New Moon

Tall, handsome, and pale-skinned, with red-brown hair and eyes that change from black to dark golden, Edward Cullen is a vampire in a coven that hunts not humans but animals for their blood. Though young-looking, he’s nearly 100 years old. He falls hard for Bella, and she for him, but he also feels an intense desire to kill her for her blood, a yearning he learns to control. Edward tends to make decisions on his own that affect both him and Bella, and when he abruptly leaves her, it causes a convulsion in her life that nearly kills them both.

Edward is the second main protagonist, who, like Bella, contains a complex and driven personality. The lesson he learns away from Bella is that trying to protect her from him merely makes worse the dangers she faces and that doing so is such agony for him that he realizes he can’t live without her.

Sixteen-year-old Jacob Black, son of Charlie Swan’s best friend, Billy Black, lives on the Quileute reservation at La Push. He befriends Bella, who knew his family when she visited as a child. Jacob’s stories about Quileute werewolves who fought vampires give Bella her first clues to the truth about Edward. Jacob’s friendship helps save Bella from the worst of her depression when Edward leaves her. A rival for Bella’s affections, Jacob also transforms into a werewolf, which makes him deeply anti-vampire. This puts Bella into conflict since she loves Jacob and his family as much as she loves the Cullens. As the third main character, Jacob revives Bella’s spirits and challenges her to find ways to get along with both sides of her extended family of mythical creatures.

Alice, one of the more recent members of the Cullen family, can’t remember her life as a human. Bella learns from vampire James that Alice grew up in a dark, sunless asylum because her strange ability to foresee the future was considered a form of insanity. She thrives, though, as a vampire. The liveliest of the Cullens, Alice takes immediately to Bella, and they become close.

Alice’s ability to read the future shows her Bella’s cliff dive, and Alice mistakenly assumes Bella killed herself. Alice goes to Forks expecting to help Charlie Swan, with whom she has a warm friendship, deal with his daughter’s death; instead, Bella is quite alive, and together they work frantically to prevent Edward from committing suicide.

Alice is the big sister Bella never had; she mentors the girl and teaches her about vampires and their culture. She also models the type of person Bella wishes she could be if she were a vampire: warm, loving, kind, generous, brilliant, sophisticated, beautiful—and, of course, powerful and never clumsy.

An ancient vampire—3,000 years old, his skin papery, his eyes cloudy—Aro leads the Volturi from within their headquarters in Volterra, Italy. Able to read minds and learn a person’s entire history, Aro enjoys unquestioned obedience from his family and associates. Presiding over a coven that lures humans to their lair and kills them for their blood, Aro—though ruthless—also is quite charming. He is interested in the Cullens’ experiment in non-violence, and he’s always intrigued by people with psychic gifts, especially Bella, who can block mind readers. As the Volturi leader, Aro’s desire to enforce secrecy about the vampires makes him the face of what’s rapidly becoming a chief antagonist to Bella and the Cullens.

Forks Chief of Police Charlie Swan is Bella’s father. Hard-working but taciturn, Charlie cares deeply for his daughter and will do anything to protect and help her as she deals with life as a teenager in a small town. He likes the Cullen family and accepts Edward, though he’s completely unaware that the Cullens are vampires. Charlie resents Edward when his abrupt departure causes a mental breakdown in Bella. He’s delighted when Jacob, son of his best friend, Billy Black, attracts Bella’s attention.

Bella risks her life to protect him from the dangers she faces, lest they spill over and injure him. Though he’s the worried father whom Bella must sometimes sneak around when she engages in risky activities, Charlie treats her fairly, and in his house, she can rest and study quietly. He serves as one of Bella’s anchors of stability.

Billy Black is an elder in the Quileute Nation. A paraplegic, he’s Charlie Swan’s best friend. He’s also a party to the Quileute’s historic antipathy toward vampires, and though he honors the truce between his people and the Cullens, he worries that Bella will ruin her life by dating Edward. Billy’s character is a type of “Greek chorus” that rises up in a story to warn the protagonist—in this case, Bella—of dangers that lurk nearby. Usually, the protagonist is immune to such warnings, with disastrous results; in the story, Bella nearly validates Billy’s concerns because of the failure of her relationship with Edward.

Sam Uley is a 20-year-old member of the Quileute nation centered in the coastal town of La Push, near Forks. When vampires begin to travel through their territory, he transforms into a werewolf to defend his people. Soon, several Quileute teens also transform and join him on patrol. The first Quileute wolfman in generations, Sam was on his own dealing with the painful transformation; during the process, he injured his beloved fiancée, Emily, and struggles with remorse. He’s a strong and patient leader who helps the boys in his charge to adapt and accept their situation.

The Quileutes, Native Americans, live on the reservation centered on La Push. The author brings them into the story as ancestral guardians of the region against incursion by vampires. When the community is threatened, its older teenage boys morph into giant wolves—Jacob calls them werewolves—who can catch and kill vampires, especially when hunting in a pack. Along with Billy Black and Sam Uley, several Quileutes figure in the story.

Many of Jacob’s Quileute friends become werewolves. Embry, tall and slender, changes first, and his sudden distance from Jacob causes friction between them. Quil, shorter and burly, is the last of several boys to transform; like Jacob, he suffers nagging uncertainties about his changing friends and his own transformation. Other boys who join the pack include Paul and Jared.

The Quileutes are a counterbalance to the Cullens. As mythical beings, they’re meant to hate one another—the wolves call the vampires “bloodsuckers” and “leeches”—and the truce between the Quileutes and the Cullens doesn’t do much to ease their mutual suspicion and contempt. Bella loves both families. Her desire to get along with them all, and to find a peaceful resolution to their ancient conflict, is a story arc that begins in New Moon and continues through the series.

The largest coven of vampires, the Volturi reside in an ancient Italian town, Volterra. Its five main members—three men, each older than 3,000 years, and two women—are augmented by a guard of nine permanent and several temporary soldiers, chosen for their unique psychic abilities. They violently enforce the rules among vampires, especially the prime one, to keep the existence of vampires secret.

The original family consists of Aro, who reads minds, plus Caius and Marcus. Others include Jane, who can inflict extreme psychic pain from a distance, and her look-alike friend Alec. Guards include Felix, tall and powerful like Emmet and eager to fight Edward, and Demetri.

The Volturi, though not a formal antagonist in this book, are a danger to overcome, and they return as the main antagonist later in the Twilight series.

The Cullens, a family of vampires who hunt, not humans but game animals, are a group Bella loves dearly for their close-knit nature and warmth toward her. When Bella saves Edward’s life, they realize their decision to leave Forks to protect Bella was a mistake, and they return.

Besides Edward and Alice, the other Cullens include Dr. Carlisle Cullen, the family leader and town doctor. Centuries-old and long resistant to human blood, Dr. Cullen is widely admired in Forks, and he’s a wise and compassionate father to his adoptive clan of vampires. He welcomes Bella into the family and later patches up her arm after she’s injured at his house. Carlisle is the rock on which the Cullen family stands.

Esme, the wife of Carlisle, is the quietest of the Cullens, but her love for the family helps keep it grounded. Delighted that Edward has finally found love, she’s extremely grateful to Bella for saving her adoptive son’s life. Her strong advocacy for Bella’s membership in the family forges a link between them and encourages other family members’ support.

The largest and physically most powerful of the Cullens, Emmet, is married to Bella-skeptic Rosalie but supports the family’s decision to accept Bella into their midst. He’s cheerful, athletic, resolutely loyal, and always ready for a fight to defend the family. Rosalie, the most beautiful among a set of beautiful vampires, mistakenly informs Edward that Bella killed herself; she’s filled with remorse and apologizes to Bella.

Jasper, the newest Cullen member, loses control when Bella cuts herself, and he tries to kill her. He’s stopped in time and later feels intense remorse, but his lapse convinces Edward that the family should move away to protect Bella. Jasper has a close and loving bond with Alice; he has a psychic ability to control others’ moods. His failure of control launches the book’s main plot and points up the danger to a human who befriends vampires.

Bella is friends with a group of students at Forks High. Most important is Jessica Stanley—chatty and sociable, smart but a bit shallow—who attaches herself to Bella and is her best friend at school. When Edward leaves, Bella mopes a lot, and she and Jessica grow apart. Bella later tries to revive the friendship by going to the movies with Jessica, but her scary behavior toward a group of strangers frightens and angers Jessica, and she shuns Bella. Jessica represents the damage to Bella’s social world inflicted by the loss of Edward.

Tall, shy, and sweet, Angela is a friend whom Bella appreciates for her quiet ways. Mike Newton tries to date Bella, and he gets her a job at his dad’s sporting-goods store. Eric Yorkie also shows an interest in her, as does Tyler Crowley. Lauren Mallory is a popular girl who doesn’t like Bella, perhaps because so many of the boys are drawn to the new girl, and Lauren chides Bella when she can. Her name is similar to that of the vampire Laurent, also a charming personality who can turn on Bella if it suits him.

All of Bella’s high-school friends are minor characters who add a bit of color to her school life. Their chief purpose in New Moon is to provide Bella with social interaction and feedback as she works through the trauma of losing Edward.