Question

What are the techniques used by Ruskin Bond to create an atmosphere of strangeness, mystery and super naturalism in the story? Can Ruskin Bond be called a visual writer? Why?

Answer 1

Ruskin Bond is a “visual writer” because for short stories, he first imagines it like a film and then notes it down. The story A Face in the Dark is eerie, leaving one haunted in a melancholy sort of way, and is beautifully written. 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.

The story opens with the description of the ordinary school teacher’s routine, then introduces the eerie atmosphere of the dark forest with the howling wind, then a surprise element of sympathy and anger at the boy out after dark leading to the horror of the faceless entity, a surreal and weird encounter. The narrator writes, ‘He carried a torch -on the night I write of, its pale gleam, the batteries were running down – moved fitfully over the narrow forest path. When its flickering light fell on the figure of a boy, who was sitting alone on a rock, Mr. Oliver stopped. Boys were not supposed to be out of school after seven p.m. and it was now well past nine.’ This detail about the torch suggests that something is not right and makes us wait expectantly for the unusual. And such an effect speaks of the superior writing and storytelling skills of Ruskin Bond.

Ruskin Bond employs words and phrases like ‘sad,’ ‘eerie sounds,’ ‘racked with silent sobbing,’ ‘shook convulsively’ to create an atmosphere replete with supernatural and fearful connotations. He opens the story with a everyday, normal occurrence and then gradually builds an atmosphere of strangeness and supernatural events through the use of appropriate imagery and language. The very title suggests that something is not right, it’s suggestive of eeriness. The use of the word dark connotes the paranormal, the supernatural, the weird.