63 pages • 2 hours read
Breaking Dawn
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Themes
The Interplay Between Love and Sacrifice
As a paranormal romance, the central conflicts of Breaking Dawn (and the Twilight series as a whole) are rooted in the love the characters feel or don’t feel for each other. The paranormal genre elements create heightened stakes around that love that include threats of violence, domination, and death, forcing the characters to grapple with the sacrifices their love requires of them. Breaking Dawn explores the interplay between these two elements, examining the ways the characters are willing to give up parts of themselves—and even their lives—for the ones they love.
Meyer repeatedly emphasizes Bella’s love and devotion to others as her defining character trait. From the moment that she falls in love with Edward in Twilight, an immortal life with him becomes her all-encompassing desire. In Breaking Dawn, Bella is willing to sacrifice her humanity to be with Edward forever. Giving up her humanity requires her to give up her friendship with Jacob, her relationship with her family, and her ability to age, choosing instead to remain 18 forever to build a life with Edward. As a vampire, this human devotion is heightened into a supernatural ability to project a shield that protects those around her from the Volturi’s mental attacks. Her gift—an extension of her love—symbolizes her sacrificial nature, as the people she loves are more important to her than her own safety. Bella’s decision to secure paperwork for Jacob and Renesmee, but not herself exemplifies this theme as she anticipates sacrificing her own life to protect them. She views her gift only as a means to protect the others’ abilities to put up a fight long enough for Renesmee and Jacob to escape—a perspective made explicit in Bella’s inner monologue: “There was a good chance that my daughter was going to survive what was coming, and Jacob, too. If they had a future, then that was a kind of victory, wasn’t it?” (652). Despite feeling entirely hopeless about her own survival, Bella is ultimately willing to sacrifice herself to save her daughter and her best friend.
Meyer alludes to William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream throughout the novel to underscore the ways in which love, rather than reason, motivates the actions of the characters in Breaking Dawn. For example, this section’s epigraph, a quote from the play, reads, “And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays” (141). Meyer also uses the play as a frame of reference for the concept of imprinting—as Bella remarks to Jacob: “Edward told me once what it was like—your imprinting thing. He said it was like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, like magic” (189). When Jacob questions why Bella would move forward with her pregnancy when it is such a danger to her life, she references his imprinting as a way to explain her actions: she feels compelled to protect her daughter because of the love she feels for her. Similarly, Jacob abandons his family and his pack to ally with the vampires despite their antagonistic history because of his love for Bella. As the epigraph suggests, from the outside, the characters’ actions seem devoid of reason. However, through Jacob and Bella’s dual perspectives, Meyer gives insight into the deep love that motivates them.
Structurally, the climactic stand that the Cullens and their vampire friends make at the conclusion of the novel represents the ultimate sacrifice the vampires and the wolves are willing to sacrifice to protect those they love. Meyer reinforces the depth of their potential sacrifice in the somber tone just before the battle begins, as the vampires tell each other goodbye, realizing that there is little hope for their survival. They stand together despite the odds against them, proving that they are willing to sacrifice even their lives for those they love.
The Importance of Family and Friendship
Breaking Dawn brings an end to a centuries-long feud between the vampires and the wolves—the central conflict of the first three novels in the series. With the impending threat of the Volturi, these two groups build a friendship and learn to work together in defense of their home, emphasizing the powerful role that friendship, family, and community play in their lives.
The alliance created between the Cullens and the Quileute wolves represents a hopeful and redemptive resolution to the enmity between their two species, underscoring the concept of generational healing. The initial creation of the wolves was a direct result of vampire violence as Jacob’s ancestors needed a way to defend themselves and the town of Forks from vampire attacks. However, Jacob, Seth, and Leah’s decision to separate from the pack and side with the vampires begins to mend this feud between the two groups. As the three wolves spend days in the wilderness protecting the Cullen home, the Cullens, in turn, provide them with food, clothing, and shelter, bridging the gap between their communities. Ultimately, it is the presence of the wolves at the fight with the Volturi that forces them to pause rather than immediately destroying the Cullens, emphasizing the importance of the friendship that the two groups have built.
The very existence of the Cullens and their way of life emphasizes the value they place on family and friendships. They have created a life that is built on family and loving relationships—a dynamic atypical of their species. In Meyer’s world, vampires are solo, nomadic creatures by nature, who hunt and live alone and form few bonds or friendships. However, the Cullens have built a nuclear family, living as siblings with Carlisle and Esme as parents—bonds rooted in love rather than convenience or survival. As Garrett, one of the vampire witnesses assembled for the climactic standoff, explains to the Volturi, “I have witnessed the bonds within this family—I say family and not coven. These strange golden-eyed ones deny their very natures. But in return have they found something worth even more, perhaps, than mere gratification of desire?” (717). This “something” that Garrett references is the loving relationship that the Cullens have built with each other. They have discovered the importance of family, living peacefully together and in community with humans for centuries and finding the strength to abstain from human blood in defiance of their very nature.
The gathering of the vampires and wolves together in the final battle against the Volturi highlights the importance of both family and friendship. Throughout the moments leading up to the fight, Bella notes how several people in the Volturi camp flee into the forest. As the situation becomes more dangerous, the angry mob that the Volturi have gathered breaks up, leaving only the Volturi to stand and fight against the Cullens and their allies. Additionally, she notes feuding between the Volturi, as Caius and Aro argue over how to handle the situation. Meyer suggests that the Volturi lack the very thing that the gathered vampires have built over their months together leading to this moment: community and friendship. Despite the natural tendency of the vampires to be nomadic, they have come together and spent months getting to know each other, learning each other’s strengths, and building bonds that allow them to withstand the Volturi. Because of this, they remain strong, willing to sacrifice even their own lives to protect the Cullen family. Ultimately, their unity emphasizes the importance of community, as they are able to resist the Volturi and prevent a fight that would jeopardize their entire race.
Overcoming Prejudice and Ignorance
The first three novels in the series center around the feud between the wolves and the vampires, as each group lives according to their nature, putting them naturally at odds. However, as first Jacob and then Seth grow closer to the vampires, they discover who they truly are and build friendships with them. In this way, Seth in particular serves as a model for overcoming entrenched prejudice and ignorance through his willingness to get to know the Cullens, attend Bella’s wedding, and ultimately befriend them.
Throughout Breaking Dawn, several of the characters repeatedly default to their prejudicial beliefs, positioning the overcoming these prejudices as an ongoing process. The existence of Renesmee provides another key example in the text. Because of the vampires’ history with babies who were turned into vampires, everyone who meets Renesmee is initially afraid of her and unwilling to put aside their preconceived ideas of her. When the Denali clan meets them, Bella notes how “Tanya skittered back four steps, her strawberry curls quivering, like a human confronted by a venomous snake. Kate jumped back all the way to the front door and braced herself against the wall there” (585). This simile—comparing Tanya’s reaction to Renesmee to how she would react to a “venomous snake”—emphasizes just how deeply rooted her prejudices are. However, as the Denali clan—and the other vampires who gather at the Cullens—get to know Renesmee, they learn that she is something entirely new, allowing them to put aside their prejudices as they truly gather information and address their ignorance.
Meyer positions the group of witnesses that arrives with the Volturi as a metaphorical representation of prejudice. Bella describes them as “an angry mob, whipped to a frenzy and slavering for justice. […] [T]hey would spread the word that the criminals had been eradicated, that he Volturi had acted with nothing but impartiality. […] [T]hey wanted to help tear and burn” (681). This “mob” represents the ignorant collective within society. With little information of their own, they are manipulated by those in a powerful position—the Volturi—who convince them that they need to be angry and seek justice for an unverified wrongdoing. Their actions underscore their inherent prejudice and their ignorance of the situation, motivated instead by the intrinsic anger instilled in them by the Volturi. However, as the truth of the situation is revealed and they learn who Renesmee is, they slowly disperse, recognizing their own ignorance and refusing to stand by and support the Volturi’s injustice.
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By Stephenie Meyer
