Symbol of Game in Karuna Riazi’s The Gauntlet

Abstract

The Gauntlet by Karuna Riazi is a middle-grade novel that tells a story of a board game that lured children into their world and trapped them inside for the personal gain of the Architect of the game. Farah and her friends were determined to help her brother escape and go back into their world. In order to do so, they were forced to win several games that the Architect presented to them; otherwise, they would be imprisoned inside the game forever. By applying Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics theory, this study aims to reveal how the challenges Farah and her friends must face in the story work as a medium for the author to present ideas of control and liberation through the metaphor of a board game. This research  is conducted  through  descriptive  methodology,  and the data  is collected from the novel by finding relevant narratives and dialogues to explore how the game functions as a symbol for control and liberation.