Major Themes The main theme of this novel is information and how people interpret it: not only in the mystery that defines the Westing game, but also in the other conflicts among the Sunset Towers residents.
What is the plot of The Westing Game?
A sixty-two-year-old delivery boy, Otis Amber, delivers six letters to people handpicked to live in a luxurious new apartment building called Sunset Towers. The man who signed the letters, Barney Northrup, doesn’t actually exist.
What is the climax in The Westing Game?
Climax. The heirs come together with Westing’s lawyer to submit their guesses for Westing’s murderer. When they learn they are all incorrect, they pool their clues and discover that the missing letters of “America the Beautiful” spell out Berthe Erica Crow.
Why did everyone want a copy of sydelle’s notes?
Why does everyone want Sydelle’s shorthand notes? They think there are clues on there. Why is Sydelle Pulaski upset when she discovers her shorthand notebook is missing? She had clues to the mystery in her notebook and lost her attention.
Who is the author of the Westing Game?
THE WESTING GAME, originally published in 1978, is a Newberry-winning mystery by accomplished YA novelist Ellen Raskin. The story follows a wild competition for the enormous inheritance of paper-products magnate Sam Westing, who has set up his 16 “heirs” in an apartment complex near the old man’s mansion on a hill on Lake Michigan.
What happens to the money in the Westing Game?
Each of the eight pairs, assigned seemingly at random, is given $10,000 cash and a different set of baffling clues. The pair that solves the mystery will inherit Westing’s entire $200 million fortune and control of his company. It is discovered that Berthe Erica Crow is the answer but not the murderer.
Is there any violence in the Westing Game?
Aside from some fierce shin-kicking from precocious preteen Turtle Wexler, the only violence in the book (aside from the supposed murder of Samuel Westing that serves as the impetus for the game) is a series of dramatic explosions that rock the apartment building where the heirs are living. Some adults drink to drunkenness.
What does Sam Westing say in the Westing Game?
He claims that chess is not allowed in the building. After Sam Westing dies, at the beginning of the book, it emerges that most of the tenants are named as heirs in Westing’s will. The will is structured like a puzzle, with the 16 heirs challenged to find the solution. In the will it states that one of his heirs has killed him.
Prejudice and Bigotry. Written in the 1970s, a time of social change in America, The Westing Game portrays an ensemble of “16 imperfect ethnics” in order to expose the prejudices and stereotypes to which people of racial and ethnic minorities and various ranges of disabilities are unfairly subjected.
What is the mood of The Westing Game?
The mood of the novel is often light, not willing to take the events seriously even as it adeptly describes the behavior and motivation of its large cast of characters.
