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
Under the full Halloween moon, Turtle, dressed in her witch costume, meets Doug at the Westing manor. She sees that the doors at the side of the house are already open. Doug readies a stopwatch and urges Turtle to hurry inside. As Turtle checks her pockets (which are full of sandwiches, a flashlight, and a silver cross necklace stolen from her mother), she feels prepared to go in. Doug has promised to pay her two dollars for every minute she spends inside. Turtle, determined to make money to play in the stock market, hurries inside. After 11 minutes, Doug hears Turtle scream. Seconds later, she comes running out of the house, shrieking.
Turtle undertakes Doug’s dare, motivated by her own individualistic desire for profit. Doug, though frightened, waits for Turtle while she stays in the house, demonstrating the fact that he sees her as a friend and is willing to stand beside her. Both are curious about the mystery hiding inside the Westing house.
Themes
In the Westing manor, Turtle found the corpse of Sam Westing tucked in a four-poster bed on the second floor after following a whisper upstairs. Now, as she lies in her bed at the Sunset Towers, she waits for dawn to break, terrified by what she has seen but excited for her $24 prize. When Turtle hears the morning paper thud against the door, she hurries to fetch it. “SAM WESTING FOUND DEAD,” reads the headline. Turtle is shocked—when she emerged from the house reporting what she’d seen, Doug hadn’t believed her, and she hadn’t told anyone else. She wonders who could have found the body—and whether the whisperer she believed she heard was real.
Turtle is suspicious of what transpired in the Westing house last night. Her experience heightens the sense of intrigue and misleading clues established in the first chapter and portends that the mystery of Westing’s death will not be a straightforward one.
Themes
As Turtle reads the sixty-five-year-old industrialist Westing’s obituary, she learns that he was the only child of immigrant parents and was orphaned at twelve, yet he rose from humble beginnings to create the Westing Paper Products Corporation and the city of Westingtown to house his workers and their families. His estate, the obituary reports, is worth more than two hundred million dollars. The number shocks and excites Turtle.
As Turtle begins learning about Sam Westing, Raskin highlights Westing’s humble beginnings and contrasts them with the unimaginably vast wealth he ultimately accrued. There are many blanks to be filled in when it comes to Westing’s story—and his road to riches will prove to be paved with misdeeds.
Themes
A chess master, teetotaler, and a patriot who staged elaborate Fourth of July pageants each year, Westing lost his daughter Violet when she drowned on the eve of her wedding; two years later, his wife left him. Five years later Westing was sued by an inventor over an intellectual property dispute concerning diapers. After getting into a terrible car accident alongside his friend, Dr. Sidney Sikes, the county coroner, Westing disappeared from public view. The obituary concludes with a statement from Julian R. Eastman, the current President and CEO of the Westing corporation, expressing his sadness at the news of the mogul’s passing.
Westing’s obituary includes many important facts about the man and his life—facts which will all become important to remember as the Westing game unfolds. Westing’s life was marred by tragedy and loss, yet he retained a deep-seated sense of patriotism and a belief in America’s promises. Westing, like all of the other characters in the novel, was a deeply complex and difficult man—and the quest to unravel the mysteries of his life will become the book’s confounding center.
Themes
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At the end of the obituary, Turtle is shocked to find no mention of how the body was found—or the note she spied on the corpse’s nightstand before fleeing the premises. Turtle knows that four people were in the Westing house last night: Doug Hoo, Theo Theodorakis, Otis Amber, and Sandy. She sets out to find them and collect her $24.
Turtle is motivated by selfishness and greed: she wants her due, and she wants it now. Perturbed by the lack of information as to how the body was found, Turtle decides to begin solving the mystery for herself.
Themes
At noon, Otis Amber sets out to deliver sixteen letters from E.J. Plum, Westing’s attorney. The letters address the named beneficiaries of Westing’s estate and urge them to come to the Westing manor the following day at four for the reading of the will. Otis collects signatures on a receipt—the receipt also asks each recipient to list their job or position. By sunset, Otis has finished his rounds.
This passage foreshadows the turn of events still to come. Westing has named sixteen people beneficiaries—yet calling together such a large number of seemingly unconnected people is a mystery unto itself.
Themes
