Jasper Hale-Cullen

It’s sort of funny how we don’t know a whole lot about Jasper, but I’m still a big fan of his character. I cared a lot about who would play him in the movie, I like rereading the short scenes where he’s mentioned, and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why exactly that is.

We don’t really learn much about Jasper-what he’s like really, or his personal history-until Eclipse. It’s sort of funny how my brain works sometimes because when I rereading Twilight or New Moon and Jasper is mentioned I forget that we don’t actually know much of anything about him yet, and apply the things we learn about him in Eclipse to the brief mentions of him in Twilight and New Moon.

In Eclipse we learn about his history in the south and a handful of little details about Jasper. If you check out the Lexicon they have listed all of this information we learn-but it’s really not all that much considering the warm feelings I have for him. I think, actually, the best thing we learn about his character in Eclipse is when we see him taking the time to explain things particularly to Bella. He does this twice in Eclipse-first he explains his history to her, and then later he demonstrates why Bella doesn’t need to worry about tiny Alice in the fight. Obviously, the reason these scenes give me my happy feelings towards him is because he’s not just explaining these things to Bella when he does this-but to us (the readers). If he didn’t do this, we wouldn’t know as much about the newborns and his history. But the other thing is that previous to this all we know about Jasper is that it’s harder for him than the other Cullens not to kill Bella. He keeps his distance, he tries to kill her on her birthday… it could easily start to give off the impression that he just didn’t care much about Bella Swan.

But in Eclipse we see on multiple occasions that this is not the case. He takes the time to explain things to Bella, he considers her a part of the family. Despite the fact that we don’t see a LOT of Jasper, he’s a very complex guy… part of the Cullen family, but sort of distant at the same time. Caring, but thirsty.

The strongest part of his character will always be his love for Alice…and that only makes me like him more.