“Payback”

2008 Atwood, Margaret [Eleanor] (b. 1939). “Payback.” In her Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (Toronto, ON, Canada: Anansi, 2008), 162-203. PSt CBC Massey Lecture Series

In the book Atwood reflects on the nature of debt and the debtor creditor relationship from a number of different perspectives, primarily in literature and myth. In the last chapter, “Payback” (163-203), she presents a twenty-first century Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (). This “Scrooge Nouveau,” as she calls him, owns multiple corporations, and is only concerned with more and more money and has no interest in the damage his actions inflict on other people or the planet. The first spirit is the Spirit of Earth Day Past who shows him how Earth was nurtured in various cultures but also shows him the Black Death and other ways humans negatively impacted the Earth. The Spirit of Earth Day Present shows him various contemporary disasters-in-the making. Finally, the Spirit of Earth Day Future multiple possible futures. In one, the human race is extinct. Finally, alternative futures are present, one in which the Earth is recovering and the other in which there is a food shortage, inflation has destroyed Scrooge’s wealth, and he is in danger of starvation. Canadian female author.