F E L I C I TA S A G U I R R E A N D C A M I L A P E RA LTA

GAMES AT TWILIGHT, BY ANITA DESAI

THE STORY • Children want to go out to play• They play hide and seek• Raghu is “It”• Ravi hides in a shed

• He dreams of winning the game

• He gets out

Dark Full of insects

• Thinking he had won• Nobody remembered him• Children were playing

another game and singing a death song

Setting: Town in India, it is very hot

ANITA DESAI

• Born 24 June 1937• Indian novelist

• Taught creative writing • Many of her works were turn into films

German motherIndian father

Anita Desai

● Youngest children in the family

● Has never won any game

● His dream is to win “Hide and seek”

● He hides in the shed feeling he would be safe

from Raghu● When he goes out everyone look at him as

if he were a stranger

● He feels very sad and disappointed

“To defeat Raghu- that hirsute, hoarse-voiced football champion- and not be the winner in a circle of older, bigger, luckier children - that would be thrilling beyond imagination”

HI, I’M RAVI

● Impatient

● Older than the rest of the kids

● Mistreats the little ones

● Ravi wants to beat him

MY NAME IS RAGHU

““I know I have to, idiot,” Raghu said, superciliously kicking him with his toe. “You’re dead”, he said with satisfaction”

COLOURS

● Description of the setting

Colours transmit how hot the place was

Colours represent the emotions and feelings Ravi experiences when he is inside the shedDark

colours

• The shed

“The white walls of the veranda glared stridently in the sun. The bougainvillea hung about it, purple and magenta, in livid balloons. The garden outside was like a tray made of beaten brass, flattened out on the red gravel and the stony soil in all shades of metal…”

COLOURS

● Twilight game

Children Pale faces

They seem ghosts

Place Dark shadows of trees

Looks like a cemetery

Connected to how Ravi felt when nobody

noticed him

DEATH CONCEPTThe games at twilight are connected to death and passing of

timeRavi is inside the shed

Described as a tomb

Experiences kind of death

Realises he is insignificant

Games happen at twilight

Connected to death

Ravi reappears and the children are singing a funeral song

“The grass is green, the rose is red; remember me when I am dead, dead, dead, dead…”

EMPATHY

● For Ravi it isn’t just a game

● Author takes us into his mind

● We know what Ravi had to endure

● Most empathy is felt when

● Stay in the dark shed

● Long time● Alone● Afraid

Ravi is forgotten by

his family“It took them a minute to grasp what he was saying, even who he was. They had quite forgotten him.”

TONES

● The beginning of the storyDesperate

Playful

● Children are desperate to go outside to play some games and take fresh air.

● Ravi is desperate to find a new place to hide from Raghu.

● Children are desperate to play some games outside

“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.”

PlayfulDesperate

● Ravi is inside the shed

Frightening

Triumphant

Frightening● Ravi is afraid when he is

inside the shedDark InsectsHe was aloneLooks like a tomb

Triumphant● Inside the shed, Ravi thought

about winning and becoming triumphant.

● It would be the first time he was going to win a game against Raghu

“It was an insect, perhaps a spider, exploring him. He squashed it and wondered how many more creatures were watching, waiting to reach out and touch him, the stranger.”

● Ravi comes out of the shedEmbarrassing/ Humiliating

Melancholic

Embarrassing● Ravi felt isolated when he came

out of the shed because nobody remembered that he was still playing.

● Everyone made fun of him and they played another game.

Melancholic● Ravy felt very disappointed

because no one in his family remembered he was still playing.

● In the end they sang a song of death

“The mother rose from her basket chair and came towards him, worried, annoyed, saying, ‘Stop it, stop it, Ravi. Don’t be a baby. Have you hurt yourself? Seeing him attended to, the children went back to clasping their hands and chanting.”

THEMES

FANTASY VERSUS REALITY● Fantas

y ● When Ravi is inside the shed

● He dreams of

● He imagines the life he would like to live

● Winning the game

● Beating Raghu

“There he sat, smiling, knocking his heels against the bathtub, now and then getting up and going to the door to put his ear to the broad crack and listening for the sounds of the game, the pursuer and the pursued, and then returning to his seat with the dogged determination of the true winner, a breaker of records, a champion.”

FANTASY VERSUS REALITY

● Reality • Ravi’s elder brother is agressive

• Ravi is not important

• Sense of reality overwhelms him• He realises he is insignificant• He feels isolated• No one in his family remembered

him

When Ravi comes out of the shed

ALIENATION AND INSIGNIFICANCE● Ravi is

inside the shed

● Ravi gets out

• He realizes he is insignificant • His siblings didn’t recognize him

• He refuses to play the new game

• He feels he’s in his own funeral because of the song

Alienates himself

• He dreams of winning the game to change his situation

“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.”

THE END