58 pages • 1 hour read
Stephenie MeyerNew Moon
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Love and Commitment
Romantic love is the central idea of the book. For Edward and Bella, the sheer intensity of their feelings compels them to commit to each other their lives and devotion. They discover that being apart is a disaster and being together enables them to handle anything.
Worried for Bella’s safety after Jasper lunges at her when she cuts herself, Edward decides that the only responsible thing to do is take himself away from her. He’d rather die than live in a world without her; even if this means missing her his whole life, at least she’ll be alive and okay.
Edward’s decision is a disaster. Her love for him refuses to go away; she begins to take dangerous risks simply to hear his voice in her head. She spends time with Jacob, who falls in love with her and asks her to be his girlfriend; it’s the perfect solution to her problems, but she turns Jacob down because her heart is already committed to Edward.
Meanwhile, Edward himself undergoes the same agonies of separation experienced by Bella. She at least goes through the motions of work and studies, but Edward explains that he became “totally useless I couldn’t be around my family—I couldn’t be around anyone. I’m embarrassed to admit that I more or less curled up into a ball and let the misery have me” (528).
Believing that it’s over between them but unable to detach herself from that relationship, Bella will do anything, including dying, to save Edward, should his life be in peril. Edward, meanwhile, refuses to live in a world that doesn’t have Bella in it. His attempt at suicide, a kind of ultimate commitment to Bella, is stopped only because she risks her own life to prove to him that she’s still alive.
Once they’re together again, Bella and Edward still face dangers and horrors—The Voltari, Victoria, and the Quileute werewolves—but being together again cancels those other worries. Thinking she’s near death at Volterra but standing once again beside Edward, Bella has a sense of completion: “I felt well” (452).
They conclude that their love commits them unalterably to each other and that the only way for them not to be continuously miserable is simply to be together. Regardless of the dangers, and no matter the situation, together, they’re in the right place. Their love and commitment to one another meld together and become essentially the same thing.
Love and Guilt
Bella has a knack for feeling guilty, especially in her relationship to Edward. The only person who can equal her in that regard is Edward himself. Each is consumed with self-doubt about how much the other cares for them; each feels intense guilt when anything goes wrong in the relationship.
Bella cuts her finger, and Jasper lunges at her. Edward blames himself for wanting her to be a human member of a family that could kill her. Bella blames not Edward but herself for putting the Cullens into an awful situation. She’s consumed with shame: “The guilt made my head bow and my shoulders slump” (55).
Edward decides he can no longer indulge his desire for Bella because it’s too risky for her, so he leaves her. Wanting it to be as painless for her as possible, he lies and says he doesn’t desire her anymore. This floors Bella, who takes it very personally and wallows for months in sadness and feelings of unworthiness. She blames herself for his foolish decision to leave; she assumes he’s lost interest in her because of her mistakes.
Bella feels guilty for enjoying Jacob’s company. She knows Jacob loves her and wants to be her boyfriend, but she’s unwilling to commit to that because of her love for Edward. Still, she can’t stay away—Jacob’s happy enthusiasm for life is a tonic to her injured spirit—and she berates herself for leading him on. She tries to assuage her guilt by holding hands with him, hugging him, and once nearly kissing him, but her actions merely make Jacob yearn even more for her, and that makes Bella feel even more guilty.
When Bella and Edward finally reunite, she believes he tried to kill himself out of remorse for actions that he thought led to her death. She tells him, “You can’t let this…this guilt…rule your life. You can’t take responsibility for the things that happen to me here” (507). Edward insists he attempted suicide because he believed she was dead and was unwilling to live in a world without her. He admits that he was also wracked with guilt, “intensely so.”
Bella and Edward’s love and commitment put them in the odd position of always blaming themselves for any pain the other feels. Their focus is on each other; when anything goes wrong, they instantly take responsibility for it. It’s a genuine sign of their compassion for one another and a price they each pay for the chance to be together.
Love and Hell
Both Bella and Edward suffer for their mutual love, especially when apart. Bella, in particular, must juggle both the ecstasy of her memories of Edward and the agony of losing him. She often finds herself feeling both emotions at the same time. Being with Edward is heaven for her; being without him is hell.
When she discovers that taking foolish risks causes Edward’s voice to appear in her mind, she takes even more risks. The thrill of danger frightens her, yet his voice soothes her. At once, she’s at peace and in terror.
The rest of the time, Bella struggles to avoid the pain of remembering, yet she can’t let herself forget Edward’s existence. It’s a difficult juggling act to recall his wondrous presence in her life without remembering the torment of his absence.
She returns to the Cullen mansion, a place she remembers as beautiful, serene, and elegant, but without them in residence, it’s empty, overgrown, and haunted by their absence. Her attempt to revive happy memories there fails utterly.
Nevertheless, Bella tries to find the meadow where she and Edward spent an idyllic afternoon. When she locates it, she confronts the vampire Laurent, who wants to kill her, and watches as five huge and ferocious wolf-like beasts chase after him. Her beloved meadow, lacking Edward, means nothing to her but suddenly is filled with hellish monsters.
During their return flights from Volterra, Bella and Edward sit together, arms around each other. Bella is exhausted; she’s on a death watch from the Volturi; Victoria still hunts her; and she believes Edward will leave her again: “It was heaven—right smack in the middle of hell” (491).
Her dreams after that consist of “The horrible and the heavenly, all mixed together into a bizarre jumble” (500). When finally they decide to remain together, Bella knows her life will continue to be in danger, but she tells Edward, “If you stay, I don’t need heaven” (547).
Without Edward, Bella’s life thus is a continuing contrast between the heaven of Edward's voice in her head and the hell of living without him. Her memories of their time together trigger the hellish knowledge that she’s lost her chance for happiness, and that the rest of her life will be meaningless and empty.
When Edward returns to her, she knows that his angelic presence will be disturbed by demonic threats to them both. As long as the heavenly part is firmly in place, however, Bella no longer cares about the hellish things.
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