In the entire Twilight series, the protagonist Bella follows the monomyth structure of a hero. She discovers an unknown, hidden world where she makes a home and finds her true self, being out of place in the mortal world. Breaking Dawn focusses on the last part of the monomyth structure, from the death and rebirth to the return to normality.
The entire series is based around the idea of a young girl who does not fit in, a theme common to young adult literature, harnessing the restlessness and anxiety of youth. This trope of young adult literature is melded with classical and fantasy elements, such as mythological monsters, creating a supernatural fiction. These mythological monsters help to heighten the supernatural element and sense of danger, instead of fighting for high school popularity, as is common in young adult fiction, Bella is fighting for her life, against these monsters.
Meyer’s vampires draw on contemporary conceptions of vampires, but they also echo raditions of Graeco-Roman myths, such as the strix of Book six of Ovid’s Fasti:
“their feathers blotched with grey, their claws fitted with hooks. They fly by night and attack nurseless children, and defile their bodies, snatched from their cradles. They are said to rend the flesh of sucklings with their beaks, and their throats are full of the blood which they have”.
(Ovid, Fasti VI. 133–140)
Other sources are the lamia and empusa of Philostratus of Athens’ Life of Apollonius:
“Vampires also feel love, but they love human intercourse and human flesh above all and use intercourse to catch those they want to devour.”
“This woman appeared to be beautiful and very refined”.
(Philostratus, Life of Apollonius IV. 25)
The “woman” of Philostratus’ writings is the empusa. She has tricked a traveler into falling in love with her. The Twilight vampires, like their classical sources, drink blood and possess supernatural beauty. For the young adult audience, the more gruesome parts of the classical examples are omitted from Meyer’s creations. Despite drinking blood, the Cullen family do not drink human blood, a trait which marks them as different from the rest of their kind and which makes them more palatable to the reader. They control their thirst to kill humans, making them more empathetic, understanding, and more human in the eyes of the reader.
The three vampires who run the Volturi, have Latin names, Marcus, Caius, and Aro. Aro means to reap or cultivate. The name Marcus has associations to the war god Mars. Both Marcus and Caius are common names in Roman history. They are best known from Caius Iulius Caesar and his assassin Marcus Brutus. The role these three characters play, can also be likened to that of the Triumvirs of the First and Second Triumvirates. Much like Caesar, Crassus and Pompey, or Mark Antony, Octavian and Lepidus, these three vampires, Aro, Caius and Marcus, are the centre of power and the ones who enforce the rules in an ostensibly democratic society. Much as the Triumvirs framed themselves as the protectors of the Republic and of the Roman good, the Volturi frame themselves as protectors of the Vampire world.
The werewolves too, whilst framed as being an indigenous form of supernatural being, are clearly influenced by the classical tradition.
“His mouth of itself gathers foam, and with his accustomed greed for blood he turns against the sheep, delighting still in slaughter. His garments change to shaggy hair, his arms to legs. He turns into a wolf, and yet retains some traces of his former shape. There is the same grey hair, the same fierce face, the same gleaming eyes, the same picture of beastly savagery”.
(Ovid, Metamorphoses I. 233–239)
“I looked round at my friend, he stripped himself and put all his clothes by the roadside. My heart was in my mouth, but I stood like a dead man. He piddled all round his clothes and suddenly turned into a wolf. Please do not think I am joking; I would not lie about this for any fortune in the world. But as I was saying, after he had turned into a wolf, he proceeded to howl, and ran off into the woods”.
(Petronius, Satyricon 62)
The comic nature of Petronius’ werewolf encounter closely mirrors that of one from the book, when Bella’s father, Charlie, discovers Jacob is a werewolf. He is both scared by the sudden removal of clothes and shocked by the transformation. Despite the novel’s dark content, Meyer uses indirect and direct classical allusions to add humour to Breaking Dawn.
Bella’s transition to becoming a vampire can be viewed as a katabasis. Her worsening health during her pregnancy takes her closer and closer to death. It is during this downward journey that a reconciliation is forced upon her; between her and Jacob, a reminder of her mortal life, much as how in Book Eleven of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus encounters Elpenor, who asks for a proper burial (Homer, Odyssey, 11.51–83). These encounters serve as reminders of the mortal consequences of the protagonists’ actions. Elpenor begs for a proper burial, so that he may escape from a state of limbo, a situation of which Odysseus had been unaware. So too does Bella’s katabasis free Jacob from his divided loyalties between Bella (whom he loves) and his pack of wolves. With Bella’s change, and the birth of Reneesme is freed from his own state of limbo. The vampire blood injection removes Bella’s mortality. This, however, is not a final death, but the beginning of a new, vampire life. It is from this experience that she emerges immortal, with super senses and abilities, similar to Achilles after being bathed in the River Styx, such as in Statius’ Achilleid (1.133–136). It is this immortality that is the reward for her katabasis, definitively removing her from the mortal world, and placing her into the world of mythology. (Compare also Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson: And the Olympians, p. 135).
