Frankenstein and the running away

Victor's pulling away starts before that night. While he works, he stops writing home. He keeps away from other people as if he has done something wrong.

Then the creature wakes, and he runs. It finds him at his bedside and reaches out a hand. He runs again.

This page reads that as a disappearing pattern. A disappearing pattern means you pull away when something gets close or gets real. You leave the room, then the house, then the people.

Victor does this again and again. After each loss he goes quiet and wanders off alone, even from those who love him.

Left alone, the creature has to make sense of the world by itself. Almost everyone it meets turns it away.

In time it turns on Victor and the people he loves. His young brother, his closest friend and his wife are all lost.

Victor keeps the secret to himself until near the end. The people around him never know what he is running from.

The cost of disappearing is often like this. What you run from does not go away. It grows in the dark, without you.

The book gives Victor a clear moment. The creature opens its eye, and horror floods him. That flood is the place to catch it.

The body signal, a racing heart and the urge to bolt, comes before his feet move.

Behavioral Interception is the practice of catching an automatic pattern as it begins, intercepting its usual response, and practicing a different action until it becomes more natural.

Here, catching it means noticing the urge to run. The usual response is to leave the room. A different action is to stay one more minute, and look.

The creature reaches out a hand. Victor could have taken it. Almost everything that follows grows from that choice.

Victor pulls away from people long before the creature wakes. What does that tell you about his running?

Look at what happens each time the creature reaches out to someone. How does being left shape it?

Find the first moment Victor could have stayed. Write what he might have done instead.