Timeline in Games at Twilight. Even the most casual reader is likely to be impressed with this weaving of past and present into a single and unified whole. Desai artistic economy in bringing the past and present is of high order. There is nothing in the present that is not related to past. Every incident of the past and of present is of integral part of the whole and fusion of the past and present has been brought about in a perceptible manner. 

 

Inner Consciousness. One of the most important parts of her style is to use an unbroken flow of thoughts and awareness in waking mind. Desai makes frequent use of flashback technique recalling the past happenings and experiences. This makes their rich internal lives and thoughts vivid and interestingly often in stark contrast to what is happening externally / in real life. There is consistently a lack of action. It enables the quality of a given state of mind to be investigated so completely.

 

In Desai’s stories action is subordinated to psychology. The central theme revolves around the mental and spiritual development. All he protagonists of her novels develop throughout the course of the novels either towards good (in their minds?) or worse (in reality). Her characters move and change and strive/struggle, however, whether this leads them any closer to their goals is debatable. 

 

Relationships. The theme of Desai’s novels, is human nature and human relationship. Her stories are peopled with men and women relationships in which Desai deals

 

One of the most distinctive characteristics of Desai’s fiction is lively description of her disenfranchised female characters. They are not the main characters in most of the stories in Games at Twilight. Anita Desai not only portrays clearly her protagonists’ emotions and feelings but she gives the lively description of the events in the novel. Her use of lively words, solid action, visual images arrest the mind as if it were in a painting. 

 

So far as the characterization of Desai is concerned, it is unique. Her characters are neurotic highly sensitive but sequestered in a world of dream and imagination and alienated from the surroundings with consequence of their failure or unwillingness to adjust with reality. They often differ in their opinion from others. Unable to solve the mystery of life, they envelop their sufferings like Bhaiyya (The Accompanist) and _____________ in Surface Textures). Her characters are from every class and age of society. Subsequently the women in these stories are also represented here. 

 

His art of contrasting characters can be easily observed again in stories like…

-           Rich vs Poor

-          Materials vs Spirituality

-          Desire vs Reality

To what effect? 

One of the most distinctive parts of Desai’s technique is her lyricism. She is often considered as a lyrical novelist as the language used by Desai is of special type. She quotes poems after poems in her novels and words come as spontaneously from her pen as music from a musical instrument. Poetry has been used by Desai as a fictional technique right from the beginning of her career as an author. Her lyrical language (which although often criticized), separates her from other Indian-English writers. 

 

Egs?

 

The use of symbols is also a very important technique in the novels of Desai. Her novels abound in variety of symbolic situations, episodes, events and characters. These symbols are drawn from human life and nature - trees, birds, animals etc. 

 

Oleander bush in Studies in the Park

Birds and flowers in Sale etc

 

Another important aspect of Desai’s artistic technique is use of imagery. Imagery lends a poetic and lyrical coloring of the estranged self and enlarges the critical and interpretative horizon of her art. Images in Desai aren’t confined to the world of art but they are scientific images. She makes an unending search for the suitable images to express subconscious. Her imagery is always in character which suits the love plight of her character. 

 

Her novels are based on the texture of a rich and splendid medley of images which is functional rather than decorative. These images don’t conflict or contradict each other but are in perfect harmony and accord with the nature of the character’s alienation. 

 

Egs.

 

One of the most prominent technique of Desai is to telescope past with present. The technique has been effectively used in The Accompanist. One moment the readers feel that they are moving in the present occurring and at the very next moment they are carried into the past incidents with the mind of characters. This beautiful mingling of past and present can be observed in her novels easily.

 

Effect? 

 

In The Accompanist, he uses first person narration. Bhaiyya is a narrator and he presents a one sided view of the events and the writer allows the readers to critically examine the actions and reactions of the narrator. 

 

Eg?

Effect?

 

 

In stories like Surface Textures and The Accompanist, she discusses the theme of marital disharmony through a series of incidents. Desai has the sharpness and the penetration of vision of extraordinary degree. She cuts things clean and enters the insides of things with perfect ease. She has penetrating eyes into the mental condition of her characters. 

 

Another distinctive feature of Desai’s writing is the use of native words to create Indian atmosphere. It shows her deep love for Indian culture; she employs many Indian words in the novels like 

 

She is also impressed by onomatopoeic words like _____________________________________. Desai’s skill in the sentence-construction seems to be breaking down in the later novels. Sometimes she uses rhetorical skill at several occasions. She is no doubt a great artist with technical dexterity. In her writing a beautiful presentation of structure, texture, technique and language is found. 

 

CONCLUSION

Being a subjective and psychological novelist, she is often forced to peep in the inner recesses of the psyche rather than in the outer spectacle of the world. She is more occupied with somber than the frivolous side of life. An undercurrent of irony, satire and sarcasm often surfaces in the pages of her novels and speak of their minimal presence in the artist’s genius.

 

developed the art of psychological novels in Indian writing in English. Life is all motion and all motion leads to destruction, so the source which activates human beings also destroys them. All the characters in the novels are striving towards a proper vocation. 

 

Desai’s novels present a kind of paradox between activism there is no success leads ultimately to the destruction of the original impulse. 

 

Mr Bose- Mr Bose gave his private tuition out on the balcony, in the evenings, in the belief that, since it faced south,the river Hooghly would send it a wavering breeze or two to drift over the rooftops, through the washing and the few tops of tulsi and marigold that his wife had placed on the balcony rail, to cool him, fan him, soothe him.” and “he tiredly intoned the Sanskrit verses that should, he felt, have been roared out on a hill-top at sunrise. “   

-> Studies in the Park (access to education)

Suno- All of them stared at me, at the exam I was to take. At the degree I was to get. Or not get.

Waiter - ‘I’m a student, too, ’ he said, ‘sixth class fail. My mother wanted me to go back and try again, but I didn’t like the teacher - he beat me. So i came here looking for a job. Lala-ji had just thrown out a boy called Hari for selling lottery tickets to the clients so he took me on. I can make out a bill.” 

Gram vendor- ‘The park’s full of boys like you,’ he continued in that sympathetic voice. ‘I see them walk up and down, up and down with their books, like mad poets. Then I’m glad I was never sent to school,’ and he began to whistle, not impertinently but so cheerfully that i stopped and stared at him. 

-> Surface Textures (poverty)

Sheila, Harrish wife-  ‘How am I to go to market and buy vegetable for dinner? I don’t even have enough for that. What am I to feed the boys tonight? The washwoman is asking for her bills to be paid. Do you hear? Do you hear? And we shall have to leave this flat. Where shall we go?’ 

-> Sale (poverty)

‘Can’t you answer the door?’ she cries. ‘What’s the matter with you? It must be them - this is your chance.’ 

‘A woman - therefore someone in league with his wife, he thinks, and statures at her lush, unreluctant face and the bright enamelled ear-rings that frames it.’ 

‘There are pictures to look at, yes, but one lies on the floor with a bundle of rags and some cigarette stubs on it, another is propped up on a shelf with bottles of hair oil, clay toys and calendars before it, and others have drifted off the wooden divan into corners of the room, peering out from under old newspaper and dirty clothes.’

‘Before he knows to, they are at the door, descending the stairs with one backward look at all the heroic mass of colour inside, saying goodbye.’

‘And will you give me an advance?’ he asks tensely. ‘I need money, my friend. Can you give me an advance?’ 

‘Brother, if I had some with me, I would give it to you - all of it - but since we only came to see,  I didn’t bring any. I’m sorry.’ 

 

-> A Devoted Son (poverty, wealth, access to education)

‘At the top of the list, Papa,’ Rakesh murmured, as if awed. ‘First in the country.’ 

‘Rakesh was the first son in the family to receive an education, so much has been sacrificed in order to send him to school and then medical college,and at last the fruits of their sacrifices had arrived, golden and glorious.’

‘Thereafter his fame seemed to grow just a little dimmer - or maybe it was only that everyone in town had grown accustomed to it at last - but it was also the beginning of his fortune for he now became known not only as the best but also the richest doctor in town.

‘Someone ran up to take his bag from him, others to escort him up the steps.’

-> Pigeons at Daybreak

‘I’m reading right,’ she protested. ‘Think I can’t read? Did my B.A, helped two children through school and college, and you think I can’t read? Blue bulls it says here, blue bulls it is.’