SHALL WE PLAY?

THE USE OF
GAMES IN LITERATURE

ELEVI:
PROFESORI COORDONATORI: BALAN RARES ANDREI
VLAD DORINA-IULIANA GHIORMA IULIAN NICOLAE
VOICA SIDONIA
 SHALL WE PLAY? THE USE OF GAMES IN LITERATURE

LIFE HAS ALWAYS BEEN SYMBOLIZED BY GAMES IN

WORKS OF LITERATURE. GAMES CAN SYMBOLIZE
WINNING AND LOSING, LIFE AND DEATH, SECRECY
AND FOOLISHNESS OR STRATEGY AND RANDOMNESS.
THE MANY LESSONS A CHARACTER AND, BY
ASSOCIATION, THE READER CAN LEARN FROM THE
MANY FACETS OF THESE GAMES MAKE WHAT MIGHT
BE A DEEP AND COMPLICATED STORY MORE CLEAR TO
THE EVERYMAN READER.
 A game can help the reader
understand the time period, from
jousting in medieval times to Monopoly
in the modern day and age.
Games can share the class of a
character, from rich sophisticated people
in high stakes poker, to brilliant hermits
playing chess, to innocent children
playing hopscotch.
 THE HAND YOU ARE DEALT

Games with playing cards are most likely the

most common symbolic theme seen in
literature. Everything from a house of
cards to games of war, hearts or
poker, card games mirror stories of win the
jackpot or lose it all. Stories such as
Mansfield Park by Jane Austin or Charles
Dickens Great Expectations contain scenes
of card games that mirror the love and war
games that people play throughout.
Other stories contain the card game not only
as a symbol of the strife the character goes
through but also as a major part of the plot.
In The Queen of Spades, an Alexander
Pushkin novella about human avarice, the
storyline follows Hermann, a German officer
in the Russian Army. Although he has sworn
never to gamble himself, he becomes
obsessed with it once he believes he has
learned the winning secret of three special
cards. While he eventually wins with the first
two secret cards, the third the Queen of
Spades is his downfall. He not only falls
financially; he falls psychologically as he
begins to see the supernatural appearance of
the woman he stole the winning secret from.
 SPIN THE WHEEL, TAKE YOUR CHANCES
Casino games are also quite common in
literary symbolism. Even games that the
recreational gambler might think of as luck
based contain strategies, and these are ever
present in many famous stories that revolve
around a casino game.
Roulette, for example, is a theme in
Fyodor Dostoyevskys The Gambler. What
roulette has represented over time is a
combination of strategy and randomness. It
has its own circle of life from winning to
losing on the turn of a dime, and this
is symbolized in the wheel full of numbers,
both black and red.
 CHECKMATE

Chess is one of the most symbolic

and descriptive games with allusions
in many famous literary pieces. A
multitude of essays, papers and even
books have been written comparing
the stories of One Thousand and
One Nights (Arabian Nights) and
its many translations, particularly
one by Richard Burton with the
game of chess. Black and white,
royalty and pawns, and strategic
moves filter through every story in
rich detail.
The symbolism of games is not limited to novels
or stories. The use of symbolism in poems has
earned many poets recognition and historical
value. In William Wordsworths The Prelude,
the poet relives the lightheartedness of card
games as a child, reminding us that the object of
a game is to play. It is a prelude to the poet
himself, a lighter playful self before the French
Revolution. Elliot used many forms of
symbolism in his World War I inspired poem,
The Waste Land, including the game of Chess.
Here he believes that in all the devastation of
the war, humans have lost touch with nature
and have given themselves over to the artificial
world of cold, lifeless chess pieces.