The World Played Chess

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses depictions of wartime atrocities that feature in the source text.

“A purpose, I have learned, is rarely found, but revealed. Only when I do not search does the purpose become clear.”

This quote, which is the first sentence of the novel, reveals Vincent Bianco to be a patient character, willing to learn from experience, rather than attempting to control his destiny.

“The world, it seemed, had been busy playing chess, / While I had played checkers […] and ignored the rest.”

These lines from a poem written by Vincent in 1979 recall William’s telling Vincent that he knew nothing about war—that while the world was engaged in a serious game of warfare, a boy like Vincent was playing trivial games. That Vincent writes these lines at age 18 shows him to have internalized William’s comment and the fundamental flaw in his reasoning: War was not Vincent’s reality, but then war, power struggles, people using people for their own aims are facts of life at any time, and this is what the title of the novel, which ignores the second line of the poem, highlights.

“Someone once said that failure is easier to live with than regret, and it pierced my heart like an arrow. Dreams are hard to catch, aren’t they? Especially if you don’t have the courage to try.”

In this quote, Dugoni uses Vincent’s regrets over his unpursued dreams as a general statement about human ambition. Everyone has dreams, but it’s easier to have a dream than it is to realize that dream. But it isn’t failing that hurts, it’s not trying. This hits Vincent to the core because he did not try to pursue his dreams of becoming a writer, so he is filled with unfulfilled regret.