Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Westing Game, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Solidarity vs. Individualism
Capitalism, Greed, and Inheritance
Prejudice and Bigotry
Mystery and Intrigue
Summary
Analysis
At Angela’s bridal shower, Madame Hoo serves food, embarrassed by her ridiculous and uncomfortable “traditional” Chinese gown. She cannot wait to get home and change back into her real clothes.
Grace calls for Angela to open her gifts in front of her guests gathered in the living room. Angela is barely making it through the party—she hates that all of the guests are her mother’s friends, and that none of her own career-focused friends are present. Angela opens two identical, gaudy gifts—as Turtle reaches for a third, Angela snatches away and opens it. An explosion goes off and rockets shoot through the room. When the smoke clears, everyone can see that Angela has a mean gash on her cheek and that her hands are badly burned. The third bomb has gone off.
The third bomb goes off, as the first two did, at a moment of significant tension. Not only is Madame Hoo seething with humiliation and rage, but Angela is on the verge of a panic attack over the unstoppable velocity of her own wedding preparations. This bomb, like the first two, externalizes these tensions and symbolizes a breaking point in relationships between the heirs.
Themes
The heirs gather in the lobby around the police captain whom Ford has summoned. With a murderer, a bomber, and a thief amongst them, every heir is suspicious of the other. Mr. Hoo suspects Flora and Jake suspects Sandy. Chris wonders if Ford is “one of those Black Panthers in disguise.” The captain calls the “bombs” a series of juvenile pranks and suggests that they’ve endangered no one’s life. Crow calls whoever tried to harm Angela a “devil.” As the captain attempts to reassure them, the members of the group continue to privately wonder how the others amongst them might be guilty.
The bomb, in this case as in the others, is an expression of tension that doesn’t quite diffuse those tensions and anxieties. Here, the heirs find that their suspicions—and their collective reliance on prejudice and racist tropes—deepened and heightened when they should instead be pushing aside their differences and working together to solve the problems in front of them.
Themes
Angela winds up in the hospital in a bed next to Sydelle’s. Angela claims to be unable to remember anything about the moment the bomb went off. Turtle sits by her sister’s bed and comforts her—Angela is worried about damage to her face, but Turtle reminds Angela that Angela has always said that it’s what’s on the inside that counts. Angela wonders if she really believes such a thing to be true. In her bed across the room, Sydelle’s ears perk up—she has realized that Angela is the bomber, but she feels proud rather than angry or betrayed.
In this passage, as Sydelle realizes that Angela is the bomber, she is full of pride for her partner rather than suspicion about her motives. Sydelle knows Angela well enough at this point to realize that Angela is a very conflicted young woman—Sydelle celebrates rather than denigrates Angela for taking action on her own behalf.
Themes
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