“The Room In The Attic” is told by the main character David, who becomes obsessed with his friend’s sister. His friend, Wolf, is already an interesting character that does not care for the things school has to offer. After his initial encounter with David, Wolf introduces him to Isabel. David never sees her due to the darkness of her room. He plays with her in the dark, games that test his imagination and challenge him to pay attention to the little things that happen in everyday life. She becomes an invisible presence in his life, intruding on his thoughts as well as his daily schedule, and he falls in love with the idea with her. When Isabel decides that she wants to bring herself into the light, David shields his eyes to avoid seeing her, and he leaves. This results in him never visiting or seeing her again, as she leaves to visit her aunt and attend school elsewhere.
Millhauser’s “The Room In The Attic” demonstrates another example of an imagination or an idea of someone, and the impact that they have on others. That being said, it is possible that Isabel herself is a figment of David’s imagination. Before he meets Isabel, Wolf talks about how a book is a “dream-machine” and its purpose is to “take you out of the world” (39). Isabel tends to do this exact thing to David, especially when he is no longer in the same room as her. It is very similar to the feeling you get when reading a book that has grabbed your interest, and you want nothing more than to continue reading it, but you are not allowed to read it all day. However, in this case, David does not want to see her face, because it takes him back into reality. He likes his ideal version of her, and doesn’t want to ruin that image. It is also possible that he is scared that if he tries to see her, he will find nothing at all, and she never really existed. Isabel is his dream-machine; when she leaves, his life goes back to a sense of normalcy and boring interactions, wondering if he anything he had experienced ever really happened.