The Theme Of Isolation In The Bath And Games At Venice

Isolation is usually associated with negative views and can be expressed in many different ways. The two short stories “The Bath” by Janet Frame and “Games at Twilight” by Anita Desai both explore isolation as a theme. Frame suggests that there are people living in our society that are often forgotten and we should be aware of this and Desai portrays that childhood is not always just filled with joy and that it is not always innocent. In these two stories, the theme of isolation relates to how people exclude themselves from society, how others isolate people, how people feel towards being excluded and how our body imprisons ourselves. “The Bath” brings the old woman’s self-imposed isolation to the reader’s attention. The old woman wants her independence but by doing so isolation is inevitable. The old woman thinks that “submitting to a district nurse will be the first humiliation” for her. Humiliation is such a devastating word and emphasizes the amount of embarrassment the old woman might have to go through. The author’s choice of the word humiliation makes readers understand that such a simple action for us is actually a problematic action for the old woman. In those seventeen years since her husband passed away, the pain inside her body has followed her and yet, she never asked for help. Her “strange feeling of being under the earth” suggests once again that she does not want to be involved in the outside world. This metaphor allows the reader to understand that the old