Dangerous Game

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About the authorWilliam Harris is the main character and also the fictional author of the book.

The author, L.G. Alexander, was a well-known teacher, writer and author of New Concept English (1967) and Direct English.

Louis George Alexander was born in London in 1932 and educated at the University of London. He taught English in Germany and Greece, and was a member of the Council of Europe Committee on Modern Language Teaching, co-authoring materials that later became the basis for a variety of communicative language courses and form the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

He started writing English language teaching materials in the 1960s and in the 1980s consulted on English teaching programmes for China on behalf of UNESCO.

Alexander lived with his wife, Julia, in London, where he died in 2002.

SummaryWilliam Harris is a successful writer of detective stories. He was very happy until his wife, Julie, died twelve years ago. After that, William only had one friend, Louis, who came to his home to play chess once a week. William is, in his own opinion, not a very interesting person, but he has an incredible secret. Every night he plays games with a ghost – a poltergeist – who he has named Poldy. The games continue for twelve years.

At first, the games are fun and Poldy is playful. But as time goes on, the games become less enjoyable and in the end they are terrifying.

Although unconvinced at first, William eventually admits to himself that Poldy might be the ghost of his dead wife, returning to punish him for her murder. William reveals he murdered Julie after twelve years of marriage because he had become insanely jealous of her friendships. There is a clear parallel between the twelve years of his marriage, which started out in happiness and ended in murder, and the twelve years of his games with Poldy, which started out as fun but have changed so that William fears for his life.

His fears are well founded. By the end of the story, William is dead, leaving behind a manuscript which describes the games and contains his confession of murder. Was William mad – driven to hallucinations by his guilt? Or was he really haunted by the ghost of his murdered wife? The reader can decide.

Chapter 1: William Harris, aged 48, explains to the reader that after his wife died twelve years ago, the poltergeist he calls Poldy started visiting him at night. William says the ghost is always in his bedroom, but he can only feel Poldy’s presence at night, after he unplugs his beside lamp.

William’s wife Julie was outgoing and liked to be around people, whereas William was the opposite.

However, when she became ill and died, William withdrew within himself and within his house, doing nothing but writing. He lost most of his friends, except Louis, who is also a writer. He plays chess with Louis once a week.

Chapter 2: During the next few nights, William experiments with pulling out the lamp plug and putting it back in. He finds that the first time each night he unplugs the lamp, Poldy makes himself felt. After he plugs the lamp back in, Poldy is gone for the rest of the night.

The two play games where Poldy knocks and, shakes the bed or throws items in the room. William laughs at these games.

Chapter 3: One evening when William is playing chess with Louis, William is distracted, thinking about his games with Poldy, which he thinks are beginning to become bad. He starts to tell Louis about Poldy, but Poldy warns him not to by knocking from the room above. Louis doesn’t hear the knocks, but William understands, and pretends Poldy is the name of a strange character in one of his new detective novels.

William Harris

Dangerous Game

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Chapter 4: After five years, things begin to go wrong with the game. At first, Poldy simply didn’t follow the rules. Then, on the night of a full moon, Poldy started using clothes in the wardrobe to play games. The arm of William’s coat grabbed the plug from his fingers, yanking the lamp onto the floor. Then, a ‘person’ behind the curtain wouldn’t let William close the drapes. He lay in bed, listening to his heart pound wildly and a cat outside crying like a baby all night.

Chapter 5: William explains to Poldy the difference between a ‘good game’ and a ‘bad game’ by how he feels – he is never afraid during a ‘good game’ and during a ‘bad game’ – which has no rules – he feels afraid. William wonders if Poldy wants to punish him, and who Poldy is. Is he Julie? No, William decides. William says he can’t get away from Poldy by selling his house and moving. He loves his house and the many memories there.

Poldy touches William for the first time by running his fingers through his hair. Then he hits William in the face, pushing him and even biting him.

Now William feels his bedroom is an evil place. He can’t write anymore and sleeps and eats very little. Louis worries about him.

Chapter 6: Poldy starts a ‘good game’, shaking the bed and playing ‘find me’. William finds Poldy in his bed, so it’s his turn. William hides under the bed. Poldy looks through his clothing and then knocks the wardrobe onto the floor. Finally, he finds William under the bed. Poldy lifts the bed to the ceiling and then drops it – though it doesn’t hit William. Eventually, Poldy throws William onto his bed and laughs an evil laugh. He takes Julie’s dress and her photo from the wall and laughs at William.

Chapter 7: William reveals to the reader – and to himself – that he was jealous of Julie and the attention other men gave her during her life. He decided if he killed her, she would be his for ever. One night, he put his pillow over her face and held it until she was dead. The doctor thought she died of her weak heart, so William didn’t get caught.

Chapter 8: William now realises that the poltergeist is Julie. She was playful and fun for the first few years, but in recent years she had become jealous and evil – just like he did in their marriage.

Julie’s poltergeist – using the dress and the photo – dances round the room, surrounded by young, laughing men.

William gets angry and knocks the dress to the floor. He thinks he has murdered Julie a second time. Then the photo cries and an invisible hand tears up the picture. William becomes scared but finds he is trapped in the bedroom. Finally, he is able to plug the lamp back in and when the light comes on he sees the room is in perfect order. Was it his imagination? He switches off the light and a shadow comes across his face – the shadow of death.

Chapter 9: The next day William writes about what has happened since Julie’s death. He knows the poltergeist is going to kill him, and so wants to leave behind a record of the truth. He hopes Louis will find the story after he dies and will publish it.

Chapter 10: Louis finds William’s story after William dies. Louis finds Williams body in his wrecked bedroom, with his pillow over his face. On the pillow was an impression of a hand.

No one can explain why William died. Louis says that William wasn’t well in his mind. He doesn’t think William killed Julie, but he doesn’t really know whether the things William wrote about happened. The conclusion is up to the reader.

Background and themes

Ghost stories: Stories of the unexplained and the supernatural are popular around the world.

Crime and punishment: The story turns into a tale of crime and punishment in the mould of the novel of that name by Dostoevsky. Like Rashkolnikov, the main narrator of the Russian story, William has committed a terrible crime and escaped punishment by society. But the knowledge of the crime lives and festers inside the criminal and eventually drives him mad. Also like Dostoevsky’s protagonist, William’s world shrinks after the murder to his house and his one friend, and then further to his bedroom, which the ghost actually locks at one point to prevent him leaving. He describes the way the ghost moves things around his room and breaks things as if they really happened, but then in the morning, we are told, things are back to normal and nothing is broken. Thus we are allowed to believe that the whole haunting is imagined, until the final scene when Louis finds William dead amongst the wreckage of his bedroom, killed, it seems, in the same manner as his own victim twelve years before.

Dangerous Game

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Jealousy: Love can turn to jealousy for a wide range of reasons, and can ultimately destroy a once caring relationship.

Relationships: Loving unions can be fragile, and even turn to hatred.

Morality: We may escape the condemnation and retribution of society for an evil act, but we cannot escape our own conscience.

Discussion activities

Before reading1 Discuss: Talk about the cover. Tell students to look

at the picture on the cover and the title. What is the name of this game in English? Is chess a ‘dangerous game’? Could it be? How?

2 Group work: Have students look at the pictures in the book and decide what kind of story this is – it is clearly a ghost story. Then put students into small groups to play a game. Each person has to choose one of the pictures in the book and then describe it to the others in the group. They must work out which picture is being described.

Chapters 1–2After reading3 Discuss: Ask the class to think of other stories that

feature ghosts and poltergeists. Put two headings on the board: Ghosts and Poltergeists. Elicit examples from books and films. Can students name examples from their own culture? For example:Ghosts PoltergeistsHamlet Poltergeist

(the film series)The Phantom of the Opera

Peeves (in the Harry Potter books)

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The Borley Rectory (in England)

4 Pairwork: Ask students to have a conversation between William and Julie before she dies. Give them these instructions:

Student A: You are Julie. You want to go to a party with William. Ask William to get ready.

Student B: You are William. You do not want to go to the party. Tell Julie why.

5 Group work: Ask students to think up another game to play with Poldy. Have them write the rules. Elicit the games from each group and have the class decide which game is best.

Chapters 3–4After reading6 Discuss: At the end of Chapter 2, William says,

‘But something went wrong, very wrong.’ What went wrong?

Chapters 5–6Before reading7 Write: Write the following combinations of letters

and blanks on the board – they are outlines of words that can be found in Chapters 3 and 4. In small groups, ask students to find the words in the story and fill in the missing letters. One person should write the words on a piece of paper. When they have finished, some of the groups can stand at the front of the class and read the lists of words to their classmates.

a m_v_ b _h_r_ct_r c b_ _rd d _ _rdr_b_ e _ma_in_t_on f _ _t_il g _u_ish h s_ _ke_ i t_ _ _r_ _w

After reading8 Write: In groups or as a class, have students write in

what way a ‘good’ game is different from a ‘bad’ game.

9 Discuss: Ask students to work in groups to consider the following questions:

a Why does Poldy start to play bad games? b Who is Poldy? Elicit reasons and decide as a class which is the best.10 Discuss: In pairs, have students discuss why William

doesn’t sell his house and go away. What do they think?

11 Discuss: In pairs or as a class, discuss why William now thinks Poldy is Julie.

Chapters 7–8After reading12 Discuss: Talk about the title of Chapter 7 The Truth.

What is the truth, do you think? 13 Artwork: Draw how Julie looks when she appears to

William.

Chapters 9–10After reading14 Discuss: Put students into groups. In Chapter 9,

William says ‘The game is like my life with Julie.’ Ask each group to:

a Make a list of the ways in which William’s statement is true.

b Explain why the game is like his life with Julie.15 Discuss: Dangerous Game is a ghost story. But can

students rewrite the ending to give it a logical explanation for everything that happened? Put students into groups to try to think of a logical explanation. Elicit the ideas and see if any of them stand up to analysis.