The following passage is taken from Games At Twilight, a short story by Anita Desai. Anita Desai is a renowned author from India who writes about India, or America told in relation to India. Games At Twilight, set in India, revolves around Ravi, one of five children, who learns about the harsh realities of life and death while playing a game of hide and seek. The didactic short story, told from a third person limited point of view, examines the idea of eventually being forgotten after death. In the excerpt, the readers are presented with a range of feelings from Ravi as he hides in the shed. Some of these feelings include pride, fear, insignificance and doubt.
From the excerpt, the initial feeling presented by Ravi is pride. This can be seen in Anita Desai’s use of diction to convey Ravi’s exuberance at finding a good hiding place. When Ravi, the youngest child in the group, stumbled into the shed, he ‘chuckled aloud with astonishment at his own temerity’ because he had managed to escape the clutches of Raghu. In the …show more content…
In an attempt to escape Raghu, Ravi slips ‘through a crack’ and into the shed, which is described as a ‘dark and depressing mortuary’. Ravi’s initial excitement at his hiding place is replaced by a sense of fear triggered by the shed that ‘smelt of rats, ant hills, dust and spider webs’. The fear experienced by Ravi can also be characterised as fear of the unknown, because the atmosphere in the shed was ‘of less definable, less recognisable’ horrors. The description of the setting of the shed creates a mood of fear which can clearly be seen in Ravi, through his actions as he ‘hunched himself into a ball’. Therefore, it can be said that Desai’s aggressive description of the setting of the shed illustrate the fear experienced by Ravi. This fear causes Ravi to feel other emotions, such as
From the excerpt, the initial feeling presented by Ravi is pride. This can be seen in Anita Desai’s use of diction to convey Ravi’s exuberance at finding a good hiding place. When Ravi, the youngest child in the group, stumbled into the shed, he ‘chuckled aloud with astonishment at his own temerity’ because he had managed to escape the clutches of Raghu. In the …show more content…
In an attempt to escape Raghu, Ravi slips ‘through a crack’ and into the shed, which is described as a ‘dark and depressing mortuary’. Ravi’s initial excitement at his hiding place is replaced by a sense of fear triggered by the shed that ‘smelt of rats, ant hills, dust and spider webs’. The fear experienced by Ravi can also be characterised as fear of the unknown, because the atmosphere in the shed was ‘of less definable, less recognisable’ horrors. The description of the setting of the shed creates a mood of fear which can clearly be seen in Ravi, through his actions as he ‘hunched himself into a ball’. Therefore, it can be said that Desai’s aggressive description of the setting of the shed illustrate the fear experienced by Ravi. This fear causes Ravi to feel other emotions, such as