Safety vs. Fear Theme Analysis

While childhood can often be an idyllic time, it is not without its rollercoaster of emotions and fears. In “Games at Twilight,” the protagonist, Ravi, constantly teeters between a sense of security and one of fear. As he plays a game of hide and seek, he yearns to rejoin his siblings and cousins in the sun, all the while growing more and more nervous in the dark and mysterious shed in which he chooses to hide. Through this wavering, Desai sets up two opposing environments that illustrate the same point: for children, safety is derived primarily from a sense of familiarity, in contrast to fear, which is prompted chiefly by the unknown.

The “dark” and “spooky” shed in which Ravi hides becomes a deep source of fear for Ravi, as he does not know what could be lurking inside it. The darkness and strangeness of the shed sets up the idea that Ravi isn’t afraid of any particular thing, but rather by the sheer unknowability of what could hurt him. Desai writes how Ravi is afraid to be in the shed, which smells of animals but also “less recognizable horrors.” The fact that there is so little light—it only gets in through the “cracks along the door”—also incites fear. Both of these ideas illustrate how the shed is scary not necessarily for any specific reason other than that it is unfamiliar to Ravi, meaning that he doesn’t know what perils might exist within it. At first, Ravi is too afraid to move in the shed, as he is worried that he might touch something he didn’t want to touch. When he feels something tickle the back of his neck, he has to wait a long time before mustering the courage to see what it might be. When he feels it is a spider, he immediately squashes it. The spider is not terrifying to him; instead, it is the feeling of not knowing “how many more creatures were watching him, waiting to reach out and touch him.” Thus, Desai establishes again the sense that not knowing what lies in the shed is more upsetting than the reality of what is actually in there. This idea becomes even more salient when Ravi encounters things that are more familiar. When he is able to see slightly better, he recognizes an old bathtub that had been discarded, and he sits inside it, feeling comforted by the fact that the object is familiar to him. Similarly, when he hears Raghu—an older boy who is the seeker in the game—bang on the shed with a stick, this actually makes him feel “protected.” Even though Raghu is trying to intimidate him, knowing that someone from his family is out there gives Ravi a sense of safety in the midst of an unknown environment.

Desai contrasts the fear prompted by the shed with the security of the world outside it. Through symbols like sunlight or the veranda (which acts as the children’s home base for their game), Desai continues to correlate the idea of familiarity and clarity with safety. In contrast to the dark unknown of the shed, Ravi longs for “the sun, the light, the free spaces of the garden and the familiarity of his brothers, sisters, and cousins.” Being able to see (and therefore know what lies in his surroundings) and being with people whom he knows affords him this sense of safety. Even though at any point he could return to them, the simple fact of being separated from that familiarity is scary for Ravi. And as the sunlight fades, he grows more and more worried about remaining in the shed, strengthening the idea that the light adds a sense of security and comfort when it is present. The veranda itself is another reinforcement of this idea that familiarity equates with safety. A white pillar on the veranda serves as the children’s home base, the thing that confers safety in the game on the person who touches it. It is no coincidence, then, that this location is part of the family’s house, as it represents a returning to the familiarity of home and family. When Ravi can’t take remain in the shed anymore and realizes that he has to return to the veranda, he streaks to it as fast as he can, crying with despair at having waited so long but also gaining a sense of relief at returning safely. Together, these two primary environments of the story prove Desai’s argument that fear is borne of a sense of the unknown, while safety is conferred by what is known and familiar.