Breaking Dawn
Breaking Dawn is the 2008 fourth novel in The Twilight Saga by American author Stephenie Meyer. Divided into three parts, the first and third sections are written from Bella Swan's perspective, and the second is written from the perspective of Jacob Black. The novel directly follows the events of the previous novel, Eclipse, as Bella and Edward Cullen get married, leaving behind a heartbroken Jacob. When Bella faces unexpected and life-threatening situations, she willingly risks her human life and possible vampire immortality.
Meyer finished an outline of the book in 2003, but developed and changed it as she wrote New Moon and Eclipse, though the main and most significant storylines remained unchanged. Little, Brown and Company took certain measures to prevent the book's contents from leaking, such as closing forums and message boards on several fansites and providing a special e-mail address for fans to send in links to leaks and spoilers online.
Breaking Dawn was released on August 2, 2008 at midnight release parties in over 4,000 bookstores throughout the US. From its initial print run of 3.7 million copies, over 1.3 million were sold in the US and 20,000 in the UK in the first 24 hours of the book's release, setting a record in first-day sales performance for the Hachette Book Group USA. The book was highly successful, selling over 6 million copies in 2008, and was the third best-selling novel of 2008 behind Twilight and New Moon.
Unlike the series' previous three entries, Breaking Dawn received mixed reviews from critics. It is also the most controversial book of the series, as adult themes and concepts are explored more directly than in its predecessors. However, the novel was awarded the British Book Award for "Children's Book of the Year". It was translated in 38 languages with rights sold to over 50 countries. The book has been adapted into a two-part movie, with the first part released on November 18, 2011, and the second part released on November 16, 2012.
Plot summary
After Bella's marriage with Edward, they spend their honeymoon on Isle Esme, a private island off the coast of Brazil that Carlisle owns. Two weeks into their honeymoon, Edward and Bella have sex for the first time, and Bella becomes pregnant. Because the fetus is part-vampire, her pregnancy progresses at an accelerated rate, causing Bella severe physical and emotional distress. Bella and Edward return home to Forks, Washington.Knowing of Bella's wish to become a vampire, Jacob is suspicious when she returns from her honeymoon and the Cullens keep her father, Charlie, from seeing her. Believing the Cullens broke their treaty not to bite another human, he advances on their home intending to kill Edward. Jacob visits the Cullen residence and seeing the state Bella is in due to her pregnancy, begs Bella to abort the fetus to save her own life, as neither Carlisle, a doctor, nor Alice who can see the future, are optimistic about Bella's prognosis.
Despite concerns that her pregnancy will be fatal, Bella refuses to terminate it, believing she can survive long enough to give birth and then be transformed into a vampire. As the wolves are telepathic, they hear Jacob's thoughts about Bella. Fearing Bella will give birth to an uncontrollable, bloodthirsty child, they decide to kill her and the fetus. Jacob accepts his bloodline as the true pack leader to break free from the alpha, Sam's control. He goes to warn the Cullens that the wolf pack plans to kill Bella. En route, Seth Clearwater, a younger pack member, also breaks away and joins Jacob. Having formed their own pack, the two discover they can no longer hear the other wolves' thoughts. They begin patrolling the Cullens' property before Leah, Seth's older sister and the lone female wolf, joins them.
Bella goes into labor and the baby begins fighting its way out of her body, inflicting life threatening injuries on Bella. In an attempt to save Bella's life Edward performs an emergency cesarean section. As Bella is dying, Edward injects his venom into her heart. Jacob, believing Bella is dead, blames her baby, Renesmee. He goes to kill Renesmee but instead imprints on her.
After her painful transformation, Bella wakes to find herself changed into a vampire. Fully recovered, she enjoys her new life and vampire abilities. Renesmee grows rapidly into a toddler and is spotted at a distance by Irina, a vampire from the Alaskan coven. Misidentifying her as an "immortal child," a human child who is turned into an uncontrollable vampire, Irina presents her allegations to the Volturi who outlawed the creation of such creatures. As the largest and most powerful vampire coven, the Volturi see Renesmee and the Cullens as a threat and plot to destroy them. Foreseeing their arrival, the Cullens gather other vampire clans from around the world to stand as witnesses and prove that Renesmee is not an immortal child upon Alice's request. Jacob's imprinting on Renesmee forged an unbreakable bond and mutual protective pact between the Cullens and the Quileute, ending the hatred between them. As local and foreign vampires arrive, the Cullen house becomes the headquarters and training ground for the assorted vampires and the Quileute wolf packs. Bella learns that she is a 'shield', meaning the gifts of other vampires do not work on her, which is why Edward and Aro cannot read her mind. Bella works with the other vampires to improve her skill and shield people other than herself.
Upon confronting the gathered Cullen allies and witnesses, the Volturi discover that they were misinformed on Renesmee's identity. The Volturi execute Irina in an attempt to instigate a full battle but are unsuccessful. They bring up the Cullens' pact with the Quileute wolves and the uncertainty of Renesmee's future in an effort to further provoke hostilities, naming her as a threat to the secret existence of vampires. Alice and Jasper, who left prior to the gathering of the Cullen's allies, return with a Mapuche called Nahuel, a 150-year-old vampire-human hybrid like Renesmee. Alongside him is his biological aunt, Huilen, who explains that her sister fell in love with a vampire and became pregnant with his child, but died in childbirth. When Nahuel was born, he bit Huilen, turning her into a vampire. With Nahuel having proved that hybrids pose no threat to the existence of vampires, the Volturi agree to leave the Cullens alone. The Cullens and their allies leave in peace, realizing that the Volturi may one day return. While alone with Edward, Bella lowers her mental shield, allowing Edward to read her mind for the first time, sharing her thoughts and feelings for him.
Background
Development
Originally, Meyer wrote a book titled Forever Dawn, which was a direct sequel to Twilight. While the basic storyline remained the same, Forever Dawn was narrated completely from Bella's point of view, the werewolves and Jacob were "only sketchily developed", Victoria and Laurent were both alive, and there was an epilogue. Meyer went on to say that she "may post some extras someday if I ever have time to go back through the Forever Dawn manuscript—it's just as long as Breaking Dawn."The part that took Meyer the longest time to write in Breaking Dawn was the half-chapter describing the 3 months after Bella's transformation into a vampire because "the amount of time per word put into that section was probably ten times what it was in any other part of the book" and Meyer liked to write minute by minute, but didn't think it would be exciting.
Meyer decided to include the pregnancy in her story while she was researching vampires, early in 2003 and came across the legend of the incubus, a demon who could father children. Bella's insistence to not let her child die was inspired by Meyer's reaction when asked if she would let one of her children die so she could live, which was to deliver the child no matter what the consequences were. Meyer said in an interview with Shannon Hale, published in The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide, that the birth scene published is a little less grotesque than the one she wrote before editing due to her editor, agent and publisher's requests to "tone down the violence a little". She stated that Bella's pregnancy and childbirth, for her, were "a way to kind of explore that concept of what childbirth used to be" in the past and acknowledged that they were "taking Bella in a new direction that wasn't relatable for a lot of people." Concerning the subject of the relatability of Bella, Meyer admitted that she lost some of her relatability to the character when she became a vampire and said, "every point up until that point in the story I would say I could step into this story right here and I could do everything she could do which made it really fun." Meyer wanted to experience Bella's vampiric experiences and "enjoyed very much" writing about them and wanted to end the book from her perspective, but still thought it was "a little bit harder" as she couldn't step in into the story anymore.
In regard to Renesmee's unique name, Meyer wrote that she "couldn't call her Jennifer or Ashley. What do you name the most unique baby in the world? I looked through a lot of baby name websites. Eventually I realized that there was no human name that was going to work for me, so I surrendered to necessity and made up my own."
Meyer states in regard to ending the series:
Influences
The plays The Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare both influenced Breaking Dawn. Meyer decided that Alice would write her instruction to Bella on a page from The Merchant of Venice to give a clue that the final confrontation at the end of the book would be a mental one—not a physical battle—like the one at the end of the play. It also hints that the novel would have a happy ending for the couples, as in The Merchant of Venice. Originally it was the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë that Alice tore a page from, but Jane Eyre had nothing to do with the story, so Meyer changed it.The idea of imprinting, which existed in Forever Dawn, was inspired by A Midsummer Night's Dream. Meyer described it as "the magic of setting things right—which doesn't happen in the real world, which is absolutely fantasy", and decided to introduce it earlier–in Eclipse–so she wouldn't have to explain it later.