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The Vampires of Twilight
After Twilight was published in 2005, it became an overnight sensation - one that put vampires back on the map in the world of entertainment. The number of vampire novels, TV shows, and movies skyrocketed. Vampires became cool again, and they owed their popularity to one major thing - the mythological ‘facelift’ they were given by writers like Stephenie Meyer.
Meyer’s vampires are different from the traditional vampires, also known as ‘foundation’ vampires - Dracula, Carmilla, Nosferatu - the original and earliest members of the vampire mythology. The foundation vampires are “dark natured, predatory, well-learned, intellectual, strong-willed, moody, mentally unstable, hunters, and relentlessly evil monsters” (Giamalva 4). While some of Meyer’s vampires resemble their literary ancestors, the stars of Twilight - the Cullen family - do not.
“‘Don’t laugh - but how can you come out
during the daytime?’
He laughed anyway. ‘Myth.’
‘Burned by the sun?’
‘Myth.’
‘Sleeping in coffins?’
‘Myth.’ He hesitated for a moment, and a
peculiar tone entered his voice. ‘I can’t sleep.’”
(Meyer 186)
The most notable thing about the Twilight vampires are their good looks. After the transformation into a vampire, both men and women become abnormally attractive. This is different from the foundation vampire, who was grotesque and frightening. In Twilight, Bella is constantly making compliments about Edward’s appearance, along with every other vampire she encounters. It is the first thing that a human would notice about a vampire - making Bella a believable and relatable human character within the secondary world of Twilight.
"I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected so see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel.”
(Meyer 19)
Bella meets the Cullens.
(Twilight 2008)
They are super strong and super fast, able to achieve feats that no normal human is capable of. The first example of the Twilight vampire's super strength that we see is when Edward rescues Bella from the path of an out-of-control van. In the school parking lot, Edward is standing a few car lengths away from Bella when an oncoming van spins out on the ice. He runs faster than the human eye can see, and physically holds the van back from crushing her. During Edward’s rescue of Bella, she remarks that his “hands moved so fast they blurred” (Meyer 56). He is able to stop the oncoming vehicle with just a touch, and with one hand “gripping under the body of the van”, he is able to hold it up long enough to move Bella’s legs out of the way (Meyer 56).
Edward saves Bella from the out of control van.
(Twilight 2008)
Another great example of the Cullens strength and speed is towards the end of the book when they play a game of vampire baseball. The sounds they make are so loud they have to wait for a thunderstorm to be able to play. Bella watches in awe as they play, running and hitting faster than the human eye can see.
“The inning continued before my incredulous eyes. It was impossible to keep up with the speed at which the ball flew, the rate at which their bodies raced around the field.”
“When they collided, the sound was like the crash of two massive falling boulders.”
(Meyer 370)
Vampire baseball game.
(Twilight 2008)
For a Twilight vampire, the eyes are truly windows to the soul. Their eyes reflect their blood drinking habits and their level of thirst. Edward hasn’t fed in a while when he first meets Bella, and she immediately notices that “his eyes were black - coal black." (Meyer 23). Twilight vampires have black eyes when they are thirsty, regardless of their normal feeding habits. Their eye color changes gradually - day by day - as they grow more hungry.
Normally, the Cullen's eyes are a golden color because of their diet - they choose to abstain from human blood and feed on animals instead. Bella notices this after Edward returns to school, their second meeting. She remarks that his eyes are “a strange ocher, darker than butterscotch, but with the same golden tone” (Meyer 46).
Vampires who feed on humans have bright red eyes, and therefore it is harder for them to blend in with society. That's why many of them are nomads who don't live in society like the Cullens do. Bella’s first encounter with a red-eyed vampires comes when the nomad vampires Laurent, Victoria, and James come upon the Cullen’s baseball game. She notices that their eyes were “a deep burgundy color that was disturbing and sinister” (Meyer 376).
Unlike some of the more classic vampires, the vampires in Twilight do not burn up in the sun. They do, however, become very noticeable on a sunny day - their skin is, for lack of a better world, sparkly. This is why the Cullens in Twilight choose to live in Forks, Washington, where it is cloudy most of the year. On days where the sun is out, they stay at home.
“Edward in the sunlight was shocking. I couldn’t get used to it, though I’d been staring at him all afternoon. His skin, white despite the faint flush from yesterday’s hunting trip, literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface.”
(Meyer 260)
Nearly every vampire has a special ability, sort of like a super power. Theoretically, a person’s talents or personality traits while they were a human ‘carry over’ into their vampire selves. For Edward Cullen, who was always very observant as a human, the power he was ‘reborn’ with is mind reading. Alice Cullen had strange visions as a human, and is now able to see the future. Jasper Hale can control the emotions of the people around him. For some vampires, their human traits are increased as a vampire, but don’t manifest themselves as a special power. Rosalie Hale was very beautiful and shallow as a human, and as a vampire she is extremely beautiful. Emmett Cullen is super strong; Esme Cullen is full of love and hospitality; Carlisle Cullen is a compassionate doctor, and a leader.
Vampires are cold - they don't have a heart pumping warm blood through their bodies. Bella describes Edward’s fingers as “ice-cold, like he'd been holding them in a snowdrift before class” (Meyer 45). Their skin is pale and rock-hard, often referred to by Bella as ‘marble’ or ‘stone’. It’s nearly unbreakable - only another vampire can harm them physically.
In the Twilight universe, vampires can smell the blood of humans by just being near them. Some human's blood smells better to certain vampires than others, and they call these humans La Tua Cantante - 'singers' - because their blood sings to the vampire. A singer can send a vampire into a feeding frenzy - the smell is nearly irresistible. Bella is Edward’s singer - the first time that they meet, Edward has to physically restrain himself from attacking her. The pull of her blood is so strong that he has to leave town for a few days in order to clear his head.The older a vampire is, the more control that they've over their bloodlust. It takes years - decades, maybe even centuries - of practice to learn to resist the temptation. Edward's restraint during his first time meeting Bella is obvious because of how physically taxing it is for him.
"Just as I passed, he suddenly went rigid in his seat. He stared at me again, meeting my eyes with the strangest expression on his face - it was hostile, furious."
(Meyer 23)
"So did you stab Edward Cullen with a pencil or what? I've never seen him act like that."
(Meyer 25)
Edward smells Bella for the first time.
(Twilight 2008)
“I listed again in my head the things I’d observed myself: the impossible speed and strength, the eye color shifting from black to gold and back again, the inhuman beauty, the pale, frigid skin. And more - small things that registered slowly - how they never seemed to eat, the disturbing grace with which they moved. And the way he sometimes spoke, with unfamiliar cadences and phrases that better fit the style of a turn-of-the-century novel than that of a twenty-first-century classroom.”
(Meyer 138)