“The Room in the Attic” gives us a great story about a boy chasing a dream he didn’t know he had. It all begins to make sense when we take his two friends, Ray and Dennis, who talk about their girlfriends at every chance they get. He sees other girls on the beach that he knows or doesn’t know. Everyday the idea of being in a relationship is constantly thrown at him. When he meets Isabel, his entire life changes. He visits her everyday after working at the library, enticed by the mystery the darkness of her room brings. But after a few months, when Isabel decides she wants David to finally see her, he runs away before the curtains open, never getting to glance upon her.
All in all, David and Isabel are similar to Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic “The Great Gatsby.” Gatsby, or David in this case, chases a girl he really likes until he can no longer have her. In reality, Gatsby enjoyed the idea of Daisy, chasing her, possibly winning her from her husband Tom, more than Daisy herself. Daisy was his dream, something to think about, to hope for. Something he never had but wanted so desperately until it was too late. Same goes for David. He loved the idea of Isabel, his dark enigma. She gave him something to think about. David realized that once she’d revealed herself, that mystery would be gone. There would be nothing to chase, he would have her.
As “The Great Gatsby” ends, Gatsby is shot and killed, never to see Daisy again. In “The Room in the Attic,” Isabel moves away to Maine to live with her aunt and her brother Wolf to a boarding school. David lost his dream, the chase was over, and he was never to see Isabel again.
I love the comparison that you made with “The Great Gatsby” and “The Room in the Attic!” I never thought of that comparison (by the way, Daisy totally did not deserve Gatsby, in my opinion.) I believe that David did not want to see Isabel’s face because he just wanted her to remain in the dark, kind of like a secret. He knew her in the dark, therefore, when she is revealed it might come as a shock to him and how he imagined her.