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.
Themes
Appearances as a (Non)indication of the Self
At the beginning of The Westing Game, the characters seem to fit into clear social categories, but these “types” quickly prove to be deceptive. Through revealing the gap between appearances and reality, the novel not only explores prejudices of various sorts but also comments on human psychology and the multitudes it can contain.
For example, characters like Denton and Sydelle at first believe that Chris’s physical disability corresponds to an intellectual disability. This is, of course, not true, and via the omniscient narration, the reader is cued into his complex thought processes on numerous occasions. For instance, Chris is thrilled at being taken for a criminal precisely because it means that people’s estimations of him have exceeded their normal ways of thinking about him. Similarly, Angela is constantly taken for, as Sydelle says, “beautiful and well-loved” by both those who know her and those who don’t (49). By the end of the book, not only has she redefined herself as someone other than Denton’s fiancée but she has become a surgeon, proving her intelligence and work ethic.
Other characters’ misconceptions primarily concern themselves, leading to comedic mismatches between who they perceive themselves to be and who they in fact are. Grace, in keeping with her perception of herself as belonging to high society, believes that she has a three-bedroom apartment. However, Sydelle’s question when she walks into Turtle’s room reveals that this is not the case: “What’s everybody doing in the closet?” (55). Furthermore, when Grace notes that she and Judge Ford have the same layouts, but that three bedrooms are spacious for one woman, Judge Ford thinks: “What does she mean, three bedrooms?” (58). Grace is under the illusion that she is of a certain social status. Her interpretation of her apartment is directly correlated to how she (mis)interprets her social status.
many selves reside in each of the characters of The Westing Game, and there is no more explicit example of this than Windy Windkloppel. As Turtle states, “He was poor Windy Windkloppel,” “He was rich Sam Westing,” “He was a happy man,” “He was a sad man,” “He was a lonely man,” and “He was a sick man” (167). All these selves represent one man, no matter the physical disguise he wears or the name he uses. The death of one physical appearance was not a real death—just a reimagining and rebirth—and one that anticipates the way the other characters reinvent themselves in the final chapters (or, perhaps, express their “true” selves at last).
Greed and Charity as Motivators
Money is one of the motivators in The Westing Game. Sam Westing uses it as incentive for his heirs to play his game, and most are attracted to the idea of being wealthy—or believe that others will be. For instance, Chris thinks that Denton Deere will only remain his partner if he knows he is going to get his half of the $10,000, while characters like Sydelle, Grace, and Mr. Hoo view money as a means to various ends. As they get to know each other, however, and begin forming meaningful connections, the characters see that money’s true value lies in its ability to improve the lives of those in real need.
Generally speaking, greed operates as a diminishing force in the book, while charity radiates outward. Turtle is excited to obtain money in the stock market, which she sees as a quick reward and the way to win the game. In other words, she initially mistakes making money for an end in and of itself. By the time she actually becomes a multimillionaire, she recognizes that her relationships matter more than her wealth, and she works to pay her success forward: Her greatest act of charity comes when she begins bestowing her knowledge upon her niece, Alice, implicitly setting her up as her own heir.
The same general movement governs the other characters’ arcs. Before others know about Crow and Amber’s work at the soup kitchen, Theo sees them “leading [a] ragtag procession into a decaying storefront” with “[p]aint […] peeling off the letters” (125). This frightens Theo (who was following Crow and Otis) because although it is an act of charity, the run-down setting is bleak and menacing. Nevertheless, Otis’s charity is what keeps Theo from giving his name as an answer in the game. By the end of the book, Angela volunteers in the kitchen every week, Grace Wexler has used her design skills to “supervi[se] the decorations” and give the kitchen the quality appearance it deserves (179), and, after Mr. Hoo’s invention becomes a success, he gives the kitchen a huge donation. The Good Salvation Soup Kitchen becomes a community organization, an outlet into which the heirs can share their own wealth (literal and figurative).
In some sense, this is the purpose of the game itself: Sam Westing has created circumstances in which his heirs can do good. Judge Ford, for example, signs her money over to Sandy (actually Westing) on the understanding that he needs it more than she does. While this ultimately functions as a means of paying Westing back for the $10,000 he provided for Ford’s education, it also serves as a test of Ford’s character. Westing paved the way for the success of both Judge Ford and Turtle so that they too can continue a tradition of charity.
The Use of Rationality to Explain an Irrational World
Early in the book, Judge Ford says, “There is certain to be a more rational explanation” when Sandy asks her if she believes in ghosts (14). To some extent, this proves true. Though Judge Ford’s mention of “rationality” is the only mention of the word over the course of The Westing Game, the novel’s events can nearly all be explained through reason and cause-and-effect. What lies beneath the cause-and-effect, however, are character actions based on frequently unexplainable human emotions. Rationality and the law are guiding tools throughout the Westing game because they help characters impose order on a world that frequently lacks sense.
The mystery at the heart of the novel exemplifies this dynamic. Everything that is known of Westing’s character is based on speculation and gossip. The residents of Westingtown are unsure if he lives on some remote island, if he is dead, or if he is alive. Many say his “corpse rot[s] on an Oriental rug” in the mansion (10). Westing’s mysterious disappearance has gone unexplained, which is partially why his story has become a local legend. In acting “the part of every brilliant lawyer she had seen on television who was about to win an impossible case” (162), Turtle brings order to this chaos. She pools all the heirs’ perspectives to come up with a reasonable—and correct—response to Westing’s riddles.
Nevertheless, much of the novel’s action eludes explanation. For example, Angela chooses to set off bombs. While it is implied that she does this because she is taken for “Angela-the-obedient-daughter” by all those in Sunset Towers (59)—and, in particular, because she does not want to marry Denton before pursuing an education and career of her own—this does not explain why she chose to set off a bomb rather than commit any other number of rebellious actions.
Indeed, many moments in the book suggest that it is more important to people that they feel something to be true than it is to actually know it to be true. For example, whenever the characters are close to pegging the murder of Westing on a neighbor based on evidence, feelings of familiarity and kinship intervene. While Chris is at the party, he thinks to himself that Judge Ford “couldn’t be a murderer, in spite of his clues. Nobody here looks like a murderer, they’re all nice people” (61). After Crow gives herself up to the police because her name appears to be the answer to the game, all the heirs are distraught as they sit around “wondering what had happened” (156). They are overjoyed upon her return, not having believed her a wrongdoer in the first place despite apparent evidence to the contrary. Their intuitions prove correct, suggesting that reason only goes so far in making sense of the world’s mysteries.
