How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Often over the years I have asked myself why I never ran away. What bound me to him beyond the inertia to which all humans are susceptible? I was not bound by blood. Not by oath. Not by law. Yet every time the thought of flight flittered across my consciousness, it disappeared as ephemerally as a will-o'-the-wisp, an ignis fatuus, an elusive glow over the marshland of my psyche. To leave him was not unthinkable—I confess I thought of it often—but to be away from him was. Was it fear that kept me by his side, fear of the unknown, fear of being adrift and alone, fear that I might meet a fate far more frightening than service to a monstrumologist? Was it that an unpleasant "known" is preferable to any unpredictable "unknown"? (7.76)
So as much as he's incredibly lonely now, he's afraid that he'd be even more alone if he were to leave Warthrop's oppressive household. It's like the idiom "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't"—why leave if what's out there could be even worse?
Quote #8
[…] it resulted too from the painful memory of another bereft boy who lay comfortless in a strange bed night after night, consigned to a little alcove, set aside and forgotten for hours, like an unwanted heirloom bequeathed by a distant relation, too vulgar to display but too valuable to discard. There were times, in the beginning of my service to the monstrumologist, when I was certain he must have heard my keening wails long into the night—heard them, and did nothing. (9.87)
To mourn the loss of both parents at a young age must be incredibly difficult, and in Will Henry's case it's only made harder because he has to do it alone. What was Dr. Warthrop's thinking that allowed him to ignore the miserable cries of a twelve-year-old boy? Ugh.
Quote #9
Which would be worse: tutelage under a man such as the monstrumologist, or the miserable, lonely life of the orphan, unwanted and bereft? (11.12)
Either way Will Henry is lonely, but maybe there's a third option: What if he went to the orphanage and eventually found a loving home to take him in? Would the slim chance be worth leaving everything he knows and the small comforts it affords him?