Alice’s Visions Symbol Analysis

Alice’s visions symbolize how important the idea of free will is in Twilight’s fictional world. As Edward explains, some vampires discover that they have special gifts once undergoing their transformations. Edward can hear others’ thoughts, while Alice can see the future. But Alice’s visions of the future are seldom black and white, or always trustworthy. Rather, she and Edward make it clear that while the weather is pretty easy for Alice to predict, it’s much more difficult for her to accurately pin down what people (or vampires) will do, because people are always making new decisions. And those decisions, Alice notes, can change the future in major ways. For instance, Alice doesn’t see visions of the ballet studio in Phoenix until James, the tracker vampire, makes choices that will lead him there—and she can’t tell what will happen in the ballet studio until Bella chooses to meet James. Alice makes it clear that had Bella and James made different decisions, she never would’ve seen the ballet studio at all.

Broadly speaking, Alice’s visions make it clear that within the fantasy world of the novel where it is possible to see the future, people do have free will and can control what happens to them, at least to some degree. Indeed, this is the very reason why Alice’s visions are only marginally helpful: she can’t predict what decisions a person might make, and those decisions are what causes the future to unfold in a particular way.