The Westing Game

“There’s only one apartment left, but you’ll love it. It was meant for you.”

Barney Northrup says this to Grace Wexler as she tours the apartment with Jake. It sounds like a phrase any salesman might use to close a deal, but as we find out later, Westing has quite literally planned for each heir to inhabit a specific apartment within the building. He suited each apartment to create certain circumstances.

“Sydelle Pulaski looked up and saw only the dim, warped reflections of treetops and drifting clouds in the glass face of Sunset Towers.” 

As Barney Northrup gives Sydelle a tour of the building she’s about to move into, she notices parts of the building’s appearance that have larger metaphorical meaning in the novel. The “warped reflections” that keep anyone from seeing in seem to signify how buffered the heirs become from the outside world as they immerse themselves in the game. They are told that no one can see into the building, but they are constantly under some kind of surveillance, whether by other residents or by one of Westing’s characters. The characters in this novel constantly struggle for privacy, although the secrets they keep from one another are what hinder them from winning.

“They say his body is sprawled out on a fancy Oriental rug, and his flesh is rotting off those mean bones, and maggots are creeping in his eye sockets and crawling out of his nose holes.” 

When the adolescents gather outside in the parking lot with Otis and Sandy, Sandy begins creating a mythology around Westing. This effectively propels Turtle to take the dare to enter the house,