“Her scent hit me like a battering ram, like an exploding grenade. There was no image violent enough to encompass the force of what happened to me in that moment.

Instantly, I was transformed. I was nothing close to the human I’d once been. No trace of the shreds of humanity I’d managed to cloak myself in over the years remained.”

This passage reveals the moment which precipitates the actions of the rest of the novel. As Edward smells Bella’s scent for the first time, she immediately becomes a major player in his life. His life is also transformed, changing from the previously mundane and repetitive life of repeating high school to a new life defined by the struggle seen here between his vampire nature and his desire to be good.

“I realized that my hate, the hate I’d imagined this girl somehow deserved for simply existing, had evaporated. Not breathing now, not tasting her scent, I found it hard to believe that anyone so vulnerable could ever be deserving of hatred.”

Although Edward’s initial response to Bella is hate, it does not take him long to become intrigued with her. What initially prompts this change of perspective is the vulnerability and innocence that Edward sees here in Bella’s eyes. Meyer maintains this characterization of Bella, in contrast with Edward’s self-hatred, throughout the novel, ever presenting Bella as a girl whose goodness can rescue Edward from monstrosity.

“Somewhere during that short, thoughtless second when I’d sprinted across the icy lot, I had transformed from killer to protector.”

This is the moment when Edward decides to save Bella from being crushed by a van in the school parking lot. By this point Bella already intrigues Edward, but here he makes an irreversible decision to entwine his life with hers. When he refers to the second that this decision takes as “thoughtless,” he references both the fact that his desire to save Bella is now instinctual and the fact that this instinct takes priority, even over his desire to protect his family.