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Chapter 16
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
Monday is a gray day. The stock market falls even further, and Turtle begins to worry. She is not the only anxious one—all the heirs are nervous in the wake of the third bombing. The bomb squad is called several times to inspect “suspicious” packages that end up being ordinary pieces of mail. When Turtle calls out Flora’s full name—Mrs. Baumbach—someone thinks she is shouting “bomb” and calls the squad again.
The third bomb has made the heirs more suspicious of one another than ever. The heirs now see all of each other’s actions as suspect or threatening. There is hardly any sense of togetherness or solidarity—everyone, it seems, is out for themselves and their own protection.
Themes
On Tuesday, the market continues bouncing up and down. Jake visits Hoo’s to eat lunch and to converse with Madame Hoo, who is learning English quickly. Grace and Hoo show their clues to Jake, who quickly interprets “PURPLE” and “FRUITED” as pointing to Plum, the lawyer. They rejoice in their breakthrough, ignoring the other clues.
In this scene, the Hoos and the Wexlers bond over their mutual suspicion of Plum, showing that while some heirs are more trusting of one another even in the face of the bomb, they are all still looking for a common enemy.
Themes
Sandy buys a notebook to begin keeping track of all the private investigator’s reports, which are delivered daily to Ford’s office. Sandy begins compiling dossiers on each of the heirs—his first completed file is on the Hoo family. He reports that James Shin Hoo added “Shin” to his name after going into the restaurant business in hopes of sounding “more Chinese”—and that after suing the Westing company over his invention, he settled for $25,000 just last year. Sandy also reports that Hoo has recently invented a paper inner sole—Sandy himself, he says, gave Hoo the idea.
As Sandy and Ford step up their investigation, they begin learning much more about their fellow heirs. The information they uncover about Hoo—specifically the fact that he changed his name to make himself seem more authentically Chinese—demonstrates just how deeply each heir is wrestling with issues of identity and conflicts of personality, even if their surface-level demeanor reflects something else.
Themes
Theo, meanwhile, tries to arrange his clues into some kind of numerical formula or equation as he does his homework. When he is done, four clue letters remain: I, S, T, and O. Theo puts the letters together to form the name “Otis”—he believes between the name and the formula, he has discovered the bomber and the formula for an explosive substance. Theo runs downstairs to find Doug and tell him. On the stairwell, he runs into Crow. She pulls him into her apartment and asks him to kneel and pray with her. Theo is disoriented and weirded out, but nevertheless, he agrees.
This strange encounter between Theo and Crow underscores the unknowability of the human condition. These far-flung individuals all live together in the same building, yet they know little about one another’s inner lives. Whenever they’re confronted with the unlikely or unpleasant truth of who another person really is, the effect can be surreal or disorienting, as it is here.
Themes
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