In the next two stories from Millhauser that we were required to read for today, both “The Room in the Attic” and “Dangerous Laughter” dealt with the forbidden and its attraction. The first story, “The Room in the Attic,” relied heavily on the differences of light and total darkness as a technique for pulling the reader into a world that was unknown and seemingly off-limits. David is pulled into this world by a new student at his school, Wolf, who brings him to his house and to his sister’s room. Isabel had a mental break down the year before and her “convalescence” requires her to stay mainly in darkness. The situation itself feels forbidden; David is pulled into Isabel’s room and they are left there alone and uninterrupted in the dark. This feeling is deepened by Isabel’s game of giving David something to feel and making him guess what it is, sometimes even using her own body. At first, David wants to see in her the light, and even brings a flashlight to her room. However, he then changes his mind, narrating, “It seemed to me that to shine the light on Isabel, to expose her to my greedy gaze, would be like tearing off her clothes.” (pg. 54) I think what the story is trying to impress upon the reader is how we experience attraction to mystery and taboo. Towards the end of the story when Isabel is about to open the curtains for the first time, David suddenly runs away without looking at her. I think that this was his acknowledgement that without the mystery surrounding Isabel, she would become uninteresting to him, and he was scared of that.
In “Dangerous Laughter,” the main character is also dealing with themes of the forbidden. The spasms of laughter that everyone strives to control in the laugh clubs and parlors are outside of the realm of the narrator, who has something blocking them from laughing like the others. The way the story is written from the narrator’s perspective and the delineation into rumors gives it a strong feeling of being an outsider in a world you can’t access; both the narrator and the reader are forbidden from laughing in the way that releases the tension inside. Clara Schuler then gives the main character a way into that world– while they’ve never really talked, they exist around each other, and it gives her a connection to the world that’s forbidden from her. In a way, the narrator seems to be living in that forbidden world through Clara, and when she dies in the laughing accident, it almost feels like the narrator is saved from that fate. She was able to feel connected to the laughing movement through Clara, and when the movement dies out, so does Clara, removing the narrator from that world and allowing her to move on.