99 pages • 3 hours read
Ellen RaskinThe Westing Game
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1978A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 26-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 26 Summary: “Turtle’s Trial”
Judge Ford gets Turtle a gavel and forms a court, and Turtle assumes the position of lawyer, looking every bit the part with her chic new haircut. She recounts the events from the first break-in to the Westing house to the present and then puts each heir on the stand to get details of what they may have seen but not made public.
Some of the details are as follows: Chris saw the limper, Dr. Sikes. Otis Amber is, in fact, a private investigator, not a delivery boy with an intellectual disability. His clients were Westing, Northrup, and, of course, Judge Ford, who hired him for the Westing game. Westing had hired Otis to watch over Crow after she ran off, and he’s been following her for decades. Of the six people Westing asked him to investigate, the only mistake he made was to give a Sunset Towers letter to Sydelle Pulaski rather than Sybil Pulaski. Sandy (whose identity still remains up for debate) created the stories about the corpse on the Oriental rug to scare children on Halloween, and Otis simply joined in on the fun.
Turtle explains the events of Halloween evening and calls Denton to the stand. Turtle uses Denton to explore the possibility that Westing’s corpse in the casket on the first night of the game was no corpse at all but, in fact, a wax dummy. Furthermore, Crow did not kill Sandy with poison, as some suspect. She put lemon juice into his flask rather than liquor. Denton also attests to seeing a bruise on Sandy’s shin, even though Turtle swears only to have kicked Barney Northrup.
Sydelle Pulaski is called to the stand. When she was recording the will as it was read, there is one word she left out: “The heir who wins the windfall will be the one who finds the _____” (165). Sydelle says it was too loud for her to hear the word when it was read because Sandy interrupted with a joke.
The issue is dropped, and Turtle asks for the letter testifying to Westing’s mental health. When Judge Ford pulls it from her files, however, she finds, in its place, a mysterious receipt that claims the two checks for $5,000 that she gave to Sandy were signed over to Westing and that she owes him no money for the education he supplied her all those years ago.
Madame Hoo can’t take it anymore. She begins to cry and lays out an array of stolen materials on a table. She’d only taken them so she could pay to travel back to China. Everyone “pitie[s] the poor woman” (168), but they are embarrassed by the scene and continue on. Turtle even lets Madame Hoo keep her stolen Mickey Mouse clock.
The court proceeds, and Turtle proves that Samuel Westing was the same as Sandy McSouthers, Barney Northrup, and Windy Windkloppel. They review the will for clues and discover that Sydelle did not actually miss a word. Everyone assumed that the sentence ended in the word “murderer,” which Sandy had shouted aloud. In fact, the sentence is incomplete. However, Turtle privately realizes that the heading of the following section of the will, “fourth,” actually supplies the missing word and refers to the fact that “Windy Windkloppel took four names” (171); the answer to the game is this fourth identity. Just then, Plum walks into the room with Crow.
Chapter 27 Summary: “A Happy Fourth”
Everyone, including Madame Hoo and especially Otis, is overjoyed to see that Crow is not in jail. Plum explains that the coroner’s examination of Sandy’s body reveals that he had a heart attack and that he was not, in fact, poisoned.
There is one more document, but Plum thought he’d absolved himself of reading it by halting his legal arrangement with Westing. The heirs demand he continue. The will states that all the heirs receive equal shares of the deed to Sunset Towers and that Crow will receive the money the first pair did not accept (by virtue of being absent from the first meeting), as well as the money Ford gave to “Sandy.” Because they did not solve the mystery of Westing’s “murder” and win the game, the millions of dollars are not handed over to the heirs.
As the heirs return to Sunset Towers, a great fireworks show erupts from the mansion in an array of color and light. They stand to watch the show, and 20 minutes later, the Westing house has completely burned to the ground. Otis wishes Crow a happy birthday and takes her hand in his.
The sun rises in the morning, but Turtle still has unfinished business. She knows Westing, McSouthers, and Northrup, and now she seeks the fourth wind of Windy Windkloppel. She finds Mr. Eastman in the phonebook, and when she walks into his study, she finds a “stern” and “proper” man whose “watery blue eyes stare[] at her over his rimless half-glasses” (173). Turtle greets him as Sandy and announces, “I won!” (175).
Chapter 28 Summary: “And Then…”
Turtle keeps the secret of Eastman all to herself. She goes every Saturday to play chess with him and keeps him apprised of the happenings of Sunset Tower. On the day of a wedding, however, she leaves early for Mr. Hoo’s restaurant.
Angela and Sydelle look beautiful in their bridesmaids’ dresses, and Flora has altered Angela’s white wedding dress for the bride. Jake toasts to the newlyweds, Crow and Amber. Even some of the soup kitchen attendees have come to witness the ceremony.
Judge Ford resigns herself to never solving the Westing game. She plans to use her share of the Sunset Towers money to educate a young person, just as Westing paid for her education. Hoo’s “Little Foot-Eze” sells well in the stores, and since she came clean about the robberies, Madame Hoo found many new friends in the building. She wears a pantsuit and one of her son’s medals to conduct business at the restaurant, now owned by Grace, who serves many famous athletes at the newly named “Hoo’s on First.” The president of Schultz Sausages (Sydelle’s boss) takes Sydelle out for lunch, and Jake quits his job to be a consultant for the state lottery.
Grace and Jake are proud of their successful daughters. Angela is back in college and preparing for medical school. She has “neither the time nor desire for a social life” (179), let alone a wedding, so she returns the ring to Denton.
The soup kitchen, decorated by Grace, now serves hardy food to its customers. Otis and Crow live together in the apartment above it.
Chapter 29 Summary: “Five Years Pass”
Five years later, Doug has won a gold medal at the Olympics. Madame Hoo has a new nickname, Sunny, and Jake is the chairman of the State Gambling Commission. Sydelle is now engaged to the president of the sausage company, and Chris has plans to go to South America to birdwatch with a love interest, Shirley.
Everyone enjoys the party at Mr. Hoo’s, which Grace has expanded into a chain. She speaks with Theo, who does not recognize the “radiant” 18-year-old Turtle Wexler, who has just “won her first chess game with the master” (182).
Chapter 30 Summary: “The End?”
On the final night of Sam Westing’s life, Turtle is at his bedside, telling him stories of all the heirs at Sunset Towers. She is now an established millionaire with advanced degrees and has served as the legal counsel of Westing Paper Products. She tells Westing that Judge Ford has been appointed to the Supreme Court, but she keeps to herself that Otis, Crow, and Mr. Hoo have all passed away.
Angela is a practicing orthopedic surgeon married to Denton, with a daughter named, lovingly, Alice. Flora now lives with Turtle. Chris is a professor at the same university as his wife Shirley, both of them teaching ornithology. Doug became a sports announcer after winning multiple gold medals at the Olympics, and although Sunny Hoo finally made it to China, she returned after her husband’s death to run the business.
Turtle’s mother now has 10 restaurants, and her father is the state crime commissioner. Turtle has married Theo, who finally wrote his first, albeit commercially unsuccessful, novel and is now working on his second.
Julian Eastman dies on the morning of the Fourth of July, and with him, all Windy Windkloppel’s other identities and “a little of Turtle” die as well (185). She will carry on his role, one day assuming the position of chairperson and, in the meantime, inviting her niece to play chess.
Chapters 26-30 Analysis
Turtle performs a great feat of lawyer-detective work during the mock court, bringing together a vast pool of knowledge to crack the case and bringing the theme of The Use of Rationality to Explain an Irrational World to its culmination. The theme of Appearances as a (Non)indication of the Self is also strong here, as Turtle surpasses other’s expectations of her. She grows from a shin-kicking young girl to a mature and collected young woman. In a similar vein, Otis finally admits that he is a private investigator, and readers, for the first time, witness the eloquence of his language when he isn’t busy yelling “Boom!” as he did throughout the story. Most notably, of course, Westing proves to have had no less than three alter egos and to have been alive the entire time; neither he nor the game was what the heirs assumed.
In these final chapters of the novel, events occur at an exponential rate. The beautiful display of fireworks witnessed by the heirs marks a change in their lives. They are inextricably tethered to one another through trauma and celebration, despair and joy. A group of strangers has become like family. Flora’s role in Turtle’s life illustrates this. Not only does she move in with Turtle, but she braids the hair of Angela’s daughter, Alice, as if Alice were her own granddaughter. This interconnectivity is also, broadly, the message of the epilogue-like final two chapters, which unite many generations at a single point.
An element of surprise exists during the wedding scene, as the beginning of the novel suggested that it might be Angela and Denton’s marriage. Angela, however, becomes the bridesmaid to the unexpected union of Crow and Otis. Their relationship is the foil to Angela and Denton’s (although the pair does marry later in the story). They have known each other for decades, and Otis has helped keep Crow out of harm’s way. They are rarely without one another in The Westing Game and even “die[] within a week of each other” (182). They are also among the most giving of the characters, underscoring the novel’s depiction of Greed and Charity as Motivators.
