Invitation To The Game

The novel opens at a critical moment in Lisse’s life: her graduation from school and the start of adulthood. Told in the first person from Lisse’s perspective, the novel is a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age tale depicting how Lisse will grow as she overcomes the challenges of adult life. However, the mood in the opening line, “It was the last day of school and the terror of the previous weeks crept up on me again” (1) subverts the reader’s expectations. Instead of portraying graduation as a time of hope, the novel reveals that in this futuristic world, graduation is an ominous, uncertain time where students discover whether they have a promising future with a job or not.

The novel has a clear dystopian setting, with humans’ lives strictly controlled by an authoritarian government, referred to as The Government. The Government determines which students will be given jobs and which will be unemployed, creating a two-level, unsurpassable hierarchy. The unemployed are denied basic rights, such as the right to travel or wear certain clothes, and they are closely monitored by the “Thought Police.” One element that determines a person’s status is their family connections, suggesting that this dystopian world relies partially on the nepotism. For example, Rich and Benta, two of Lisse’s classmates who do find jobs, only have them because of their families. We later learn, however, that The Government can easily displace even these seemingly “safe” individuals by revoking their employment.

Some employed people benefit directly at the expense of the unemployed, which underscores the power imbalance between them. The employed also see the unemployed as lazy and as consuming their resources—a narrative that The Government supports so that the masses will not rise up against it. As in Nazi-ruled Germany, which Hughes frequently references in the novel, The Government blames an innocent group (the unemployed) for the troubled system to detract from its own responsibility and to prevent the masses from coming together and overthrowing it. We see one example of the employed benefiting at the expense of the unemployed in Rich, who receives an offer to train as psychiatrist under his father, tells Lisse, “Psychiatry’s a gold mine! I ask you…High unemployment. Boredom. Low self-esteem. I’ll have clients beating a path to my door. Your loss is my gain” (9).

Lisse and her friends are somewhat critical of the authoritarian government, but they are also afraid of being monitored by the Thought Police. They view being unemployed as a punishment, since they are confined to a designated area, which one boy, Trent, calls, “another word for prison” (14). They guess that the reason they are not allowed to move freely is so they cannot congregate in large groups with other unemployed people and try to overthrow The Government. While they fleetingly mention rebellion, none of the teens seem particularly interested in it. The novel depicts their situation as unjust, but it suggests that revolt is not a practical option because The Government cracks down harshly on any dissent.

All the members of Lisse’s group are mostly willing to conform to the role that The Government has given them. Instead of looking for ways to resist, they accept their assigned address and follow the rules. The teens are do-gooders who want to make the most of their situation, and none of them have any interest in illegal activities such as gang violence or drug use.

One theme that emerges in the first two chapters is the difficulty of finding purpose in a life without structure or a goal. Lisse’s printout informing her of her unemployed status ironically tells her to “enjoy your leisure years” (6). However, the unemployed teens are not excited by the prospect of idleness. Lisse wonders if the presence of violent criminal gangs in the city stems from the lack of meaning in unemployed people’s lives.

Without a job, the teens have nothing to do or look forward to, so they create structure and routines of their own, trying out hobbies and visiting the public library. Nevertheless, they soon grow bored without any interaction with outsiders, so they seek out novel experiences in the city nightlife. Their nights out, where they witness many unemployed spending their time drinking, taking drugs, and engaging in criminal activity, reinforce Lisse’s theory that too much free time leads to negative social behaviors. When the teens find out about The Game, it gives them something to investigate, giving their lives a purpose. The novel suggests that work has more than just an economic value; it also provides meaning in people’s lives. This echoes the idea of the Protestant work ethic, where working is considered virtuous, and idleness is associated with sinful behaviors. While the book is not explicitly Christian, many of its themes allude to Christian theology.

The gang leader Charlie, whom the students ask for information about The Game, asserts that The Game is a form of social control: The Government provides The Game as a distraction for unemployed people to prevent them from organizing a rebellion. While the teens realize in later chapters that The Game was a test to determine if they could survive on another planet, Charlie’s theory that it serves as a “propaganda tool” is never disproven (40), so it is possible The Game serves multiple aims for The Government.

Another theme the first chapter explores is the relationship between technology and power. The robots who have taken over jobs are not depicted as having agency, but they still seem to wield significant power over humans. The Government presumably uses surveillance technology to monitor people, although it is never explicitly confirmed. Furthermore, the teens realize that, as unemployed people, their access to technology is limited, which prevents them from having power in their society. For example, they are not allowed to use computers, so instead they resort to reading outdated print books. The teens’ limited resources here foreshadow their reliance on old-world knowledge while in The Game and as they become pioneers on a new planet.

Finally, there is also foreshadowing in the first chapter of the outcome of The Game. When the unemployed teens express their outrage at not finding jobs, despite having useful skills, Trent remarks, “That’s the problem with this society […] It is uninterested. Dead in the water. We should scrap it and start it over” (14). This offhand comment predicts the later events in the book, where the teens travel to a new planet to build a new society from scratch. It suggests that Trent’s impulse is right, that starting over in a new place is the best way to reinvigorate a society that is struggling economically and socially. This moment first develops the theme of “Colonization as a Solution to Humanity’s Ills.”