A New Dawn

     I am not one to let someone hate on Twilight by Stephenie Meyer but I decided to read a book of essays called A New Dawn where many authors share their thoughts on The Twilight Saga.
     The most offensive chapter to me (being on team Edward) was the first one titled A Very Dangerous Boy by Susan Vaught. Before reading this chapter I never really thought of Edward Cullen a Sociopath. Apparently there are seven traits of being a sociopath. Edward fits six of those characteristics. The first characteristic is simple "Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest" (A New Dawn). It never really occurred to me while reading Twilight how unlawful Edward was until I read this book. As described in the book Edward first of all drives super super fast and definitely goes way above the speed limit but the more unlawful act is basically breaking into Bella's home and watching her while she sleeps which would be categorized as both stalking and a break in if Bella had reported it to the police. Along with that first characteristic, he fits into 2) using aliases for personal profit or pleasure 3) lack of planning ahead 4) Aggressiveness 5)Disregard of safety 6) consistent irresponsibility. The only category Edward doesn't fit in is lack of remorse (Edward is probably the most remorseful character I have read about in a book).
     The other thing I realized while reading this book that I didn't realize while reading Twilight was how typical Twilight really is. Twilight is basically about a teen romance but to throw in some drama Edward is a vampire. To make it more interesting there is a love triangle with Jacob who also happens to be an inhuman creature or a werewolf. Twilight as mentioned in A New Dawn basically is like Romeo and Juliet which was ironically quoted in the beginning of a Twilight saga book and was actually a required read in the story of Twilight. A story so typical yet so unique.