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
Several years later, Otis arrives at the Hoos’ new lakefront home excited to celebrate Doug’s recent Olympic victory—all the other heirs are coming, too. Hoo is a wealthy man now thanks to his business, Hoo’s Little Foot-Eze. Theo is a cub reporter: he helped contribute to an article covering Doug’s Olympic success, as Doug has set a new record for the 1500-meter run. Sunny—as Madame Hoo now likes to be called—welcomes Jake, the chairman of the State Gambling Commission, to her home. Angela and Denton Deere reunite for the first time in years—they are both still unmarried. Sydelle sidles up to them and introduces them to her fiancé, Mr. Schultz, her former boss and the owner of the sausage factory.
By relaying the final chapters of the novel in flash-forward format, Raskin allows her readers to see just how far the heirs have come since the Westing game. Raskin implies that the lessons they learned playing the game and the bonds they forged throughout its duration have shaped their lives into happy, successful ones—lives each of the heirs are at last living on their own terms.
Themes
Chris is still in a wheelchair—but many of his neurological symptoms have completely abated, and he now speaks in full, clear, sentences. He introduces his new girlfriend to Judge Ford, who is now a judge on the United States Circuit Court of Appeals. Chris’s new girlfriend tells Ford that the two of them are going on a birdwatching tour of Central America in just a few months.
Again, this passage continues to show how the players of the Westing game have grown into themselves and recognized their full potential—in part because of the confidence the game instilled in it and the lessons in community and generosity they learned from it.
Themes
Grace Wexler now owns a chain of five restaurants: Hoo’s On First, Hoo’s On Second, and so on, but she caters the afternoon herself. Theo comes up to her and asks who the “attractive young woman” talking to Flora is—Grace is surprised that Theo doesn’t recognize the eighteen-year-old Turtle, who now goes by T.R. Wexler. No one knows that earlier that day, T.R. won her first match against her Uncle Sam Westing, the chess master.
Everyone has changed, grown, and become more successful than they once were as a result of the bonds they’ve forged and the lessons they’ve learned playing the Westing game. T.R., as the game’s rightful but unacknowledged victor, has perhaps come the furthest—her apprenticeship with Westing has helped her grow into seemingly an entirely new person.
Themes
