Chess, Unlike War, is a Game of Perfect Information
Chess, Unlike War, is a Game of Perfect Information
Chess, Unlike War, is a Game of Perfect Information
By Adrienne Raphel
April 12, 2023
Summary
If chess is typically the figure, for Simic, it's the ground: chess is more real than reality.
Chess is an abstract strategy tabletop game, played across a grid, with no hidden information-that is, unlike a card game where other players don't know what's in their opponents' hands, all the components of play are always equally available to both players.
A Black Knight bemoans the loss of his lady love, Whyt, to a game of chess with Fortune.
Although Fortune has "Checkmated" Whyt, the Knight can bring her back to a kind of life, as literary critic Jenny Adams points out, when he envisions her as a chess piece, perpetually playing his game.
As Guillemette Bolens and Paul Beekman Taylor argue, the point of chess in the poem isn't the game itself, but rather its symbolic function.
Our narrator the dreamer takes the discussion of the game too much to heart, so chess becomes a lesson in literary interpretation.
While the book starts as a chess problem, chess becomes the metaphor guiding Alice's progression toward adulthood.
Reference
Raphel , A. (2023, April 12). Chess, unlike war, is a game of perfect information. JSTOR DAILY. https://daily.jstor.org/chess-unlike-war-is-a-game-of-perfect-information/