Post
by corona » Fri Apr 15, 2011 10:33 am
Openhome,
Those are very good points to bring up. I didn't think that any particular remark by SM was necessarily that bad, considering this was an interview and not a dissertation, and sometimes people say things they wish they had worded differently. Overall, though, I think once you add everything up there definitely seems to be a bias in the way SM discusses the characters, although she may very well be simply defensive of her Jacob character and feels that Edward needs no defense.
However, that sets up Edward as having "tragic" flaws, but Jacob has none and all can be forgiven (if indeed there is anything that needs to be forgiven) through his golden parachute of youth. Both Edward and Jacob make mistakes by using the rationale of the "ends justify the means". In Edward's case his decision to lie to Bella illuminates his tragic flaw, while Jacob's manipulation of Bella is considered noble. The books are riddled with these double-standards between the two. And that is OK, it is part of what makes reading them fun, because even the frustrations just means you are really getting into the story. It would have been nice, though, to see Jacob just once acknowledge that he went too far. By removing any responsibility for his actions in the books and in the interviews, there seems to be an underlying message that if we don't like Jacob then we don't understand him and don't get what everything is about. Frankly, I don't like him because I wouldn't want to be around him at all. When he is miserable he makes sure that everyone else is miserable. Jacob the he-man werewolf, the true alpha pack leader, is basically a drama queen.
Edit: I just wanted to add a small example of Jacob, the flawless one who is only concerned about Bella, in one of his exuberant moments:
I didn’t care if the wolves, either set, avenged me or called the Cullens’ justice fair. None of that mattered. All I cared about was my own justice. My revenge. The thing that had killed Bella would not live another minute longer.
If Bella’d survived, she would have hated me for this. She would have wanted to kill me personally.
But I didn’t care. She didn’t care what she had done to me—letting herself be slaughtered like an animal. Why should I take her feelings into account?
No, I don't like Jacob.
"It will take an amazing amount of control,” she mused. “More even than Carlisle has. He may be just strong enough…the only thing he’s not strong enough to do is stay away from her. That’s a lost cause.”