A Face in the Dark

 

A Face in the Dark by Ruskin Bond: Setting & Plot

The prose, A face in the Dark, was published in the year 2004 in a collection of short stories by Ruskin Bond. Set in the misty landscape of Shimla, the plot of this story and the style of writing are both very simple and pragmatic. There is an element of supernatural mystery created by the author to spook the reader. Bond uses the darker aspects of nature like eerie sounds, crooked branches and pine trees all shrouded in the misty atmosphere of the hills to create that ghoulish sensation. Although the story begins on a completely ordinary note, it gradually and creepily develops into a horrific tale of ghostly occurrences. Like the author’s other ghost stories, this tale of haunting also includes weird coincidences and surprise endings. It offers an insight into human nature and the ways it is affected by difficult situations.

A Face in the Dark Summary by Ruskin Bond

The central protagonist of the story, A face in the Dark is a British man called Oliver. He is an enthusiastic and kind teacher at a prestigious school in Shimla. He is extremely devoted to the well being of his students and attempts to educate them in the best possible way. He spends most of his time at the school or the library with pending work because he has no family of his own and is thus very lonely in the world. This lack of a wife and children haunts him but he goes on with his daily life without much fuss.

He has a strict everyday routine which he follows with diligence. It involves waking up in the morning for school and then going over to the market on his bicycle in the evenings. While returning from the market, he often takes a small detour as a form of refreshment from his dull life. This path is a road through the wild which is always teeming with pine trees and wild life. As the dusk falls very quickly in the hills, it gets dark by the time he comes back to the school. Oliver never allows himself to be afraid of the dark and always carries a torch with him wherever he goes.

On one such evening, when he was simply following his routine and taking a detour while on his way back from the market, he heard the sobs of a child in the dark. He stops on his bicycle and tries to find the source of this sound among the brambles and bushes of the wild. That is when he discovers a small boy sitting crouched in the dark and crying into his palms. Obviously, the kind-hearted school teacher is surprised and overwhelmed to see a young school boy sitting all alone and crying so he asks him questions about his whereabouts. He goes on to advice the child to leave this place immediately as it might be dangerous for him to be out late in the hills after dark.

Even after trying to console him, the boy does not heed to any of the things Oliver says and continues sobbing in a relentless strain. The compassionate man still couldn’t leave the child alone and continues to coax him into talking and telling him his problems. The boy eventually decided to stop his sobbing and look up. As the light from Oliver’s torch reached the boy’s face, he was startled to see that the boy had no eyes or ears or mouth on his face. His face was a featureless mound of bare skin and this revelation scared Oliver beyond expression. Somehow, at that very moment the torch in Oliver’s hand goes off and he is left standing in the dark with the faceless crying boy.

After the initial shock was over, Oliver gathers all his courage and decides to flee from that place. He drops his torch and turns around to run as fast as his legs would allow. His mind was at once both blank and filled with terror, he didn’t even care that he was howling. As he ran towards the school screaming for help he came across the school watch guard at the gate who stops him and asks him what happened. Panting, the poor scared man relates his encounter with the little ghost boy in the jungle to the watchman. Relief washed over him as he felt much better in the presence of the watchman.

However, just as he was regaining his composure, Oliver sees in the light of a swinging lantern the face of the watchman which was as featureless as the face of the ghost boy. The story ends on a peculiar note as the wind blows the lamp out leaving Oliver once again in utter darkness. 

A Face in the Dark: Analysis

As we know, human psychology can be a matter of deep complexity and must not be treated lightly. The mind is powerful enough to make us see things we do not comprehend, drawing images from the subconscious. Some interpret the story in terms of loneliness and despair and their effects on the human mind. Humans associate emotions with people. Individual emotions like anger, love, sympathy, friendship are allocated to individual people who incite these emotions within us. Therefore each emotion has a face. The fact that the main protagonist of the story was a lonely man living without love gives us an insight into his psychology which is empty and deprived of any emotion because he has no one to share them with. Hence, his subconscious mind forces him to face his worst nightmare by making him see people who have no faces or individuality. The lack of face is directly related to the lack of people he can depend on and trust. The actual horror of the story is the fact that these people Oliver sees around him do not exist in reality. 

A Face in the Dark: Themes

The story A face in the dark is a widely popular tale, and many people have read it and commented upon it. One thing that remains common in every critic’s perception is the basic theme of the story, which connects the entire plot. This theme is said to be the human instinct for love and companionship. In certain ways, the ghost of the boy reflects the primal character of Oliver. It’s like the little boy lost in the dark wood is the ghost of Oliver himself. Just like the little boy, all Oliver wants is to be consoled and treated with love while he cries for some shred of familiarity on the inside. He, too, feels alienated and scared in this country that is not his own. The faceless boy is a symbol of lost individuality, and it represents Oliver’s inner conflict that he has lost his own individuality, living away from home for so long.

It might also be important to remember that the story in its raw essence is supernatural in context, and themes of fear of the dark and spooky appearances are appealing to the reader. The twist at the end of the story is particularly chilling and can induce goosebumps if read alone in the silence of the night. 

A Face in the Dark: Character Sketch

The story revolves around the character of Oliver, who, at the beginning, seems like a well-educated and rational man. He is a teacher at a boarding school and deals with his students in a kind and just manner. Though he is a compassionate person, his character has been shown to have a certain amount of control and restrain. The man adheres to a strict routine and lives his life without any excitement or exceptions. He is often lonely and misses the warmth of a family, but he seldom expresses these feelings to anyone. Oliver had perhaps stored all these emotions within him and did not give them much thought, which is why his mind played tricks on him in the woods and showed him exactly what he was trying so hard to suppress. In the act of simply existing and surviving in life, he had forgotten to find the courage to be true to himself – even if it meant carving out his own identity in a land of strangers.

When Oliver sees the featureless face of the boy without eyes and nose and ears, he loses all his calm and composure and runs away like a cowardly child, screaming for help. All of a sudden, he had lost control over his rational senses, and his mind had given in to the terrors of the night. The once wise and sensible teacher felt paralyzed with fear and shock. An important clue about his character is the event upon which he meets the watchman. Only in the company of another person does Oliver feel a little better and hopeful. He was almost filled with joy at the sight of the watchman, but he loses this hope when he sees the blank face of the watchman. He is once again reminded that he is isolated in the world and is only surrounded by other lost, lonely souls like him.

Ruskin Bond writes poignantly beautiful tales which are often based in the northern regions of India, like Shimla and Dehradun. These places are anyways popular for their scenic beauty, and the author adds a mystical element while writing about these places in his stories to add the charm of the unknown. He has a real talent for creating an illustrious picture about the feel and the atmosphere of the setting through his words which fascinates the reader. Once the reader gets comfortable with the tale’s theme, he introduces seemingly ordinary characters with ordinary lives.

Slowly, and carefully the author then proceeds to bring up interesting plot twists, which reveals the extraordinary side of his character’s personality, making it a thrilling experience. The supernatural elements in this short story are inspired by the eeriness of undisturbed nature, and it evokes the reader to believe in strange happenings. According to Bond, he considers himself a visual writer. The trick is to imagine the story like a film before penning it down, and this technique makes all the difference.