The Grandest Game

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2024

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 19

Chapters 20-41

Chapters 42-63

Chapter 64-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Fathers

The Grandest Game features a motif related to problematic fathers and father figures. Lyra’s father’s death by suicide is the plot’s central mystery, and it has greatly impacted her life: She loses sleep over the memory, dreams about it, has become distanced from her mother because of it, has given up dancing in favor of running to distract herself from it, and has flashbacks that manifest like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at various points in the story. Gigi and Savannah likewise struggle to come to terms with their father’s death: Their father, whom law enforcement officials were investigating for financial crimes, died while trying to kill Avery Grambs. Now, Gigi and Savannah are both keeping their knowledge of his death a secret from one another and growing estranged; Gigi tries to devote herself to making up for the evil her father did, while Savannah becomes obsessed with revenge against Avery. When Odette was a teen, her father essentially sold her into marriage because his personal ambitions mattered more to him than her happiness.

For other characters, men who aren’t their fathers but function as father figures to them have detrimental effects on their lives. The men who essentially raised Rohan, Brady, and Knox—Sirhan and the Proprietor of the Devil’s Mercy—instilled in them an aggressive and dysfunctional orientation toward the world. In addition, Calla Thorp’s disappearance (which Brady believes her domineering father, Orion Thorp, engineered) forever changed Brady’s and Knox’s lives. Although Lyra has a stepfather whom she loves and who seems to be a stable and loving parent, the novel mentions him only in passing, in the early chapters—and he’s the story’s only example of a positive father figure.

Secrets

As is typical of the mystery genre, The Grandest Game has a pronounced motif of secrets. Naturally, in a puzzle-solving mystery, the designers of the puzzles keep secrets. However, not all the withheld information in the story is as benign as this. The secret of what happened to Lyra’s father is clearly a dangerous one that many people are working behind the scenes to either reveal or keep hidden. The way that Odette reluctantly doles out information and then immediately leaves the game as soon as possible after escaping from the locked rooms makes it clear that she’s aware of how dangerous this secret might be.

Beyond the puzzle-solving aspect of the plot and its central mystery regarding Lyra’s father’s death, the text’s motif of secrets appears in many of the choices the characters make. For at least one—Rohan—secrets are a way of life because his work with the Devil’s Mercy involves keeping his own information private and using others’ personal information against them. Lyra, Gigi, and Savannah all keep secrets about their fathers from other family members. In addition, Savannah conceals her intention to exact revenge on Avery for her role in Savannah’s father’s death. Knox keeps a secret about Calla’s disappearance from Brady, believing that he’s protecting Brady’s feelings. Knox, Savannah, and Brady all keep secrets about playing the game for sponsors, and when Gigi discovers the bug and other equipment—which one of these sponsors ostensibly left behind—she keeps this a secret from the game’s designers.

The Island

Hawthorne Island symbolizes the characters’ desire for autonomy and the truth that, regardless of their wishes, “no man is an island” (49). The John Donne poem alluded to on the chain and lock that Rohan and Savannah find makes this clear: It emphasizes the interconnectedness of all humankind. Brady shares with Gigi a belief that islands are closed systems that allow nothing in and nothing out; the escape rooms likewise seem to function in this way, and Brady uses this appearance of isolation to manipulate Gigi when, in response to her question about whether his flirtation with her was real, he replies, “All kinds of things can happen […] in a closed system” (351). It’s obvious that these apparently closed systems are really nothing of the kind, however: Brady can’t form a sincere relationship with Gigi because of his feelings for Calla.

Similarly, the island isn’t as isolated as it seems: Mimosas listens to everything that happens on Gigi’s team, someone left the bag of scuba gear on the island, and someone cut the power. Thus, people outside the supposedly “closed” system have a marked impact on events both on the island and inside the locked game rooms. The game’s designers constructed the game’s first challenge to emphasize just how interdependent the players really are, even offering each player a symbol of this interconnectedness: the golden key pins. The players may be there for individual reasons—and many may be committed to the ideas of independence and control—but in the end they’re forced to cooperate and rely on one another to achieve their goals.

Keys

In a puzzle-solving mystery, keys naturally symbolize the ability to “unlock” the solutions to puzzles. Appropriately, The Grandest Game contains a clear motif of keys. The keys in the novel are a multilayered symbol, however, conveying more than just the players’ ability to unlock the game’s mysteries. When the players arrive in the foyer of the main house, each finds a key waiting for them. These keys unlock their individual rooms and bear an inscrutable interwoven symbol. On the beach, a few hours later, each player also receives a key-shaped gold pin to wear as a marker of participation in the game. Avery explains that these key pins symbolize how the game binds the participants together. The keys that the players find in the foyer don’t, at first glance, seem to be a similar symbol of unity—after all, they unlock individual rooms.

Later, however, the players see a deconstruction of the elaborate symbol each key bears: It’s composed of a heart, a diamond, a club, and the number eight. Eight individual players participate in the game, once Grayson joins, and they play on three teams: the heart team, the diamond team, and the club team. The symbol on their keys thus conveys the importance of all eight individuals, their unity as teams, and their unity as participants in the second Grandest Game. Then, in Chapter 36, the players receive swords bearing an inscription: “From every trap be free,” it begins, “For every lock a key” (163). This adds yet another layer of meaning to the novel’s keys: They’re a route to freedom. Taken together, the various layers of the key symbolism suggest that the players’ individual skills, when unified with those of the other players, will help them solve the puzzles and mysteries that stand between each of them and true freedom.