The author spends the first six paragraphs describing in vivid detail the effects of the summer heat on all living things, using similes of death to describe how plants, animals, and humans struggle in the extreme heat of the day: “[T]he birds still drooped, like dead fruit, in the papery tents of the trees […]. The outdoor dog lay stretched as if dead on the veranda mat, his paws and ears and tail all reaching out like dying travelers in search of water” (Paragraph 5). The heat is such a strong force in this story that it almost becomes a character itself. It has an effect on the children’s mother, who retreats to the bath after letting the children outside to “help her face the summer evening” (Paragraph 3). The heat serves as a motif symbolizing frustration and entrapment—first the children’s entrapment within the stifling house, and later Ravi’s entrapment in his Feelings of Inadequacy and Insignificance. 

The interplay of light and darkness is used in this story as a motif, with light representing freedom, comfort, and familiarity, while darkness evokes fear, discomfort, and danger. This is seen at several points in the story, the first being the description of the children feeling as if they will be suffocated if they don’t get out of the dark, closed-up house and into the bright afternoon outside.