Young adult fiction, as one of the literary genres, seeks into themes that are important and essential to adolescence, for instance, peer pressure and ensuing experimentations, relationships to authority figures, issues of diversity relating to gender, sociocultural, and socioeconomic status. Young Adult Literature contains adolescent characters as the protagonists, the events in the story evolve around the protagonist, and the story is often told from an adolescent’s point of view (Cole, 2009). Reading Young Adult Literature enables the readers to experience emotions and situations through the young leading protagonist and they can see how the problems or situations are solved (Bucher and Manning, 2006).
Adolescence is an interesting age to study because it is the age where many changes, both mental and physical aspects, occur. Thus, this study is conducted to analyze how Stephenie Meyer, the author of the Twilight series, applied adolescent development theories to the characterization of Bella, the main character in the series. The study analytically employed the theories of adolescent development (Sprinthall & Collins, 1995) to examine Bella’s character development. The adolescent development theories will portray Bella’s six stages of adolescent development and will examine adolescent’s changes in both mental and physical aspects.