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

Themes

Balancing Morality and Ambition

All the players on Hawthorne Island (except possibly Grayson Hawthorne) desperately want to win the game. Some are willing to go to any lengths to achieve this goal, and others aren’t. At the far end of the spectrum of ambition to win are players like Rohan, who uses his connections to gather secret information about the game and its players even before arriving on the island. He cheats by ensuring that Gigi finds an invitation to the game, an attempt to manipulate the odds in his favor. Once on the island, he uses both charm and intimidation to influence other players’ choices and makes it clear that he’ll do whatever it takes to win. Knowing what kind of a person Rohan is, Nash tells him early on that it’s unlikely he’ll win the Grandest Game. Nash says that Hawthorne “games have heart,” implying that the way Rohan treats others will prevent him from winning (66). This conveys a clear message about the importance of balancing one’s ambitions with one’s ethics—a task that Rohan isn’t the least bit concerned with.

On the other end of the spectrum are players like Gigi and Odette. Odette’s initial goals to win center on leaving a legacy for her family—but she begins to realize that other things are at stake in the game and bows out. When she sees that someone is manipulating Lyra and Grayson regarding the death of Lyra’s father, Odette worries about their emotional and physical safety. Rather than continue to play a part in this unanticipated layer of the game, she decides to quit and go home: “There are some legacies one does not wish to pass down” (343), she tells Lyra, revealing that her ethics are more important to her than her ambitions. Gigi is so concerned with morality that she won’t accept anything unearned: She turns down both Avery’s invitation and Odette’s spot in the game (after Odette bows out). In Chapter 11, after reading the clues written on the steps after reading them, Gigi refuses to wipe them away: Keeping other competitors from discovering these hints is part of the game, but her sense of decency and fair play rebels.

Of course, by the novel’s end, both Gigi and Odette have been eliminated from the game. This suggests that neither extreme of the spectrum is the correct approach. Players like Brady and Knox, who steal and lie during the game, remain in the competition, as does Rohan. Lyra and Grayson are the only remaining players with “heart.” The events of the sequel will reveal whether Nash’s prediction comes true and exactly what balance of morality and ambition is required to succeed in the Grandest Game.

The Risks and Rewards of Trust

One task that the characters in The Grandest Game face is deciding whom, and how much, to trust. As with the text’s consideration of morality, its consideration of the benefits and drawbacks of trust depicts the various players along a spectrum. Rohan and Savannah are at the far end, instinctively trusting no one. Brady and Knox display little trust in one another, but both seem willing to trust Gigi. Odette isn’t particularly trusting but eventually offers confidences to Lyra and Grayson. Lyra and Grayson are somewhere in the middle: They’re wary of trusting too easily, but once someone has earned their trust, both are relatively open and forthright. Gigi is alone at the pole opposite Rohan and Savannah: Her lack of guile leads her to trust too easily, exposing her to risks she doesn’t anticipate.

Avery, Jameson, Xander, and Nash deliberately structure the first challenge so that players must cooperate and build trust. Even Rohan and Savannah, despite their resistance, eventually reach an uneasy truce, but both struggle to cooperate and commit to temporary trust: Their incessant physical fights and arguing slow their progress in the game, suggesting that their approach isn’t the most effective. Conversely, however, Gigi’s approach is just as problematic. After she too easily trusts Brady, he breaks her heart—and surely, when she eventually discovers Savannah’s secret agenda in the game, she’ll experience heartbreak again. Gigi even trusts herself a little too much: Because of her faith in her abilities and judgment, she doesn’t tell the game’s designers about the bug and the presence of Mimosas on the island, instead confronting the man herself—leading to her capture and chloroforming at the novel’s end.

Instead of arguing for either “trust no one” or “trust everyone” as a default setting, the novel suggests that the smart approach is to evaluate trustworthiness carefully and proceed accordingly. Lyra and Grayson are an excellent illustration of this principle. Neither initially trusts the other: He’s suspicious of her presence on the island and quizzes her extensively about her motives. She asks him many critical questions about the way he behaved in their past interactions. It takes time for them to accept one another’s answers and extend provisional trust. They watch one another, carefully evaluating each other’s behavior and motivations, until finally they reach a place of genuine trust. At this point, they exchange information and cooperate well: Their progress in the game and in solving the mystery of what happened to Lyra’s father illuminates the benefits of this kind of carefully constructed and vetted trust.

The Relationship Between Motivation and Individuality

As a part of the novel’s concern regarding human psychology, The Grandest Game explores how individual personality relates to motivation. Each character playing the game has a different reason for participating; the text explores how each of their reasons has roots in both psychology and life experience.

Most of the characters have had traumatic experiences: Lyra witnessed her father’s violent death; Rohan experienced abuse and was brought up in the Devil’s Mercy; Odette was an involuntary teenage bride whom Tobias Hawthorne, a man she loved, used and manipulated; Brady and Knox endured Sirhan’s training and the loss of Calla Thorp, which shaped their lives. Although Grayson’s youth wasn’t marred by experiences that extreme, the Hawthornes are a troubled family, competitive and not emotionally supportive, and Grayson grew up believing that he had to be perfect and always in control. Gigi and Savannah are both struggling to process their father’s death, and Gigi carries the additional burden of knowing about her father’s criminal history; both twins coping with the estrangement that follows keeping secrets from one another.

Naturally, characters who have struggled in these ways want to achieve something that gives them a sense of accomplishment, security, and purpose: Winning the Grandest Game is one way to do this. They conceive of this goal very differently, however, depending on their individual psychology, as Gigi and Savannah clearly illustrate: Although they’re twins, raised in the same environment and struggling with similar trauma, their motivations for playing the game differ. Gigi turns her trauma into an occasion for generosity toward others, while Savannah uses the game to exact revenge. Odette and Lyra, like Gigi, have generous intentions should they win the game, and both imagine helping their families more than helping themselves. Brady, despite all his faults, likewise focuses on helping someone else—specifically Calla Thorp. By contrast, Knox’s end goal is simply to enrich himself. For Rohan, the game is a way to preserve his identity: He doesn’t envision using the prize money to move on from the dark and abusive world of the Devil’s Mercy but instead to permanently secure his place in this world. The various characters may have past trauma in common, but the way they choose to respond to their difficult pasts differs dramatically because of their different personalities.