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Alice

Alice’s Transformation (Ant Level and Cloud Level Transformation)

(For an explanation of “ant level” and “cloud level” perspectives, see the link for “Fate and Destiny” http://twilightsagaarchetypes.com/fate-and-destiny/.)

Alice is not immune to the same fate/destiny struggles everyone else has either.  She is omniscient to an extent, but she can only see what happens after people have made choices. The very foundation of her gift is based on, and highlights for us, the power of free will when people are presented with choices at the threshold between fate and destiny.  Do they walk through the door to meet destiny based on choices in faith, or do they run in fear?  In each moment of our lives, big and small, we are never not making those decisions — how to respond to someone, to an event, to a challenge — in each moment, we make choices that reflect our perspective and our motivations.

In the series, Alice has her own journey toward faith, just like the rest of the characters.  But how does someone who has “all of the answers” learn to trust the unknown if nothing is, well, unknown?  The necessary handicap for her, of course, is that she has holes in her omniscience.  Those holes are notably strongest around Jacob and Nessie, but why?  Alice may feel responsible for seeing everyone else’s journey, but of course because she is a person with her own journey, too, God must shield her from seeing too much because she has to learn to make blind leaps of faith like the rest of us.  Jacob and Nessie, individually and collectively, are central to Alice’s personal future.  (Remember Jacob is the only one who can “bless” the decision to transform Bella while keeping the treaty intact; otherwise, Alice would lose her best friend, her brother and perhaps the rest of her family if the wolves decided to avenge Bella’s transformation; and Nessie is the character who gives Bella the strength and courage to save them all, Alice included.)  It stands to reason then that Alice does not have holes with people who do not have that kind of influence in her own personal outcome, but for people who do, she must be prevented from being able to see them too clearly.  When too much information is revealed too fast (to any of us), we try to manipulate the outcome to satisfy the needs of our fragile or terrified egos; the only way for us to grow in any authentic, pure way is to make blind leaps of faith (no omniscience, including Alice), even if that is also the scariest way.

Everyone, Alice included, is very frustrated by the holes in her omniscience because they all believe her visions are, for the most part, the only way to save those around her.   In truth, though, at the end of the series she learns that without all of the answers, she must act on (literally) blind faith to save her loved ones.  She must have faith that Bella will understand her cryptic written message in her book, that Bella will find J, that Bella will understand J’s role, that Bella will keep her secret from Edward, that Bella will trust Alice to follow the clues in the first place, that Edward will not question Bella even though he knows she is up to something (which notably has been impossible for him the entire series until this event), and that basically, everyone will trust everyone else even though none of them have any “answers” beforehand.  Having the answers in advance defeats the very essence of faith, and they all learn this Divine truth at the end when they learn it is not Alice’s omniscience that saves people – it is faith that saves people.

Like Bella and Edward, Alice undergoes an archetypal evolution over the course of the story.  She has many other archetypes that will be discussed, but the evolution is from the Royal Fool, to the Oracle, to Hero.  More on these archetypes later.

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