The Westing Game Themes

When the supposedly deceased founder of the Westing Paper Products Corporation, the reclusive Sam Westing, he uses his will to call together 16 seemingly random strangers. He offers these people the chance to become potential heirs to his vast estate, matches them up in pairs, and urges them to compete for a $200 million prize, thus setting in motion a battle between individualism and teamwork. Westing’s challenge to his heirs—work together or lose everything—stands…

As the son of immigrants turned reclusive, multimillionaire owner of the fruitful Westing Paper Products Corporation, Sam Westing knows that money is a corruptive force. Westing, who grew from humble origins into a shadowy and greedy figurehead of a massive company, knows just how much wealth and power can change a person. In deciding to bestow his inheritance upon an unsuspecting heir drawn from a seemingly random assortment of individuals, Westing offers the freedom of…

The Westing Game is a mystery novel—as such, the book contains numerous twists and turns, plentiful red herrings (clues intentionally designed to be misleading or distracting), sleights of hand, and seemingly random or useless clues which lead to an unexpected (and even profound) conclusion. By employing a classic murder-mystery structure, Ellen Raskin uses a plot full of intrigue to show how the individuals involved in the Westing game—and, by proxy, all individuals—are just as deep…