The Westing Game
Ellen Raskin (1978)
“Sixteen strangers inherit a millionaire's puzzle — but the real mystery is who they truly are.”
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The Westing Game
Ellen Raskin (1978) · 182pages · Contemporary / Postmodern Children's
Summary
Sam Westing, an eccentric millionaire, is found dead in his mansion. Sixteen hand-picked heirs move into Sunset Towers and are told one of them is his murderer. They must solve clues in Westing's will to win a $200 million inheritance. As the game unfolds, the heirs discover less about who killed Westing and more about who they really are — and who Westing himself was.
Why It Matters
Won the Newbery Medal in 1979. Considered one of the most structurally sophisticated children's novels ever written — a puzzle book that is also a character study, a social satire, and a feminist argument. Consistently on best-of-children's-literature lists and school curricula across five decade...
Themes & Motifs
Diction & Style
Register: Conversational with bursts of formal legal or bureaucratic language — Raskin plays register for comedy and revelation
Narrator: Third-person omniscient with strong ironic distance. Raskin's narrator knows the answer to the mystery from page one ...
Figurative Language: Low-to-medium
Historical Context
Post-Civil Rights, pre-Reagan America — late 1970s: The Westing Game's multicultural cast was radical for 1978 children's literature. The era's feminism is written directly into Angela's arc and Turtle's ambition. The post-Watergate distrust of powe...
Key Characters
Talking Points
- Why does Raskin choose Turtle — the least respected and most overlooked Wexler daughter — as the person who solves the Westing puzzle? What is she arguing about intelligence and recognition?
- Sam Westing is described as both a benefactor (he paid for Judge Ford's education) and an exploiter (he destroyed business competitors). Is it possible to be both? Does the novel let him off the hook?
- The clues in the Westing Game turn out to be lyrics from 'America the Beautiful.' Why that song? What does this choice say about what Sam Westing thinks the game is really about?
- Angela Wexler is described as 'beautiful, which everyone mentioned, and smart, which no one mentioned.' How does this single observation contain the argument of her entire subplot?
- Sandy McSouthers, the doorman, is invisible to the heirs for the entire novel even though he talks to all of them every day. What does this say about how social class shapes what we see and don't see?
Notable Quotes
“Sunset Towers faced east, and the early morning sun shone on its six stories of tinted glass windows.”
“Grace Wexler had hoped for a view of the lake; instead she looked out at a parking lot.”
“Judge Ford moved slowly through the lobby, sizing up each tenant with the practiced eye of someone who had spent forty years reading people in cour...”
Why Read This
Because it is the most purely fun demonstration that close reading is actually useful. Every detail in The Westing Game means something. The character who mentions a detail in chapter 2 will matter in chapter 14. The clue that seems random is a fr...