FUCKING LONG. Also, if I didn’t understand human emotions Bella is definitely not the first place I’d go for that lesson. As previously outlined, she is a sociopath.

I’m gonna be honest and admit that I haven’t read Wuthering Heights since high school and I don’t remember much of it. I just remember it was depressing and Heathcliff was a jackass. Hopefully my fellow Snark Ladies remember it better?

Mari: It’s actually a classic I haven’t read at all. I tried in high school and noped my way out pretty quickly. 

K: I reread it earlier this year and Heathcliff is literally an abusive bag of dicks. Like, beats people and imprisons them against their will. NO ONE is happy until after he dies. So the fact that Edward can sympathise with Heathcliff? Is fucking terrifying, but not surprising.

Catherine: I knew Kirsti would know even if the rest of us aren’t SMART!GIRLS like Bella.

The next morning Edward leaves and Bella gets ready for school. She notices that whoever (Victoria, dumbass) broke into her hamper to steal her shirt had ‘critically impaired’ her wardrobe.

I guess she’ll have to go without her cult-length khaki skirts for one day before she can buy another dozen at Walmart.

She thinks that:

“If it wasn’t so frightening, it would be seriously annoying.”

It can be both, Bella. You are. (M: A+)

Before she can go down for breakfast she sees her ‘battered’ (cue eye roll) copy of Wuthering Heights on the floor where Edward accidentally dropped it. She remembers Edward saying that he felt sympathy for Heathcliff and thinks that she must have dreamed that and it can’t be right.

She sees that Edward stopped on a passage where Heathcliff was talking about not sending away Edgar as long as Catherine wants him around but that he would’ve ‘torn his heart out and drank his blood’ the moment she didn’t want him anymore.

The passage is reprinted in the book, btw. Bella shudders at the passage and thinks that she must be mis-remembering what Edward said and that he definitely doesn’t sympathize with a guy who would drink another guys blood or anything.

Mari: Why is she an idiot? Your boyfriend has 100% definitely murdered people, homegirl. 

Catherine: You know what this means, guys. Stephenie Meyer has read at least one passage of Wuthering Heights. Gold star!

Annie: I wish she’d stuck to reading books rather than writing them.

Mari: Katy, YOU get an A for effort today. None for Stephenie Meyer. (C: Yay! I’d like to thank: being done now.)

On a final note, I think it would be worthwhile to check out Debbie Reese’s blog American Indians in Children’s Literature, especially as it pertains to Twilight and the Quileute.

We touched on the awful way that Meyer treats Native Americans in her story, but it’s worth while to listen to some Native voices on why this is awful and problematic. We can laugh about the terrible writing and shallow characters until the cows come home, but this is also AWFUL and PROBLEMATIC. Just making sure we are clear on that point before we’re back again soon with even more awful. 

 

Next time on Eclipse: We are reminded that Edward thinks about killing Bella all the time in Chapter 12