Question

Authors use various narrative techniques to manipulate time in a work of fiction. Cite examples of how the narrator influences time and pacing within the story. What effect does the pacing have on how the reader interprets the story? "Games at Twilight"

Answer 1

The author Anita Desai had a lot of changes in pace during Games at twilight. Some of the changes of pacing are: 
1. The kids are about to play hide and seek and they are excited and the pace of the story is fast. But as soon as Ravi hides the pace is slow and the story tends to get contemplative and it slowly connects to the thoughts and Ravi's memories.
2. One of the changes in pace that is most exciting is when Ravi finaly decides to finish the game by going to the post and say Den!. By the time he says that, the other kids cannot recognize him. A lot of time has passed and now the kids don't even recognize him. It is such an exciting change of pace and time.
The reader may interpret the story in different ways due to the fact that the perspective of Ravi is in a different pace of the other kids perspective.
Some of the examples of this change of pace are:
- It took them a minute to grasp what he was saying, even who he was.
- Ravi had never cared to enter such a dark and depressing mortuary of defunct household goods seething with such unspeakable and alarming animal life but,  Ravi suddenly slipped off the flowerpot and through the crack and was gone.
- 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
- It grew darker in the shed as the light at the door grew softer, fuzzier, turned to a kind of crumbling yellow pollen that turned to yellow fur, blue fur, gray fur. Evening. Twilight.
- It took them a minute to grasp what he was saying, even who he was. They had quite forgotten him. 

Answer 2

The pacing of the story changes with the changing moods of the children. The story opens with the sense of oppression a group of children feel when they are forcibly kept inside the house. The pace is slow at this point. The pace changes when the children rush outside to play. It increases as the game of hide and seek closely replicates a hunting game. Raghu is like a wild animal hunting his prey.

When Ravi is hiding, the narrator doesn’t reveal exactly how much time has passed: “for minutes, hours, his legs began to tremble with the effort, the inaction.” As the suspense builds, the reader is eager to know the outcome. The pace builds and climaxes when the narrator describes Ravi’s plans for winning the game. The narrator gives us a glimpse of the myriad of thoughts streaming across his mind.

The pace comes to a grinding halt when Ravi realizes that no one cared where he was hiding, and he is not the winner of the game. The reader, who experienced the rush of the game as well as the sudden jolt of defeat, can sympathize with Ravi’s disappointment.