Money to burn

Drugs, sexual obsession, crimes. These elements filled in the entire book in the fiction Money to Burn written by Piglia.

Since the start of the book, Piglia is constantly stressing the importance of MONEY, the medium used in the society for exchange. On page 14, the character the Girl is introduced. She is the lover of Mereles for money since she was 15, and she still went to secondary school. Piglia described that when she first brought money to her home, her mother told her that she “has to make the most of being young while she can”. Also, on the first page of Chapter 2, Piglia introduces another small character who is a bank-clerk. He just turned 40 and was short in his financial position because of his sick daughter. He has thought about stealing the money himself (page 19).  For these small characters, even though they are not committing crime, the scarcity of money also brings troubles to their lives (what i am saying??). When Piglia is portraying  the bank-clerk, he states that he just turned 40 and not have many hours to live. THIS IS THE MIDLIFE CRISIS. The scarcity of money is the factor for people in the society to feel anxious and not comfortable about.

The book takes the climax, the scene the gang burning money as its title. The gang was burning the 1000 peso bills, each of those will take the bank clerk a month to earn it. When people saw that, they are super mad about the gang. Because if the reason for them to murder is to get the money, people totally get it. But if they are burning the bills, it means that “they had no morals nor motives” to kill people. One people shouted that the gang should have donate the money. When I read this part, I was laughing. It is hilarious. From my point of view, the gang definitely has no morals nor ethics. So, people should definitely not expecting them to “improve” the conditions of the society, just don’t make it worse.  From the reaction of the crowd, it explains the usage of money: the value of it can improve the condition of the society; it can also be used to solve the midlife crisis of individual person. When people sees the money is “wasted”, going back from a bill to a piece of paper, their value got challenged.

The question I have for this week is that: do you agree that with an infinite amount of money, there is no crisis for an individual?