Money, a novel about, well… money, surprisingly has a lot of mentions about the weather as well. John Self seems to refer to the weather almost as constantly as he does to money––how he’s “dumped out of the sky into nothing weather” (51), and there’s just “no weather” (71), and him asking “where has the weather gone?” (85). I think if we exchange the word “weather” with the word “money”, it’d still make sense: he’s just dumped into nothing money, there’s no money, where has the money gone? It is as if two, money and weather, are synonyms for each other. When John isn’t doing anything for money, there’s no weather. When there some kind of dilemma in him getting money, it’s raining, or snowing, or it’s oppressively hot, or it’s just grey.
Throughout the novel the weather is constantly grey, bleak, and having all kinds of effects (rain, snow), but rarely is there “nice weather”. The only time when it’s considered to be nice is when the royal wedding was happening, and John sat there watching and bawled. He said Princess Diana had the colour of “health or sun… but it is only the colour of money” (263). Weather and money are something you can’t control, John has said it himself, but it seems the people who have money are those who can also control the weather, those who have the weather element. Martina is also weather and money, where she could “fill the air with sun or thunder at the touch of her tap… she’s [John’s] weather god for now” (320), and because she controls the weather and the wealth, she also controls him.
(I hope I’m making sense… I’m still trying to distinguish or clearly identify the relationship between weather and money and this is what I have come up with so far.)
Hi Cherie,
great observation! While I don’t have anything to add in the way of examples, I think bringing up the literary concept of the pathetic fallacy might be useful here. As a pathetic fallacy is the idea that the weather mirrors a character’s interior state, it’s interesting that in “Money”, as you’ve pointed out, it correlates to money and its availability. I think this could point to the idea that John, as a character, is himself a representation of money and its potential, and therefore his state is synonymous with money, and now the weather. This also ties into the point other posts have been making about the connection between money and John’s substance abuse- transactions that cause him to physically internalize his income.
Any other thoughts? Great idea again, Cherie!
Hi Cherie, great thoughts. Its also really good to have it discussed in class thoroughly.
After lecture, we can summarize this metaphoric parallelism between two ideas – money and weather, in this case – into a sort of “limited metaphor”. This includes the sense that there is a limit to how much they relate to each other. Say, money is always going to be the money we know and love (or possibly hate), and weather is going to be something else completely. All despite money and weather both being something people try to predict, examine, make a science of, praise/loathe, pray for the good, survive the disastrous, and so on.
This could all be part of the author’s idea to relate money to other aspects in life. Well, the entire novel is probably meant to do that.
If only I can remember everything else we’ve all discussed in class about this. Does anyone have more thoughts and suggestjons?