Games at Twilight: AnalysisBy: Victoria Redigo and Mia Rinaldi

Topics

✤Plot

✤Information about the author

✤Description of main characters (Ravi and Raghu)

✤The importance of colours

✤“Death” in the story

✤Feeling of empathy

✤Tones

✤Themes

✤Important Quotations

Plot

The children go outside to play hide and seek. Raghu, the oldest boy, is the “it”. Everyone looks for a place to hide. Ravi gets

into a shed to hide from Raghu and stays there for a long time. Eventually, he gets out saying he was the winner. The children laugh at him, they were

already playing another game. Ravi realizes everyone forgot about him.

Setting: India, a very hot place

“The children too felt released. They too began tumbling, shoving, pushing against each other, frantic to start. Start

what? Start their business. The business of the children’s day which is – play”

Author: Anita Desai

Anita Desai, original name Anita Mazumdar, is an English-language Indian novelist and author. She was born June 24, 1937, Mussoorie, India, to a

German mother and an Indian father. She spent her early life in India, and then moved to the US to work and write.

Some of her novels are:

-Cry, the Peacock (1963)

-Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975)

-Fire on the Mountain (1977)

- Games at Twilight, and Other Stories (1978)

Characters

- One of the younger children- He looks for attention

- Nobody is patient with him- Feels lonely, insignificant

- He´s desperate to win the game

“To defeat Raghu – that hirsute, hoarse-voiced football champion – to be the winner in a circle of older, bigger, luckier children – that would be thrilling beyond imagination”. He hugged his knees together and smiled to himself

almost shyly at the thought of so much victory, such laurels.

Ravi

Characters

- Oldest kid- He has an eye on Ravi

- He is kind of a Bully- He has no patience with the little ones

- Looks intimidating to Ravi - Arrogant

“I know I have to, idiot,” Raghu said, superciliously kicking him with his toe. “You’re dead”, he said with satisfaction, licking the beads of perspiration off his upper lip, and then stalked off in

search of worthier prey, whistling so that the hiders would hear and tremble.

Raghu

The importance of colours

The colours play an important role

When Ravi is inside the shed

When Ravi gets out of the shed:

Makes seem the children are ghosts and the place looks like a cemetery. This at the same time is connected to Ravis’s feelings; in that moment he felt like

he “was dead” to the other people who never noticed he wasn’t there.

Darkness: Transmits Ravi’s emotions and

feelings

- Pale faces of the children- Darkness from the shadows of the trees

“Death” in the story

-When Ravi goes in the dark shed and describes it as a tomb. -When Ravi gets out of the shed thinking he had won, he finds the other children playing another game and singing a death

song.

At twilight Feeling of death

and not being important

There are two moments when death and the passing of life are shown:

Feeling of empathy

We feel empathy for Ravi because:

He stays alone in a shed, afraid, just to win.

The author takes us into Ravi’s mind

He gets out of the shed and they had forgotten him.

“He lay down full length on the damp grass, crushing his face into it, no

longer crying, silenced by a terrible sense of his significance”

Tones

Beginning

Inside shed

Outside shed

Playful: Children are excited to go and play

Desperate: Ravi is desperate to find a place to hide

Frightening: Ravi hears noises, feels bugs and is alone

Triumphant: Ravi thinks about how to win

Embarrassing and Melancholic: Ravi gets out of the shed and nobody remembered about him and they were starting a new game

Themes

Reality vs Fantasy

Fantasy: He is in the shed and dreams of winning and a better life

Reality: When he goes out of the shed he is insignificant and his siblings had forgotten about him.

Alienation and Insignificance

Ravi is in the shed and dreams to change his situation.

He gets out of the shed he realises he is insignificant because his sibling forgot him and he feels alienated and insignificant.

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