games at twilight
TRANSCRIPT
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.