Margaret Atwood’s Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth

Igor Maver

doi:10.4312/an.57.1.31-38

Authors

Igor Maver University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Slovenia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4312/an.57.1.31-38

Keywords:

Charles Dickens, debt, ecology, Margaret Atwood, Victorian literature

Abstract

Margaret Atwood’s provocative book of non-fiction contains many literary references, which help to effectively highlight her points about such a topical matter as debt, debt as a philosophical, politico-economic, religious, and historical issue over the centuries. In the central chapters of the book she looks at the Protestant Reformation and the introduction of interest on loans and in this light analyzes the novels by Dickens, Irving, Thackeray and G. Eliot. Her final statement in the book is, however, about the ecological debt we all have to pay to Earth in order to ensure our existence.

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References

Ashenburg, Katherine. »What Atwood Knows«. Toronto Life 43/2 (2009): 54-60.

Atwood, Margaret. 2008. Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. London: Bloomsbury, 2009.

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Dickens, Charles. 1843. A Christmas Carol. New York: Pocket Books, 1958.

Gray, John. »The Way of All Debt«. The New York Review of Books, Vol. 56/6, April 2009, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22556, accessed 26 March 2010.

Liss, David. »Getting Even: Civilization is Built on Credits and Debits«. Washington Post, November 23, 2008: T5.

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