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Chapter 19
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
On Friday, as the specter of returning to the Westing house looms, Turtle skips school and accompanies Flora to the broker’s office. As WPP reaches its highest price in over a decade, Turtle declares it is time to sell. Meanwhile, Doug continues following Otis Amber around town on foot. He watches as Otis enters a rooming house downtown. He waits for Otis to emerge, but the man does not come out for hours. At five, Otis returns to Sunset Towers. Doug wonders where Theo is. Theo, it turns out, is in the emergency room after finding out that his formula was miscalculated—his lab equipment blew up, shattering glass into his skin. A bomb squad detective questions Theo as a doctor removes shards from his shoulders—but Theo has alibis for all three bombings.
The heirs grow increasingly desperate to tie up their loose ends before the return to the Westing house over the weekend. They are all clearly motivated to win—so much so that they make risky decisions, cause themselves bodily harm, and risk blowing their own investigative covers.
Themes
Ford and Sandy continue placing orders from the coffee shop until George Theodorakis himself delivers their order. When he arrives, they ask him about Violet Westing. George explains that his father was a foreman who lived and worked in Westingtown. George and Violet were childhood sweethearts, but Violet’s mother disapproved of the match and urged Violet to marry someone more respectable and “important.” Mrs. Westing, George reveals, handpicked the crooked politician Violet ended up engaged to. Rather than marry the man, Violet killed herself. Sandy and Ford are at last able to complete their dossier on the Theodorakis family.
The opportunity to talk with George about his past reveals the truth about the Westing family’s tragic past. Ford and Sandy are saddened by what they’ve learned—but they also understand Westing a bit better. Westing’s motivation for playing the game is clearly to right the wrongs of his past—yet it is unclear whether he believes the blame for his daughter’s death lies with his ex-wife or with himself.
Themes
As Ford and Sandy puzzle over why Westing involved Chris and Theo but not George or Catherine in the game, they begin to consider the deeper question of which heir Westing wanted to see punished. They agree that the person who caused his daughter’s death is the one being targeted. Ford concludes that the mysterious Mrs. Westing must be one of the heirs—and that she is the person they must protect.
Ford and Sandy begin to believe that because Mrs. Westing all but disappeared after Violet’s death, she must have changed her identity—and she is, without a doubt, hidden amongst the heirs. Ford and Sandy know that those around them could be anyone, so unknowable are humans to one another. By showing how Mrs. Westing has been living right under everyone’s noses, Raskin suggests just how impenetrable and mysterious human beings are.
Themes
