Games

"Soon we'll be leaving Hailsham. It's not a game anymore." (104)
This quote really caught my attention and I began thinking about the idea of a game. Why is Hailsham just a game?  How can Ruth see Hailsham as a game when it is literally the only thing that she knows in life. The game seems to be trying to deal with the Guardians and figure out as much as possible. It's an interesting concept because there is an implied recreation with games, and them leaving its as though there is no more recreation but how much do they really know about whats coming next.
It comes again when Kathy is talking about reading at the cottages. She compares it to sex at Hailsham and describes it as "a little game we all indulged to some extent" (123), which goes against what Ruth said about their life no longer being a game but they still do participate in this game of secrecy and gossip. Also a page later when Kathy and Ruth are arguing and Kathy realizes her mistake and describes it as "a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece you see the mistake you've made and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to." (124). In many ways an argument is like a chess match, but it does comeback to the idea of its a game, and why is it not more than that? In the next chapter Ruth and Kathy get along just fine so its like their argument really was just a game but maybe it wasn't, who knows?