The Twilight Saga Book Covers

[Rae Cullen]

Yeah I didn't want to believe that all the other book covers had a meaning and New Moon's cover was just a "pretty picture". I think New Moon's cover does have a meaning and I like what flo1190 said about the New Moon cover,although when I first saw the New Moon cover and read the book, I thought the ruffled tulip represented Bella's heart and the petal falling was Edward's leaving Bella. I don't know that is just what I thought about the New Moon cover.

Twilight: Choice or Decision. Do you take a bite and forever be changed or do you leave it alone and remain normal forever.

Eclipse: The ribbon is Bella trying hard to make a clean break form her mortal life into her immortal life, but Jacob, Charlie, and Renee are the strings holding on.

Breaking Dawn:The red pawn is Bella in the beginning still a human who is vulnerable and needs protection, then the Queen is Bella at the end of the book now a vampire and a very strong character now who can protect others instead of the others protecting her.

[iloveshineeKEY]

I don't get Bella being a pawn when she is still human.Yeah, a pawn is weak, but in chess you don't protect them, they start off in front of your other pieces protecting them. You put them on the front line knowing you have lots of them and they are sort of expendable, Bella's not like that at all.
I think if Bella as a human should be the king... it is weak (can only move one square at a time) and everyone needs to protect it. If the king is checkmated, then the whole game is over, just like if Bella died the story would basically be over.
But I get that the pawn to queen thing looks better on a cover... so yeah.

[ringswraith]

That's true, but a king can't go through a transformation like a pawn can.

And just because a pawn is up front, it doesn't mean it's not protected. Other pieces can threaten any piece that might want to capture it, in essence "protecting" the pawn by their mere presence/closeness.

Lastly, about the pawns being expendable, the flipside of it is yes, Bella is expendable- in the eyes of all the other (non-Cullen) vampires out there. To them, she's just another human.

[Edwards Wheels]

I thought that the tulip was representing Bellas human life? Throughout the book she worried about getting older and reaching her birthday etc. I thought that the petal falling off was meant to represent her life passing and in her terms, getting closer to old age and death everyday.

I recently bought all of the books for a friend and I wanted her to have the original covers. I bought some red ribbon to tie them all together because I thought that would be a perfect way to wrap it up..........I couldn't find the original cover only the film cover, the same for New Moon. So I had to explain the reasoning and just how perfect the red ribbon was meant to be. Luckily she understood and felt as though I had put extra effort in for her.

[AyaDiefair]

Well, by now everyone knows Steph's explanations (Except NM)'s meanings behind them, but just for conversations sake, I will tell you what I thought they meant to me when first seeing them:

Twilight - Of course, my thoughts on this are just echo's from other people - Forbidden Fruit. Someone mentioned how the apple has been used to symbolize lots of negative things like in Snow White with other stories as well. The hands presenting the apple is saying: "I am offering you a dangerous gift, take it or leave it" sort of message. I thought it was well suited for the first book.

New Moon - I thought it would have been nice to hear what Steph thought it meant to her, because she saying it having nothing to do with the book is sort of not true. Even though she had no say in it, whoever picked it made it relevant to the story. With the fallen petal being Edward vanishing from Bella's life, it is a piece of her life that went missing, the ruffled look to the tulip representing how hard those 8 months were for her, and the tulip still being intact for the most part in the first place was because of Jacob.

It has probably been mentioned within these 13 pages but I will ask again: Did Steph describe what she had in mind for this cover anywhere? If so, where could I find it so I could read it?

Eclipse - The meaning of this cover I thought would've been a tad better (with the way I describe it, that is) for BD (after I read BD) only because it represents the life she wants and the life she has just barely being held together by the 2 strands. In BD when she is a vampire and still interacts with her dad is like one of the strands that is letting her be able to have some of her human life be apart of her vampire life, and the other strand is Jacob of course, not hating her despite the fact she went against all his wishes.

Of course, now I know it more represents her relationships between Edward and Jacob and how they are being forced together by Bella. I don't think it represents her transition to a new life because that happens in BD.

Breaking Dawn - Honestly, after all the other covers, this one I didn't like appearance wise only cause it was so ... odd. Anyway, someone mentioned here that to them the red pawn represented Nessie and the white queen was Bella. After reading BD and looking at the cover again, I could see it fit nicely. But then again it would only mean it represented the last half of the book, which I thought was the more important part of the story overall anyway. However, even though it was a Bella before and after ordeal, I don't like that interpretation Steph gave of it anyway. From weakest to strongest. I do not think that, even though Bella is a newborn with excess strength, that she is the strongest in the Cullen coven. It is something like that that perturbs me when reading books, having the weakest character becoming the strongest all of a sudden.

That is all imho though, please take it as a grain of salt.

[BabyEsme2203]

Twilight-
to me, the apple represents forbidden love, or the "forbidden fruit", and the pale arms represent the vampires.
its all about choice. the cover itself is like, you have a "choice" to take the apple, even though its forbidden. the choices bella and eddie both have to make are the same. do they avoid each other for bella's safety? do they become friends? should they stuff it all and become MORE than friends? (heck yeah )

New Moon-
the flower is kind of wilted, and that little petal falling from it looks like a tear to me, so i think it represents Bella's broken heart. the flower looks pretty, but you can see that its dying. Also, the red fringes around the edges of the flower, look a little like blood.

Eclipse-
i think the ribbon represents the sort of love triangle between eddie, bella, and jake. mostly from bella's POV.
the tear in the ribbon, is NEARLY broken, but is still attcached a little, representing her friendship with jake, and how its not completely over, and there is no clean break.

Breaking Dawn
i think the chess pieces symbolise the fight between the vampires, and the Volturi, fo Renesmee.
the firght itself reminded me of chess, two different sides. other than that i really have no idea

[ShoTheCat]

yeah well, this might be a repetiton of what´s been said before but, I interpreted the covers like that:

Twilight: an apple is offered, a secret knowledge. Bella comes to know about the world of myth existing and becomes a part of it herself

New Moon: a withering tulip. Bella is suffering from being abandonned by her love, the withering flower is a symbol for her depression and her loosing herself when Edward is gone.

Eclipse: a ripped ribbon. Bella is tied between Edward and Jacob. she loves them both and the fact that they´re enemies is killing her. in the end when she´s getting engaged to Edward, her relationship to Jacob "rips".

Breaking Dawn: a red pawn and the white queen. To me the white queen is the symbol of power, the symbol for the Volturi. the red pawn stands for Bella who is being underestimated by them even tho she is actually a very powerful vampire and in the end is one of the main reasons BD ended the way it did.

[AyaDiefair]

Breaking Dawn: a red pawn and the white queen. To me the white queen is the symbol of power, the symbol for the Volturi. the red pawn stands for Bella who is being underestimated by them even tho she is actually a very powerful vampire and in the end is one of the main reasons BD ended the way it did.

I liked your thought on that cover. Never saw it that way at all.

[madness_falls]

Even though SM said it was about choice and that makes so much more sense, I thought for the longest time it was the whole forbidden fruit thing.

New Moon, I've never really came up with an idea what it means and I know it means nothing really to SM but I like the interpretation of about how the flower represents Bella's heart.

Eclipse is about how breaks are never clean, and there's always loose threads.

With Breaking Dawn I don't think I ever heard what it's supposed to mean. I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine and we a list of about two dozen meanings...all completely irrelevant to the plot (we tried guessing the plot of the book based off the cover). I guess I've always thought of it as strategy and maneuvering against the Volturi so they don't lose any pieces.

[Ina EssBe]

Hi, I'm new on the forum, so I'm getting a feeling of its space right now by dipping in and out the conversations.
Wow! I never thought of the covers that way, but I must admit, that the last few posts make a lot of sense. Except, maybe, I'd explain BD's cover as Bella being the queen, powerful and strong, which no one anticipated and expected; the chess board representing the political game Volturi were playing (and Bella had to manoeuvre around it) and the red figure behind the queen - Aro, who's like a shadow, waiting for the strike, all threatening and dangerous, yet rendered powerless by Bella's ability...

Sorry, if I'm expressing something that had already been posted, but I simply had limited time to dive into this thread today