Sacrifice Part 2 – Parents

Breaking Dawn spoilers!
(psst: part 1 was my guest blogger, Abbey, blogging about Snape and his sacrifices. check it out color=”blue”>here!)

Where do we begin? Parents so often sacrifice so much and their children either don’t know it, don’t understand it, or don’t appreciate it enough and take it for given. There is so much going on that we feel is so important and that our parents can’t understand.

In Twilight I often felt that Bella, like most teenagers, did not fully appreciate her parents, and took them for granted until something threatened the well-being of the family structure and her family itself. When we are thrust into a situation that is trying, both emotionally and physically, we are forced to accept the mortality of those around us. We come to realize that those we have surrounded ourselves with, the people we can trust and how we know where we stand with certain people, are just as mortal as we are and are just as prey as we are to the unknown.

I believe that Bella came to fully appreciate her parents, especially her father with whom she had a generic and somewhat unimpressive relationship with, when she realized the danger that Charlie was in from the nomadic hunters who were stalking her. And again when she was fully aware of the dangers she would be putting her family in with her decision to become a vampire.

But wait, you say. This is supposed to be about sacrifice! In a way, Bella’s parents unknowingly sacrificed their daughter by allowing her to take care of herself and them. She cooked and cleaned. She was an incredibly domestic being and was content to settle into that domestic homemaker role. Of course, the big one in the Twilight series is the sacrifice that Bella makes for her daughter, Renesmee, in Breaking Dawn. Bella’s baby is literally killing her from the inside out yet she insists on putting herself through the pain and suffering so that her child might survive. And at the end of the book, Bella is willing to give up her child and never see her again so as to ensure Renesmee’s safety. I will admit that I was not a big fan of Breaking Dawn, but that moment when she gave her child to her best friend for safekeeping? I got a little teary because that was a very large sacrifice that Bella made.

Opposite to Bella, Harry never knew his parents. What little he did know was from tales he heard from the adults who knew them and through pictures, letters, and hand-me-downs. The big sacrifice in Harry Potter is Lily’s sacrifice. Lily loved her child so much that it poured into Harry and protected him from the one curse that was supposed to be infallible: Avada Kedavra. She loved her child so much that Voldemort cannot touch Harry without experiencing extreme pain, a pain I assumed was something akin to the Cruciatus Curse. And of course, she loved Harry so much that he somehow defeated Voldemort’s physical body and sent his soul scurrying away into the dark corners of the world to hide.

These two examples are true sacrifices born of love. They speak of the primitive bond that has outlasted centuries of change and modernization. Love is the one thing that is certain in this world, and it’s a good thing too because of how uncertain the rest of the world can appear.

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