‘Twilight’: Why Stephenie Meyer Really Chose an Apple for the Cover
Though the first of the Twilight books was published back in 2008, fans are still invested in the story today. Thanks to Stephenie Meyer’s recent release of Midnight Sun, which is a retelling of Twilight from Edward Cullen’s perspective, interest in the books has skyrocketed once more. But fans aren’t just interested in the words within the books. They also are speculating about the cover art as well.
Whether you’re a fan of the Twilight books or not, you’ve likely seen the infamous cover of the first book. The cover features extremely pale hands holding a blood red apple out in invitation. Fans of the movies will recall that Robert Pattinson managed to recreate the cover in the film thanks to a particularly difficult stunt because the director felt the callback was important. But just what does the cover represent and why was an apple chosen?
Stephenie Meyer reflects on Bella’s idea of good and evil
Since fans of the Twilight books are so fascinated by the cover of the books, Meyer took to her personal website to speak a bit more about why the specific image was chosen. “The apple on the cover of Twilight represents ‘forbidden fruit.’ I used the scripture from Genesis (located just after the table of contents) because I loved the phrase ‘the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil,'” Meyer shared.
Of course, Meyer is referring to the Bible verse that she references in the very beginning of her book. “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” the scripture reads. Meyer loved the idea of choosing an image that played upon her main character’s understanding of what good and evil were. “Isn’t this exactly what Bella ends up with?” the Twilight author posed to her fans. “A working knowledge of what good is, and what evil is.”
Why the ‘Twilight’ author chose an apple for her cover
Continuing on, Meyer also spoke about how apples have historically had a lot of symbolism and thus could represent a lot of different things. “The nice thing about the apple is it has so many symbolic roots,” Meyer penned, giving more reasons as to why she landed on the particular fruit for the Twilight cover. “You’ve got the apple in Snow White, one bite and you’re frozen forever in a state of not-quite-death… Then you have Paris and the golden apple in Greek mythology—look how much trouble that started. Apples are quite the versatile fruit.”
But why did Meyer choose that particular picture of an apple above the others? For the Twilight author, it all boiled down to one single word which she felt accurately represented her story. “In the end, I love the beautiful simplicity of the picture. To me, it says: choice.” Clearly, a lot of thought went into Meyer selecting the right image for her infamous book. We’re interested to see if Twilight fans will be as taken with the covers of her future works.
