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Chapters 61–70
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Inheritance Games, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Money and Social Class
Competition, Cooperation, and Manipulation
Family
Charity and Responsibility
Violence and Intimate Partner Abuse
Summary
Analysis
Chapter 71. While Avery is getting styled for the gala in her bedroom, a tearstained Libby rushes in, hugs her, and apologizes. For a moment, Avery is terrified. Then Libby says that she should have blocked Drake’s number, and Avery realizes that Libby isn’t apologizing for helping Drake but for not cutting him off completely. The makeup artist barks at Avery not to cry and then asks whether she wants to look like the photo he received. Avery casually agrees, preoccupied by the question of who let Drake onto Hawthorne House’s grounds if Libby didn’t. The stylists end up intricately braiding Avery’s hair and doing her makeup so her eyes look huge and green.
Avery’s momentary terror when Libby apologizes make it clear that she was secretly afraid Libby had snuck Drake onto the grounds, even as the apology shows that Libby is confessing to no such thing. Thus, this moment reveals that the paranoid, high-stress existence that Avery’s inheritance has foisted on her is capable of straining even her highly loving, supportive relationship with her sister.
Themes
Chapter 72. As Avery is leaving, Oren meets her. She asks about the police interrogation of Drake. Oren tells her that Drake’s story—that Libby let him in through the front gate—is contradicted by the house’s security cameras. Oren believes Drake came in through the tunnels under the house. Oren knows about two entrances to the tunnels—but, Avery infers, there might be other, secret entrances. As she is driven to her event, she wonders who knows Hawthorne House well enough to direct Drake to a secret tunnel entrance and how they got Drake to cooperate. She concludes the mastermind may have told Drake that Libby would inherit if Avery died.
The secret tunnels under Hawthorne House remind readers yet again of Tobias’s love of puzzles, secrets, and the like. Avery’s speculation about Drake’s motives shows that the abusive Drake believes he could regain control over Libby after having hit her—and, through her, gain control of the billions she would inherit upon Avery’s death. Drake’s financial motivation to target Avery makes clear, yet again, the danger as well as the power of extreme wealth.
Themes
Alisa, in the SUV with Avery, tells her that the Hawthorne Foundation purchased two tables at the charity event. When Avery realizes aloud that she’s going to be sitting with the Hawthornes, Alisa encourages her to act friendly in order to quell gossip. Avery points out that a Hawthorne might want to kill her, and Oren cautions her not to let on that she knows the mastermind of the attacks is still out there now that Drake has been arrested.
The use of Hawthorne Foundation money to buy tables at a fancy charity event somewhat undercuts Grayson’s claim that the Foundation is or ought to be oriented toward maximally efficient, structural giving, revealing that the Hawthorne Foundation is also a means to access high society and social influence.
Themes
Chapter 73. As Avery enters the museum where the event is taking place, she ignores rude journalists until one asks her how she’s feeling after the attack, at which point she delivers the line she practiced with the PR professional. Inside, she sees Grayson staring at her. He drops a glass, breaking it, and says Emily’s name. A confused Avery flees to the bathroom, where Thea appears and says she looks “perfect.” When Avery demands to know what stunt Thea just pulled, Thea shows her a photo of Emily with a dress, hairstyle, and makeup similar to Avery’s. Avery realizes Thea must have shown the photo to her stylists. Thea explains that Emily “would have wanted” this and that she’s attacking the Hawthornes, not Avery. When Avery calls Thea messed up, Thea agrees.
The paparazzi’s invasive, rude questions to Avery emphasize that while extreme wealth conveys power and privilege, it also involves an uncomfortable loss of privacy. That Thea manipulated Avery into looking like Emily because Emily “would have wanted” it emphasizes both that Thea is a manipulative game-player like the Hawthornes, and that Emily was competitive and possessive over the Hawthorne brothers’ attention.
Themes
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Chapter 74. When Alisa checks on Avery in the bathroom, Avery angrily explains that Thea manipulated her into looking like Emily. Alisa says that the journalists won't notice because Emily wasn’t famous—but they will notice Avery hiding. Avery tells Alisa she’ll finish the event only if Alisa promises to help Libby regardless of Alisa’s issues with Nash. Alisa promises. At the event dinner, Alisa makes Avery sit next to Grayson, who avoids looking at Avery. When Avery quietly tells him she didn’t mean to look like Emily and can’t take the braid out by herself, he says that he knows. Avery unwillingly pictures Grayson helping Emily undo her hair, upsets Alisa’s wineglass, and decides she doesn’t fit “in this world.”
When Avery promises to complete the gala only if Alisa helps Libby, it shows Avery’s protectiveness and loyalty toward Libby. Avery’s sudden decision that she doesn’t fit “in this world” of extreme wealth and charity galas after picturing Grayson in an intimate moment with Emily not only shows her insecurity about her working-class background despite her new extreme wealth. It also implies that she judges whether she belongs in “this world” according to whether the Hawthornes—and perhaps Grayson specifically—accept and value her.
Themes
Chapter 75. After the dinner ends, Avery wanders into an emptier part of the museum with Oren behind her. There, Jameson stands in front of a painting, Cézanne’s Four Brothers—which he identifies as an on-the-nose “favorite” from Tobias’s collection. Jameson comments that Avery found the Davenport clue before he did, so now he and Avery only need the final clue. Avery asks whether he sees her as “just a tool.” Jameson admits he has a one-track mind. Avery, wondering whether Jameson is focused on Tobias’s puzzle or Emily, starts to leave. Jameson calls after Avery that he doesn’t care whether she looks like Emily: the night Emily died, Jameson had just broken up with her over her “little games.” Then he begs Avery to come with him to search the Black Wood.
The paintings of Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), a French post-Impressionist, have sold for hundreds of millions of dollars at auction. Tobias’s personal ownership of a Cézanne underscores his—and now Avery’s—extreme wealth. That one of Tobias’s “favorite” paintings represents four brothers, a clear nod to brothers Nash, Grayson, Jameson, and Xander, implies Tobias’s extreme affection for his four grandsons despite the Hawthorne family’s dysfunction. When Avery asks whether Jameson sees her as “just a tool,” it shows how Tobias’s manipulation of her through his will has negatively impacted her self-esteem. Yet the revelation that Jameson broke up with Emily over her “little games” hints that Jameson may not be as unbothered by interpersonal manipulation and competitiveness as he has previously given Avery reason to believe.
Themes
Grayson walks up, and Jameson leaves. When Grayson asks how Jameson reacted to seeing Avery, Avery admits that Jameson told her he broke up with Emily right before Emily died. Grayson goes rigid and asks, “Did Jameson tell you that I killed her?”
It's initially unclear whether Grayson asks whether Jameson said that Grayson killed Emily because he feels responsible for Emily’s death or because he believes Jameson holds him responsible for Emily’s death. If the latter, it suggests another way in which Grayson and Jameson’s competition over Emily’s affections has poisoned their relationship, making one brother blame and suspect the other.
Themes
Chapter 76. Grayson leaves. Xander finds Avery and convinces her to waltz with him, though Avery tells herself she’ll waltz exactly once before leaving. As Xander and Avery dance, Xander tells her how Tobias used to give him money on his birthday—and how he sold off his cryptocurrency investments for about $100 million prior to Tobias’s death. Avery realizes that she hadn’t been counting the grandsons’ birthday investments when she thought about their supposed disinheritance.
Here Xander reveals that he is still ultrawealthy despite his supposed “disinheritance” and that his brothers likely are as well. The revelation helps explain why Xander and Nash were both relatively unbothered by Avery’s inheritance—and hints that if Skye and Zara ever got similar gifts, their rage over Avery’s inheritance was due more to entitlement than any genuine risk of poverty.
Themes
When Avery says the paparazzi will think she and Xander are involved, Xander says he’s great at “fake dating” and looks pointedly at Thea. In response to Avery’s questions, he admits that Thea and Rebecca were secretly involved. Because they thought Emily wouldn’t like her best friend dating her sister, he helped them cover it up. Avery speculates that he helped them because he has feelings for Rebecca. When Avery asks whether Emily wouldn’t have liked it, Xander tells her that Emily discovered the secret the day she died and took it as a “betrayal.”
Xander’s revelation that Emily interpreted her sister’s relationship with her best friend as a “betrayal” of Emily herself characterizes Emily as a selfish, controlling sister to Rebecca—a characterization already hinted at when Rebecca admitted to Avery that as a child, Emily used to tell Rebecca that they had the same favorite color, purple, though in fact it was only Emily’s favorite.
Themes
The dance ends. Xander informs Avery that he already figured out the Blackwood clue and could finish the puzzle himself—but since Jameson and Grayson “need it more,” he tells her to return to Hawthorne House, get in the helicopter with Jameson and Grayson, and fly over the forest. When a confused Avery reminds Xander that he said he wanted to win the game, Xander agrees that he does.
Xander’s claim that he still wants to win the game—despite his assertion that Jameson and Grayson “need it more” and his repeated decisions to help Avery with the puzzle—may hint that he sees “winning” as something different than they do or that he is playing an entirely different game than they are.
Themes
Chapter 77. A helicopter is waiting for Avery when she returns to Hawthorne House. She gets in and finds Jameson already there. When Grayson joins them, Jameson questions his presence. Grayson asks Avery’s permission to stay, which she grants despite Jameson’s obvious wish that she’d say no. When the helicopter flies over the Black Wood, Avery sees that there’s a central clearing that makes the forest look like a 0.
Tobias paid to landscape an entire forest to look like a 0, yet another indication of his extreme wealth and flamboyant commitment to puzzles. Jameson’s desire that Grayson not accompany him and Avery in the helicopter may hint at his competitiveness with Grayson over the puzzle game—or over Avery’s affections.
Themes
When the helicopter lands, Avery and Jameson hop out and high five. Jameson holds onto Avery’s hand, and she lets him, though she thinks it’s a “mistake.” She recites the clues—8, 1, 1, 0—and suggests that they might indicate a date. She considers 11/08, 08/11, 01/18, and finally 10/18—her birthday. When she tells Jameson 10/18 is her birthday, he lets go of her hand, horrified. Grayson walks up and quietly tells her that Emily died on 10/18 the previous year. Jameson curses, asks whether Tobias picked Avery just because of her birthday “to send a message,” and storms away. When Avery calls after him, he nastily congratulates her on her lucky birthday.
To Jameson, the revelation that Avery’s birthday is the same date as Emily’s death-day solves the puzzle that Avery represents: Tobias was simply using Avery “to send a message” to Jameson and Grayson about Avery. If Jameson is correct, it would suggest that when Tobias willed Avery his billions, he was simply manipulating her without regard to her personhood.
Themes
Chapter 78. Avery tells herself that the clue must refer to more than Emily’s death because Avery’s mother told Avery that she had a secret on Avery’s 15th birthday, one year before Emily died. Yet she also remembers Nash calling her a “glass ballerina” or a “knife.” Grayson apologizes, claiming the situation is his fault. When Avery asks how, Grayson starts talking about Emily, explaining how after she got her heart transplant, moved to Texas, and started attending school with the Hawthornes, she turned his and Jameson’s attraction to her into a competitive game. Grayson admits he’s not sure whether they played because of Emily or just because they were so competitive.
Avery wants to believe that Tobias’s puzzle game is somehow about her and her own family history, which would make his manipulation of her feel less dehumanizing—but she still worriedly recalls Nash’s warning that Tobias was using her as a tool in the puzzle game, as an object like a “glass ballerina” or a “knife.” When Grayson admits that he and Jameson were conditioned to vie for Emily’s affections due to their competitiveness, meanwhile, he is of course engaging in self-criticism—but readers may wonder whether Tobias’s insistence that the brothers compete in games throughout their childhoods might have been part of the problem.
Themes
Grudgingly, Grayson admits that Emily wanted more than him and Jameson—she wanted the adrenaline-junkie “thrills” they could provide her, such as “race cars” and “clubs.” The night Emily died, she called Grayson, told him that she had chosen him over Jameson, and asked him to take her cliff-diving at a coastal cliff called Devil’s Gulf. After the dive, Grayson left Emily on the shore to fetch their towels; when he came back, she was dead. He infers that “adrenaline” or “altitude” killed her and it was his fault for taking her somewhere dangerous. Afterward, Tobias told Grayson that Emily wouldn’t have died if Grayson hadn’t prioritized her over Jameson and his family. Grayson concludes that the puzzle was Tobias communicating that everything is Grayson’s fault.
Though Emily didn’t want Grayson and Jameson for their money per se, she did want them in part for the “thrills” such money could give her access to: “race cars” and “clubs” are not generally free, after all. Emily’s indirect financial motivation to date the Hawthorne brothers shows the interpersonal influence but also the loneliness of extreme wealth, where the wealthy must suspect that the people around them are interested in them at least in part for their money. Grayson’s assumption that Tobias engineered the puzzle game to punish him for his accidental role in Emily’s heart failure, meanwhile, shows Grayson’s ongoing guilt over her death. If Grayson is right, however, Tobias’s puzzle seems hypocritical and cruel. After all, he taught Grayson and Jameson to compete with each other from childhood, so Tobias blaming Grayson’s competition with Jameson for Emily’s death would in fact implicate Tobias too.
Themes
Chapter 79. Grayson leaves. As Avery returns to Hawthorne House with Oren, she asks him whether Tobias would have given her all that money just because she was born on the same date Emily died. Oren says he doesn’t know: no one could fully predict or understand Tobias. Back at Hawthorne House, Avery walks to a portrait of Tobias and silently demands answers from it. Then she notices Tobias’s signature on the portrait followed by 18 in Roman numerals. Searching behind the portrait, she finds a keypad. When she types 1008 into the keypad, a hidden compartment opens, inside which is an octagonal purple glass ornament and a riddle poem. Avery concludes that they haven’t yet completed Tobias’s puzzle.
If the puzzle is ongoing, as Avery’s discovery behind the portrait suggests, then Avery’s birthday and Emily’s identical death-day, 10/18, are another clue in the puzzle but not the endgame. If 10/18 is not the endgame, then Jameson and Grayson are wrong to conclude that Tobias constructed the puzzle simply to punish them for competing with one another and to make them feel guilty for Emily’s death.
Themes
Chapter 80. Avery searches for Grayson and Jameson the following day. When she finds Jameson in the solarium and tells him she discovered a new clue, he indicates a trash can containing six or so ornaments identical to the one Avery found and says that he’s started finding 10s and 18s everywhere in Hawthorne House. When Avery insists that 10/18 is just a “clue,” not the “answer,” Jameson tells her that he’s given up the game. Avery wonders whether Tobias was really just using her to punish his grandsons over Emily. She concludes that she doesn’t want to be a tool in the game: she wants to “win.”
It is ambiguous whether Jameson’s rejection of the game springs from his belief that 10/18 is the “answer” or his assumption that the game’s point is about Emily and so essentially about punishing him. Avery’s decision to “win” the game, meanwhile, indicates her desire to assert her personhood regardless of Tobias’s intentions—whether he intended her as a player or a dehumanized game piece.
Themes
