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LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Games at Twilight , which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. One afternoon, a group of children begs to be let out to play after spending all day confined in their house because of the extreme heat.
Despite her protests, they plead relentlessly, until she finally lets them go outside. The children pour out of the house, where it is extremely hot and bright. Additionally, their mother establishes the veranda as a place of safety because it is familiar and close to home, as opposed to places outside the veranda which are less familiar and potentially dangerous.
Active Themes. Social Hierarchy. Related Quotes with Explanations. Mira , the mother figure in the group, intervenes and determines that they will play a game to determine who will be It.
The game results in Raghu , the oldest, becoming It. As the children gear up for their game of hide and seek, their roles within the group are quickly clarified and reinforced, in contrast with their monolithic nature earlier. As Raghu approaches his count of , one of the younger children named Manu reappears, unsure of where to hide and near tears.
Raghu finishes his count and catches a glimpse of Manu as he runs away. Raghu runs up to him and easily catches him.
Manu cries and says that Raghu still has to find all of the others. Raghu sets off to find the others, whistling so that the other kids will hear him and fear being caught. As a result, Raghu is easily able to hunt down Manu and establish his own dominance in the game, reflecting and reinforcing their dynamic outside of the game.
Ravi hears Raghu whistling and is also unsure of where to go. Ravi had a frightening glimpse of them as Raghu combed the hedge of crotons and hibiscus, trampling delicate ferns underfoot as he did so. Ravi looked about him desperately, swallowing a small ball of snot in his fear. The garage was locked with a great heavy lock to which the driver had the key in his room, hanging from a nail on the wall under his workshirt.
Ravi had peeped in and seen him still sprawling on his string cot in his vest and striped underpants, the hair on his chest and the hair in his nose shaking with the vibrations of his phlegm-obstructed snores. Ravi had wished he were tall enough, big enough to reach the key on the nail, but it was impossible, beyond his reach for years to come. He had sidled away and sat dejectedly on the flowerpot. That at least was cut to his own size.
But next to the garage was another shed with a big green door. Also locked. No one even knew who had the key to the lock. The green leaves of the door sagged. They were nearly off their rusty hinges. The hinges were large and made a small gap between the door and the walls—only just large enough for rats, dogs, and, possibly, Ravi to slip through. Snarling, he bent to pick up a stick and went off, whacking it against the garage and shed walls as if to beat out his prey.
Ravi shook, then shivered with delight, with self-congratulation. Also with fear. It was dark, spooky in the shed. It had a muffled smell, as of graves. Ravi had once got locked into the linen cupboard and sat there weeping for half an hour before he was rescued.
But at least that had been a familiar place, and even smelled pleasantly of starch, laundry, and, reassuringly, of his mother. But the shed smelled of rats, anthills, dust, and spider webs. Also of less definable, less recognizable horrors. And it was dark. Except for the white-hot cracks along the door, there was no light. The roof was very low. Although Ravi was small, he felt as if he could reach up and touch it with his fingertips. He hunched himself into a ball so as not to bump into anything, touch or feel anything.
What might there not be to touch him and feel him as he stood there, trying to see in the dark? Something cold, or slimy—like a snake. He leapt up as Raghu whacked the wall with his stick—then, quickly realizing what it was, felt almost relieved to hear Raghu, hear his stick. It made him feel protected. But Raghu soon moved away. Ravi stood frozen inside the shed. Then he shivered all over. Something had tickled the back of his neck. It took him a while to pick up the courage to lift his hand and explore.
It was an insect—perhaps a spider—exploring him. He squashed it and wondered how many more creatures were watching him, waiting to reach out and touch him, the stranger. There was nothing now. After standing in that position—his hand still on his neck, feeling the wet splodge of the squashed spider gradually dry—for minutes, hours, his legs began to tremble with the effort, the inaction. By now he could see enough in the dark to make out the large solid shapes of old wardrobes, broken buckets, and bedsteads piled on top of each other around him.
He recognized an old bathtub—patches of enamel glimmered at him, and at last he lowered himself onto its edge. He contemplated slipping out of the shed and into the fray. He wondered if it would not be better to be captured by Raghu and be returned to the milling crowd as long as he could be in the sun, the light, the free spaces of the garden, and the familiarity of his brothers, sisters, and cousins.
It would be evening soon. Their games would become legitimate. The parents would sit out on the lawn on cane basket chairs and watch them as they tore around the garden or gathered in knots to share a loot of mulberries or black, teeth-splitting jamun from the garden trees.
The gardener would fix the hosepipe to the water tap, and water would fall lavishly through the air to the ground, soaking the dry yellow grass and the red gravel and arousing the sweet, the intoxicating scent of water on dry earth—that loveliest scent in the world.
Ravi sniffed for a whiff of it. In reality, the rest of the children have all but forgotten about Ravi, which means that he does indeed win the game. In spite of this victory, his success seems to go unnoticed by the other children who simply begin playing a different game. The power of competition or rivalry emerges as a significant theme.
So powerful is his resolve to win that it carries him through the fear he feels when he hides in the shed. As one of the younger children playing the game, he was not confident but managed to persevere. The implication is that winning will make him see himself in a different light.
At the onset of the game, the author describes birds drooping and a dog stretched out on a mat in a way that suggests they are, or at least seem to be, dead. By the end of the story Ravi feels as if he too has died and he is described lying silently on the ground, lifeless. Ironically, towards the end of Games at Twilight, the children play a game that is about death. They have no way of knowing that he took the game of hide and seek seriously, while to them it was just a way to pass the time.
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