“No, far better to have turned away, to have understood that, for me, Isabel existed only in the dark.” (74).
Millhauser does an interesting concept in “The Room in the Attic” on not confirming or denying if Isabel is real. Even at the very end of the story, David still isn’t 100% on if Isabel was real or his mind had made it all up with Wolf’s slight manipulations. After meeting the supposed Isabel, David seems to be pulled into an almost fantasy realm and comes over to just sit in the dark and talk to Isabel and it begins impacting his life. He comes over to Wolf’s house not to spend time with his friend but rather sit in the dark talking to a girl who may not even be real. Wolf on his end seems oddly chill with his friend coming in and sitting in the attic.
David seems so wrapped up in the allure of Isabel to the point that when she goes to show herself to him that he turns away not wanting the illusion of her he’d built in his reality that the potential of it to be broken was something he didn’t want. This really brings into the question of if Isabel is real or not. David might have been an overactive mind and created Isabel with prompting from his friend. There could be the argument on if Wolf was really real but based the fact rumors about him flunking out of his previous school that Wolf might actually be real.
Wolf brings up that the difference between animals and humans is that humans were able to dream while awake (42). Millhauser seems to be dropping hints that Isabel could possibly be all part of an experiment done by Wolf on his friend David to see if David was a dreamer, and if Isabel truly isn’t real, David would seem to be.
I really liked your take on this. In the story they did seem to hint that Isabel was made up by Wolf and that perhaps he was tricking David. When looking at it this way I can definitely see why David would be hesitant on discovering Isabel’s true identity, but part of me still wishes that he took that risk.