The story "Games at Twilight" by Anita Desai is set in India on a hot summer day. Children are forced to stay indoors but are ea
ger to go out. Which four words in the excerpt suggest this sense of suffocation? It was still too hot to play outdoors. They had had their tea, they had been washed and had their hair brushed, and after the long day of confinement in the house that was not cool but at least a protection from the sun, the children strained to get out. Their faces were red and bloated with the effort, but their mother would not open the door, everything was still curtained and shuttered in a way that stifled the children, made them feel that their lungs were stuffed with cotton wool and their noses with dust and if they didn't burst out into the light and see the sun and feel the air, they would choke.
A sense of suffocation suggests a sense of 'forced' confinement, the need to get free, and be out and about. This is one theme in Anita Desai's "Games at Twilight" where the children were not allowed to go out in the open and play.
The<u> four words that suggest a sense of suffocation are "confinement", "strained", "stifled", and "choke"</u>. These four words capture the feelings of the children who were eager to be out playing but instead were made to sit indoors. The author even stated that<em> "the children . . . [felt] their lungs were stuffed with cotton wool and their noses with dust and if they didn't burst out into the light and see the sun and feel the air, they would choke."
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