A Face in The Dark By Ruskin Bond ICSE 9

1. About the Author
2. About the Story "A Face In The Dark"
3. Plot "A Face In The Dark"
4. Theme "A Face In The Dark"
5. Highlights
6. Character

About The Author

Ruskin Bond was born on 19 May 1934 in a military hospital, to Edith Clarke and Aubrey Bond, in Kasauli. He is an Indian Author of British descent. He lives with his adopted family in Landour,in Mussoorie,India. The Indian Council for Child Education has recogniswd his role in the growth of children's literature in India.He got the Sahitya Academy Award in1992 for Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra, for his published work in English. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 and Padma Bhushan in 2014.

When Bond was eight years old, his mother separated from his father and married a Punjabi Hindu, Hari. Ellen lived in Ludhiana until she died in 2014.

Most of his work are influenced by life in the hill stations at the foothills of the Himalayas, where he spent his childhood. His first novel,The Room On the Roof, was written when he was 17 and published when he was 21. It was partly based on his experiences at Dehradun , in his small rented room on the roof, and his friends. On writing,he said, "I had a pretty lonely childhood and it helps me to understand child better." Bond's work reflects his Anglo-Indian experiences and the changing political, social and cultural aspects of India, having been through colonial, postcolonial and post- independence places in India.

About the Story " A Face in The Dark"

 Ruskin Bond Once famously remarked that while he does no believe in ghosts, he sees them all the time- in the woods, in a bar, in a crowd outside a cinema. Not surprising, then, that in his stories, ghosts, jinns, witches- and the occasional monster- are as real as the people he writes about. He makes the supernatural appear entirely natural, and therefore harder to ignore. This story brings together all of Ruskin Bond's tales of the paranormal. It opens with perhaps his best-known story, the unforgettable" A face in the Dark" as set in a pine forest outside Shimla, A face in the Dark is the perfect story to have by your bedside when the moon is up.

A Face in the Dark is a short story with the theme of supernatural bind. The supernatural and Bond's classically beautiful descriptive and matter-of-fact writing style spin out of you; it merely indulges in various accounts of what and how the supernatural may or may not exist as a part of our everyday life.

A Face in the Dark is one of Bond's more famous stories,having been a part of Indian Schools's English Lit. books for a long time now. This story is short and crisp and has one of those beautiful endings that say very little but tell a lot. The story is eerie, leaving on haunted in a melancholy sort of way, and is beautifully written.

Face in the Dark offers some semblance of escape for readers. It is able to " raise the possibility of another layer of life outside our material selves- something of the soul- force the aura of a person that lingers on after the body is no more." And so lingers on long after it has been read.

Plot " A Face In The Dark"

A Face In The Dark is a short story by Ruskin Bond. It's the story set on a windy night when Mr.Oliver, an Anglo-Indian Teacher, dares to walk through the pine forest on his way back to school after an evening at Shimla Bazaar. He comes across a weeping boy who lifts face, which is not a face but a flat something without eyes,nose or mouth. Mr Oliver runs only to bump into a watchman who again had face like that of the faceless boy.

Theme "A Face In The Dark"

The story A face In The Dark exhibits Bond's interest in the supernatural. It deals with the paranormal depicting the story of a school teacher who while returning from the Shimla Bazaar takes a shortcut through the forest and encounters a faceless boy. The boy has no nose, ears or eyes. Mr.Oliver runs in fear but to his horror meets the watchman who is also without a face.

Highlights " A Face In The Dark"

A Face in the Dark is a short story by Ruskin Bond. It's the story set on a windy night when Mr. Oliver, an Anglo-Indian Teacher, dares to walk through the bpine forest on his way back to the school after an evening at Shimla Bazaar.The Shimla Bazaar was about three miles from the school. Mr.Oliver, was a bechelor and would generally go to the town to while away time and then return using a shortcut through the pine forest.

At night when winds blew forcefully they would make an eerie sound which frightened most people and they preferred to take the main road.But Mr Oliver was not a nervous man. He took the forest road carrying a torch. The battery was low so the gleam moved fitfully down the road.

And then he was a figure. It was a boy sitting alone on a rock. He stopped next to the boy as boys from the school were not supposed to be out after dark. Inorder to see him better,Mr Oliver moved closer and said,'What are you doing out here boy?' The boy seemed to be crying. Mr Oliver asked him to look up and to his horror to boy had no face, ears, nose or eyes. There was just a cap over a smooth, round head. Mr Oliver gets horrified and drops the torch and runs for the school, crying for help.

He collided with the watchman who asked, ' What is the matter Sahib? Has there been an accident? Why are you running?'

Mr Oliver told him about the faceless boy he had seen in the forest and to his shock and utter horror the watchman raised the lamp to his own face which was like boy's with no ears, eyes or nose. A faceless man. And then the wind blew out the lamp.

Character

Mr Oliver 

 Mr Oliver was an Anglo-Indian teacher working in a boy's boarding school near Shimla. He had been at the school for several years. He was a bachelor and liked to stroll to the Shimla Bazaar in the evening. He was a man who prided himself on not being fearful of the dark and was unafraid. Hence he often returned to the school in the late evening via the shortcut through the pine forest. But seeing the faceless boy in the forest scares and horrifies him and in panic he drops his torch and runs towards the school meeting the watchman on the way. But to his dismay the watchman too is without a face. Maybe it was all his imagination, his inherent fears being conjured to frighten him face to face in the dark.

Title 

The title of the story ' A Face in the Dark' is very appropriate as it suggests to the reader a theme which is got dark or paranormal connotations . The story revolves around Mr Oliver and his strange and frightening encounter with a faceless boy in the eerie forest in the darkness  of  the night. Mr Oliver stumbles into a faceless watchman when he runs towards the school. So the emphasis is on his strange experience with the people who are weird  in the sense they have no face. These are supernatural experiences,extensions may be of Mr Oliver's subconscious fears .

Setting

 The setting of the story is a deep and dark pine forest on the outskirts of the north Indian hill- station, Shimla. Mr.Oliver, a bachelor often visited the Shimla Bazaar in the evening and then took a shortcut through the forest to the school. But on a particular night as he returned through the forest he saw a boy sitting on a rock and crying. When he asked the boy to raise his face, he saw in the flickering light of his torch a faceless round head with a cap perched over it. In fear he  ran towards  the school only  to encounter another faceless  entity in the form of the watchman . The setting of the story thus is mysterious , eerie and supernatural.