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Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Twilight, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Lust
Self-Restraint and Morality
Good, Evil, and Perspective
Family
Summary
Analysis
The next day is better: it’s not raining, and Bella now recognizes some of her classmates. It’s flattering that Mike and Eric seem to be vying for her attention, too. But Bella’s day is still miserable, especially since she spends all morning wondering how to confront Edward. When she enters the cafeteria with Jessica, though, Edward isn’t with his siblings. He doesn’t show up for lunch at all. After lunch, Mike accompanies Bella to biology. Edward isn’t there, so Bella breathes a sigh of relief. She knows she’s going to have to do something about Mike—he’s getting too friendly. She spends all of biology wondering if Edward isn’t in school because of her.
Though Bella frames it as a nice change that Mike and Eric are so interested in her, she implies that she’s not into a romantic relationship right now. And in general, this passage illustrates how conflicted Bella is about all the attention she’s getting in Forks. She likes it on one level, but it also means that she has to reevaluate how she sees herself and do things she’s never done before—like turn down Mike’s advances. And as all of this is going on, her thoughts remain focused on Edward.
Themes
When school is over, Bella heads for the grocery store. She discovered last night that Charlie can’t cook, so she asked to take over the shopping and food prep. When she gets home, Bella preps some steak and potatoes and then checks her email. She has three frantic emails from Mom. Bella writes Mom back and tells her about the truck. Then, she starts reading Wuthering Heights for school.
Again, Bella demonstrates her maturity by so readily taking over food prep now that she lives with Charlie—it seems as though she probably did the same thing when she lived with Mom, given that Bella earlier expressed concern about Mom’s ability to feed herself. Bella seems to have been taking care of herself for some time. Wuthering Heights, full of gothic drama and dramatic love affairs between people who seem almost magnetically attracted to each other, foreshadows in a way the Gothic elements and intense romantic drama of Twilight.
Themes
Over dinner later, Bella tells Charlie about Mike and then asks if he knows of the Cullens; the kids, she says, are “different.” Charlie looks angry. He says that Dr. Cullen is brilliant, and that the town is lucky to have him. He was concerned at first, but all the Cullen kids are polite and nice; none of them have caused trouble—unlike some local kids. The family also “stick[s] together the way a family should.” Bella says that they seem nice, and that they’re all attractive. With a laugh, Charlie replies that she should see Dr. Cullen—the nurses at the hospital swoon over him.
In talking about the Cullen kids in particular, Charlie acknowledges that he had some ideas about how a family of adopted and foster teens was going to act—and they’ve defied all his expectations. Unlike Jessica, Charlie is open to his expectations being defied, and changing his mind. Charlie recognizes that the Cullen family is better at supporting each other than other, more conventional families are.
Themes
The rest of Bella’s week is uneventful. Edward doesn’t come back to school, and Mike invites Bella to La Push Ocean Park in two weeks. By Friday, Bella isn’t worried about Edward. Her first weekend in Forks is uneventful; she cleans, does homework, and checks out the local library. On Monday, kids greet her when she gets to school. Bella is thrilled; she’s more comfortable here than she thought she’d ever be. But when she and Mike step outside after English, Bella’s day gets much worse—it’s snowing, and she hates snow. Bella hurries away from Mike after someone, presumably Eric, throws a snowball at him.
Things seem to be evening out for Bella and going better than expected. The upside of having such a small class is that it doesn’t take long to get to know people, and aside from Edward, people seem genuinely interested in hanging out with and getting to know Bella. But as comfortable as Bella is getting in Forks, the weather still poses a problem for her—she still misses the Phoenix sun and heat, and the freezing snow makes it harder for her to believe she’ll feel truly comfortable here.
Themes
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Thanks to the snow, Bella is already on edge when she gets to the cafeteria. But when she sees five people sitting at the Cullens’ table, she freezes. She tells Jessica that she feels sick, and she only buys a soda. The one time she sneaks a look at the Cullens, they’re all laughing. Studying Edward, Bella decides he has a bit more color today. Jessica interrupts Bella’s thoughts to ask what she’s looking at—and at that instant, Edward meets Bella’s eyes. He doesn’t look unfriendly this time. Jessica laughs at Bella as Mike invites everyone to a snowball fight after school.
Bella has spent the last week wondering what’s up with Edward and wondering what she possibly could’ve done to make him treat her so poorly in biology class, and so this moment of eye-to-eye contact is a kind of shock, for both Bella and the reader. That Edward doesn’t look unfriendly now also makes things more complicated.
Themes
Bella is thrilled when she exits the cafeteria and finds that the snow has turned to rain. In the biology classroom, Bella is relieved to find her table empty. But a few minutes later, Edward sits down and introduces himself politely. Bella can’t figure out if she made up his rudeness last week, and she asks how he knows to call her Bella when everyone else calls her Isabella at first. He drops the subject as the teacher passes out supplies for their lab. Bella has already done this lab, so she and Edward identify the phases of mitosis on slides with little effort. The one time their hands touch, Edward’s hand is ice cold.
Edward’s abrupt about-face is unsettling for Bella—she seems to have expected more rudeness from him in the event he did return to class. Meanwhile, that he learned to call her Bella instead of Isabella, shows either that Edward pays attention to what’s going on around him, or is paying special attention to Bella just as Bella has been focused on him. Bella again demonstrates her intelligence during the lab, and Edward matches her—they are a lab team of equals. Edward’s ice cold hands, of course, foreshadow future revelations, while the focus on the fact of that touch further amplifies Bella’s physical awareness of Edward.
Themes
Bella and Edward are the first group to finish. They sit in awkward silence for a moment until Bella realizes what’s different about Edward. She asks if he got contacts; his eyes are a golden color now, when they were black last week. He says he didn’t. Just then, the teacher comes to check their work. He accuses Edward of doing the lab himself, but Bella shares that she was in an advanced placement program in Phoenix.
Like Edward, Bella is very observant (recall that she also noted during lunch that Edward has more color today). At this point, though, being so observant is just awkward, as it suggests that both Bella and Edward are paying closer attention to each other than perhaps they think is appropriate. Meanwhile, the teacher’s behavior seems pretty sexist, and generally displays an underestimation of Bella’s abilities.
Themes
Edward tries to make small talk with Bella about the snow. Bella feels paranoid; it’s almost like Edward somehow knows she hates it. She says, truthfully, that she doesn’t like it in Forks, and she tells him why she decided to come: Mom married to a minor league baseball player and wanted to travel with him, and Bella decided to move so that Mom could be happy. Edward suggests that this doesn’t sound fair, and he says he’s sure that Bella is suffering more than she’s letting on. This is annoying, but when Edward asks if he's annoying her, Bella says that she’s just annoyed that she’s so easy to read. Edward replies that she’s actually very hard to read.
At this point in Bella and Edward’s relationship, it seems like Edward is paying too much attention to Bella—especially when, only a week ago, he acted like he hated her. Meanwhile, Bella reveals that she has no issue putting others first and ensuring their happiness above her own. It’s most important to her to care for others, even if it means doing something she doesn’t like (such as moving to Forks). Edward’s response indicates that he’d like to try to empathize, but that he doesn’t entirely understand Bella’s tendency toward self-sacrifice and sees it as putting her in the position of the victim. The comment about Bella being hard to read foreshadows future revelations.
Themes
The teacher calls the class to attention, but Bella watches Edward clench his fists and lean away again. Once again, Edward disappears as soon as the bell rings. Mike walks over and groans that Bella was lucky to get to work with Edward on such a hard lab, but Bella says she didn’t have a hard time. They walk to gym class together. When school is over, Bella climbs into her truck. She looks around and notices Edward staring at her, which causes her to almost back out in front of another car. When she finally does pull out, she notices Edward laughing.
Edward might be something of an outcast in the student body, but Mike implies here that Edward is known to be very smart—again making clear that he is Bella’s intellectual equal. When Bella starts to notice Edward watching her it’s uncomfortable to acknowledge that she’s paying so much attention to him, and that he’s doing the same to her. Almost pulling out in front of another car foreshadows that paying so much attention to each other could have dire consequences.
Themes
