Swindle

“That was why he was here now, in this ancient dying house. That is why everybody should have been here—every kid who was sick of counting for nothing in this town.”

This statement encapsulates Griffin’s primary motivation in Swindle and is one of the novel’s central themes. Griffin is determined to make the adults of Cedarville take his ideas seriously, not because he is vain, but because their dismissal stems from the belief that children have nothing important to say.

“A word to the wise: The world is a big fat scary place filled with people who’ll chew you up and spit you out if you give them half a chance.”

Swindle delivers these lines to Griffin after he cheats Griffin out of the Babe Ruth baseball card. Swindle’s philosophy of a dog-eat-dog world explains why he has no compunction about cheating a child. His attitude represents the theme of greed in the novel, which directly opposes Griffin’s belief that people should be honest, and that money should be shared equally.

“Picturing the sentence as it might have appeared in one of his famous plans made him feel a little more in control.”

Griffin’s habit of writing out his plans as detailed outlines helps him feel like he can manage any difficulty he might face. When he discovers that Swindle has cheated him, he imagines the phrase “(i) I’ve been CHEATED!!” in a way that helps him make sense of an event that he did not foresee.