I prefer not to," also tells the reader about isolating himself. The phrase shows his lack of involvement, another form of isolation. The narrator tells the reader exactly what he did to , very vividly, as shown below. In the novella, the author tells the reader, down to the smallest detail, what he did to to isolate him from the world. He tells us in this passage, "I placed his desk close up to a small side window in that part of the room, a window which originally had afforded a lateral view of certain grimy backyards, and bricks, but whic ....