Hangman
A Simple Game with a Questionable Past
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Today’s entry relates to Episode 1: Alleys and Shadows in DANCING AT THE ORANGE PEEL. (You don’t have to read the episode first to enjoy this piece!)
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HANGMAN: A Simple Game with a Questionable Past
When I needed a game for two nine-year-old characters in my serialized novel to play on their school bus, I went back to my own childhood. “Hangman” and “I Spy” were the first to come to mind. After a bit of research, I knew Hangman was the appropriate choice.
For generations, children throughout the U.S. have played Hangman doodled on chalkboards or scribbled on notebook paper. Often seen as a child’s pastime, this simple word-guessing game has a problematic history laced with cultural influences and contemporary controversies.
How It’s Played
At its core, Hangman is a test of vocabulary and deduction. One player selects a word and represents it with blank spaces—each one standing for a letter. The second player attempts to reveal the word by guessing letters, one at a time. For every correct guess, the first player fills in the corresponding blank space. For every wrong guess, a segment of a stick figure—meant to depict a man being hanged—is drawn.
The game ends in one of two pays: a correct deduction of the word, thanks to enough letter guesses, and the second player wins, or the stick figure is completely drawn by the first player, signifying the "hanging" of the man, so the second player loses.
History and Origins
Though Hangman’s precise origins are murky, it could have been inspired by other games played in Victorian England, such as “Birds, Beasts, and Fishes,” a simple word game described in (get ready for this title) The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland With Tunes, Singing-Rhymes, And Methods Of Playing According To The Variants Extant And Recorded In Different Parts Of The Kingdom (Volume 1), collected and annotated by Alice Bertha Gomme (1894). Prior to Gomme’s game book, though, a set of rules for Hangman, was printed in the December 26, 1885, issue of the American magazine Good Housekeeping.
No one really knows for sure where it originated (although this YouTuber makes a strong case that he does). Regardless, the simplicity of the game, and the need for no more than pencil and paper to play, made it an easy one for school children to enjoy.
Cultural Influences
The game’s appeal to children and its uncomplicated rules would predict a quick spread of it, or some variation, to other countries. I haven’t found any facts to back that up, though, so I can only address the game’s evolution and influences in America.
Until the discovery of the rules in Good Housekeeping noted above, an article in a 1902 issue of The Philadelphia Inquirer was believed to make the first mention of a hanging man in relation to the game. It noted the game as popular at “White Cap” parties where—you guessed it—partygoers wore “white peaked caps with masks.”
Throughout the 1900s, educators used the game to enhance vocabulary and language learning. Then, in 1978, Atari released a digital game called Hangman (also called Spelling in some areas). Reportedly, media mogul and television show host Merv Griffin came up with the idea for the game show “Wheel of Fortune” after recalling the game he played with his sister during long, family car trips.
Contemporary Controversies
Unquestionably, the game’s central image—a person being hanged—is morbid. In an era increasingly aware of societal influences and mental health issues, such imagery can be especially inappropriate for children and teens. Some teachers have chosen alternative imagery, such as an apple tree with falling apples, that still support their classes’ learning goals.
The hanging man image evokes capital punishment, which is controversial, not only in the U.S., but in many other countries. Along with firing squad, electrocution, lethal injections, and gas chamber, death by hanging remains legal in some parts of the U.S. These heinous methods of execution were performed publicly until the execution of Rainey Bethea, a confessed rapist whose hanging in Owensboro, Kentucky, drew a crowd of an estimated 20,000 in 1936.
The act of hanging as a form of punishment carries painful memories for some cultures and communities, especially where it was used as a means of oppression or persecution. Initiating a game with such undertones appears insensitive to those historical traumas.
The seemingly innocuous game of Hangman serves as a testament to how cultural elements evolve and are reevaluated over time. What was once a harmless pastime is now at the intersection of cultural sensitivity and traditional play.
A Writer’s Choices
Knowing all this, why did I still choose to use the Hangman game in the opening scene of Dancing at The Orange Peel?
The story is set in the U.S. South in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time of intense racial unrest (not unlike today; history does repeat). Americans were entrenched in issues of civil rights, racial equality, and the ravages of war. It was a deeply confusing time for many, young and old.
Children, including me, received mixed messages about these issues from the authorities in their lives: the adults around them. This was exacerbated by a rise in television viewing and visual access to worldwide news. But generally, children adopt habits, beliefs, sayings and, yes, even seemingly harmless games, that are most pervasive in their immediate environment. After all, most children don’t know how or what to question. But as adults, we do.
Allowing us to face hard questions is one of the super-powers of storytelling and books, even (perhaps, especially) fiction. In writing this novel, I find myself regularly at odds between historical accuracy and my current values. Thus, I’m having to make some hard choices.
So, yes, for historical accuracy, Hangman is a game suitable for the time and place, as well as relevant for the characters. Not only that . . . I hope my use of Hangman—as complex and ugly as its history is—can provide an opening for us to question the complex and ugly things from our past that no longer fit in our world, both immediate and extended, things that have been so ingrained and systemic that we’ve simply not stopped to question them yet.
Sources and Related Material
As with most topics that pique my interest, I went down a deep rabbit hole of research for this one; here are some other things I found in case you’re a deep diver too.
The Complete History of Hangman (and, indeed, it’s the most complete history I could find)
Hangman (Game): History, Origins, Past, Present, and Future!
Thanks for reading. See how this article relates to my novel DANCING AT THE ORANGE PEEL by checking out Episode 1: Alleys and Shadows.
More reading: The Novel’s Episode Guide | THE MAILBAG
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Your grateful scribe,
Fascinating post. I note the hangman also adds a sense of foreboding, in the way our more gruesome nursery rhymes so often do. It gives a multi-layered/subtext to your scene.