Raskin exemplifies this idea most profoundly through the use of the character dossiers which Judge Ford compiles with the help of her partner in the game, Sandy McSouthers, and a private investigator. Just as following a promising clue often leads one to realize that one has only encountered a red herring, Raskin demonstrates how looking only at the surface of a person’s life in order to understand them often leads to a frustrating dead end. ![]() Once readers learn who the bomber is and who the bookie is, those categories become insufficient to hold all the complicated, disparate parts of each characters’ journey. In unseating her readers’ expectations of these reductive terms and easy categories, Raskin shows how the journey of uncovering who another person truly is can be just as exciting, complicated, and indeed frightful as solving a murder mystery. The “mistake” is Sydelle Pulaski, who was summoned to live in Sunset Towers along with the other heirs when she was confused with her sister Sybil-and though she is involved in the Westing game by accident, she proves one of its most deft, curious, and insightful players. ![]() The “bookie” is Jake Wexler, who feels unsatisfied by his lackluster profession and yearns for a way to prove himself to his critical, social-climbing wife. Isolated and afraid, she resorts to stealing the possessions of others in order to understand her new neighbors and feel closer to them. The “burglar” is Madame Hoo, a young immigrant from Hong Kong who is unable to communicate with her new neighbors. The “bomber” is Angela Wexler, who begins setting off fireworks in hopes of disfiguring herself so that the people who have told her all her life she’ll never amount to anything other than a beautiful wife will be forced to look beyond her face and discover who she truly is. Raskin unspools these secrets, revealing by the end of the novel who the bomber, the burglar, the bookie, and the mistake are-but by the time the narrative comes to a close, she’s also shown her readers that none of her characters can be defined by one simple thing. ![]() And, oh yes, one was a bookie, one was a burglar, one was a bomber, and one was a mistake.” With this, she frames the disparate people she’s introduced as complex, mysterious, and even threatening-the secrets they possess in spite of their fronts as “mothers and fathers and children” are deep and fraught. A dressmaker, a secretary, an inventor, a doctor, a judge. Raskin concludes the first chapter of the novel with the following passage: “Who were these people, these specially selected tenants? They were mothers and fathers and children. Thus, Raskin uses her main characters’ engagement in the titular Westing game-in which they must compete to solve Westing’s murder and win his inheritance money-to compare the complexity of a murder mystery to the complexity of the human spirit. Just as the work of solving a murder-like that of the wealthy Sam Westing-requires a combination of openness and suspicion as well as instinct and logic, understanding another person requires looking beyond the simple facts of their life and seeking to understand their histories, motivations, and imperfections. ![]() The most compelling mysteries, Raskin argues, are not related to scandal, intrigue, or crime, but to uncovering the truth of another person’s existence. 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, unknowable, and complex as the complex trial at the heart of the novel. 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.
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