My overall impression of the children in Anita Desai's "Games at Twilight" is that they are portrayed very realistically. In the beginning of the story, the children are going stir crazy, because they have been cooped up inside all day. That sounds exactly like my three children. They bug the mom so much, that she simply lets them outside in order to get some free space away from them.
. . . they wailed so horrendously that she actually let down the bolt of the front door so that they burst out like seeds from a crackling, overripe pod into the veranda, with such wild, maniacal yells that she retreated to her bath and the shower of talcum powder and the fresh sari that were to help her face the summer evening.
The children next decide to play hide and seek. All of my kids are under the age of eight, and they love that game. So once again, I feel the children are portrayed realistically. They can't decide who is going to be it, and Mira steps in and starts to boss everybody around.
The motherly Mira intervened. She pulled the boys roughly apart. . . "Make a circle, make a circle!'' she shouted, firmly pulling and pushing till a kind of vague circle was formed. "Now clap!'' she roared, . . .
Again, that's common to any group of kids. There is always the alpha leader.
Once Raghu is picked, he starts proclaiming that it wasn't fair and somebody cheated.
He started to protest, to cry "You cheated—Mira cheated—Anu cheated——'' but it was too late, the others had all already streaked away.
Yep, check the realistic box one more time. Even at the end of the story, the children are still portrayed as realistic, because they have forgotten about Ravi. He was out of sight for so long that he simply went out of mind. That's a great parenting tactic, if you don't want your kids to whine about having something. Get it out of sight, and soon it will be out of mind. I think Desai did a great job at portraying the children.
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