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The Shed
The veranda, or den, at the children’s home represents the sense of safety and protection that familiar people, places, and things foster. The veranda, which is the children’s home base when they are playing hide and seek, contains a white pillar that they are trying to reach in order to win the game. But the veranda denotes safety in many ways—not only safety in the game (as returning to it makes one safe from being caught by the seeker) but also more tangible safety. The pillar is located just outside children’s home. Thus, it is a familiar structure and one that is near to their home and their parents, who truly keep them safe and protect them. The den thus symbolizes home and family more broadly, and the sense of comfort and security that these aspects of life provide. Desai puts the den in contrast with the shed in which Ravi hides, an unfamiliar place that inspires fear and a sense of being unsafe.
The Veranda / Den Quotes in Games at Twilight
The Games at Twilight quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Veranda / Den. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Games at Twilight
Quotes
With a whimper he burst through the crack, fell on his knees, got up and stumbled on stiff, benumbed legs across the shadowy yard, crying heartily by the time he reached the veranda so that when he flung himself at the white pillar and bawled, “Den! Den! Den!” his voice broke with rage and pity at the disgrace of it all and he felt himself flooded with tears and misery.
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The Veranda / Den Symbol Timeline in Games at Twilight
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Veranda / Den appears in Games at Twilight. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Games at Twilight
...heat. Their mother insists that she doesn’t want them to go outside of their house’s veranda, and they promise that they won’t. Despite her protests, they plead relentlessly, until she finally...
(full context)
...the girls scream as Raghu catches her before she touches the white pillar on the veranda, which they call the den, that serves as their home base. Ravi contemplates the idea...
(full context)
Ravi realizes then that he could have slipped out and run to the den a long time ago: he hid so successfully that he forgot it was necessary to...
(full context)
