The Queen's Gambit

“Something in her life was solved: she knew about the chess pieces and how they moved and captured, and she knew how to make herself feel good in the stomach and in the tense joints of her arms and legs, with the pills the orphanage gave her.”

Beth’s dependence on substances and genius for chess begin to develop at almost the same time in her life. The notion that they are connected, and that both calm her and make her feel good, creates a relationship between her substance use and genius that follows her throughout the novel.

“The next Sunday she blocked the Scholar’s Mate with her king’s knight. She had gone over the game in her mind a hundred times, until the anger and humiliation were purged from it, leaving the pieces and the board clear in her nighttime vision.”

Even from her early days playing, Beth’s motivation in chess is to win, and there is nothing she dislikes more than losing. The pain and fear of losing is a double-edged sword for Beth: It spurs her to improve, but it also clouds her mind and prevents her from seeing clearly. To win, she must pass through this pain and fear and find clarity on the other side. Increasingly, she turns to pills to achieve this clarity.

“And she was scared to go to bed tonight without pills. She had been sleeping only two or three hours a night for the past two nights. Her eyes felt gritty and the back of her neck, even right after showering, was sweaty.”

When Methuen stops giving the children tranquilizers, Beth suffers from withdrawal symptoms. She comes to discover that the pills not only make her feel good but that their absence makes her feel terrible, creating a need for them in her mind.