45 pages • 1 hour read
Zilpha Keatley SnyderThe Egypt Game
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1967A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Rejecting One’s Present Reality
The novel begins by setting up a parallel between two characters who have difficulty accepting their reality. Although April and the Professor are generations apart in age, both are mired in past experiences that keep them from moving forward. The Professor is a mystery to everyone in the neighborhood. His behavior is that of someone who is detached from reality, and the reader doesn’t find out why until the book’s final pages. We learn that the Professor is living in the past because his wife’s untimely death has made the present too painful.
April is also unable to relate to anyone in her immediate surroundings, and has suffered a painful personal loss. After her glamorous mother’s abandonment, she resents having to live with her grandmother.
April and the Professor gravitate to each other rather quickly. Unlike every other child in the neighborhood, April finds the Professor intriguing and is drawn to A-Z Antiques. Aside from their shared loss of loved ones, both of them enjoy learning about the past. April tells the Professor that she wants to be an archaeologist when she grows up. Although the Professor doesn’t mock April’s aspirations, he barely engages with her, and April feels compelled to fill up his silence with meaningless words. Despite his noncommittal response, the Professor is also interested in ancient civilizations. Both are so busy looking back in time that they fail to see what’s right in front of them.
The Egypt Game offers an opportunity for April and the Professor to find their way back to the present reality. April’s imaginative recreation of a lost civilization catches the Professor’s interest. It pulls him out of his own mental solitude. While April is the principal actor in the Egypt Game, the Professor is the game’s principal audience. Both need to create an imaginative past free of the heartache of their actual past experiences. Going back in time to ancient Egypt allows them to construct an alternative reality. While it may be argued that this acts as a diversion, it also offers them a chance to reorient to the present.
Overcoming Isolation
All the characters in the novel suffer from a sense of isolation, though to a lesser degree than April and the Professor. Before meeting April, Melanie finds herself wishing for a friend. She says of April: “It would be neat if she turned out to be a real friend. There hadn’t been any girls the right age in the Casa Rosada lately. To have a handy friend again, for spur-of-the-moment visiting, would be great” (22-23).
Melanie’s cut-out paper dolls are an attempt to forge connections with imaginary characters, as real ones don’t present in the real world. Melanie’s need for companionship dovetails with April’s, as both have been forced to loners: “[April] looked right straight at Melanie and said, ‘You know what? I never did call them that before, but imagining games are just about all I ever play because most of the time I never have anybody to play with’” (32-33). Marshall is also isolated because his young age excludes him from many activities pursued by the older children. A stuffed octopus is his only real friend.
When Elizabeth moves into the building, she is also alone. April and Melanie only offer to walk her to school because their families guilt them into it. They debate whether to socialize much or include her in the Egypt Game because she is only in the fourth grade. While Toby and Ken aren’t technically isolated, they both fear the company of girls might compromise their reputation among the sixth graders. In that sense, they’ve isolated themselves from half the human population.
The most extreme example of isolation is the Professor. Unlike the rest of the characters, he has sequestered himself by choice, whereas the children are only isolated by circumstance. Once the kids find each other, they begin to form a cohesive group. It will take an attack on April to pull the Professor out of his comfort zone. As he tells them later: “I felt obligated to let you know what I had done with Security, and the oracle offered a way to do it without any direct contact. And contact—involvement—was what I had spent years eliminating entirely from my life” (209). Fortunately, before the novel ends, the professor returns to the land of the living.
Building a Community
In a novel of isolated and lonely characters, the obvious solution lies in connecting to other people. Melanie’s paper dolls are an early attempt to create a community where none exists. She tells April:
I make up a family and then I find people who look like them in magazines and catalogues. Just so I’ll remember them better. I have fourteen families now. See, they all have their names and ages written on the back. I make up stuff about their personalities and what they do (30).
This is all the encouragement April needs to connect to the same imaginative group. For both girls, it’s a short leap from there to building an entire imaginary culture. While they are busy assigning roles for themselves in the Egypt Game, they fail to notice a community forming around their efforts. The Professor has started watching them from his hidden vantage point. Marshall becomes a passive boy pharaoh in their game. Soon, Elizabeth’s resemblance to Nefertiti pulls her in as well. The gatecrashers, Toby and Ken, are initially driven by curiosity but eventually become enthralled by the game as well.
As the Egypt Game becomes more elaborate and involved, the Professor finds himself unexpectedly drawn in, both imaginatively and in reality. He makes his first tentative step toward connection when he leaves the oracle message about Security. He plays an even larger role when April is nearly abducted:
There was a splintering crash and a strange hoarse shout. “Help!” the strange voice rasped. “Help!” A window went up with a bang somewhere nearby, and farther away other voices began to call questions. “What? What is it? What’s the matter?” And all the while the first strange voice went on calling for help (184).
The Professor has not merely connected with the children; his cry for help also reconnects him with the larger community. His voice is heard, and the response is immediate. In crying for assistance for April, the Professor is also unconsciously asking to be saved himself. He finally becomes part of the larger community on Christmas Eve when he tells the children his story and gives them keys to the gaming yard:
“You’ve already made me a gift—a very important one.” He smiled his strange solemn smile and put his hand on Marshall’s head. “That’s how I should have ended my story—if I could have explained it—with your gift to me. That would have been the Christmas part. That’s what makes it a Christmas story” (213-14).
