Murray, J. (2021). Women Navigating the Climate Catastrophe: Challenging Anthropocentrism in Selected Fiction. Journal of Literary Studies, 37(3), 15–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/02564718.2021.1959760

• Murray discusses how different novels address climate catastrophe and the emotional pressure that comes with caring for the planet. Even though her argument focuses on women in these stories, the part that actually helps my project is her discussion of the emotional side of climate anxiety,  things like feeling overwhelmed, responsible, or stuck between everyday life and global disaster. I’m using this source because it gives me a vocabulary for understanding the kind of climate worry and emotional “weight” that shows up in Weather. Murray’s ideas about ecological fear and the burden of caring for the world help me explain how Offill’s fragmented style captures that same feeling, even though my paper isn’t explicitly focused on gender.

De Cristofaro, D. (2024). ‘How do you sleep at night knowing all this?’: climate breakdown, sleep, and extractive capitalism in contemporary literature and culture. Textual Practice, 38(10), 1601–1623. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2023.2265887

• De Cristofaro examines how contemporary literature represents climate anxiety through disrupted sleep, arguing that insomnia becomes an emotional and political response to living in a world structured by extractive capitalism. What interests me for my paper is the idea that climate knowledge produces a constant background stress, a low-level psychological pressure that shows up in daily life. This connects directly to Weather, where Lizzie’s thoughts jump between ordinary routines and an ever-present dread about the future. I’m using this source because it helps explain how Offill’s writing mirrors that restless mental state. The feeling of never being able to entirely “rest” when you’re aware of everything that’s falling apart.

Peinado Abarrio, Rubén. “’Fragmented and bewildering:’ The New Risk Society in Jenny Offill’s Weather”. Revista De Estudios Norteamericanos, vol. 26, Dec. 2022,          https://doi.org/10.12795/REN.2022.i26.11        

• Peinado-Abarrio reads Weather through the idea of a “risk society,” arguing that the novel’s fragmented style reflects the unstable, rapidly shifting world they live in. He talks about how Weather has this consent flow of worries, information, and global threats that affect daily life. This source is helpful for my paper because it helps me explore why fragmentation isn’t just a writing choice but is also connected to emotional and social pressure and to living with constant concerns.

Wharton, Amy S. “The Sociology of Emotional Labor.” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 35, 2009, pp. 147–65. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27800073

• Wharton’s article explains the idea of emotional labor,  how people manage their feelings to meet social expectations, and the effects this has on stress and mental health. Even though she focuses on workplaces, I’m using this source because it helps me think about the emotional weight of caring in general. In Weather, Lizzie constantly balances her own anxiety, concern for others, and awareness of global problems, which creates a kind of ongoing emotional strain similar to what Wharton describes.

Fisher, Clare. “The centrality of the trivial: reading Jenny Offill’s weather.” Alluvium: 21st-Century Writing, 21st-Century Approaches 8.2 (2020).

• Fisher’s article looks at how Offill uses small, everyday details to shape the narrative of Weather. She argues that these “trivial” moments, observations about groceries, Weather, or minor interactions are central to understanding Lizzie’s  emotional world. I’m using this source because it helps me see how the novel’s focus on seemingly minor details contributes to how it conveys anxiety, care, and attention to the world. This article supports my research question: the novel’s fragmentary approach captures Lizzie’s emotional strain, showing that caring for others and the world is part of her daily life.

Kruger, Katherine. “Aging through Precarious Time: Maintenance and Milling in The Cost of Living and Weather.” Poetics Today 44.1-2 (2023): 89-110. https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-10342099

• Kruger explores how Offill captures daily life in Weather, focusing on Lizzie’s small, repetitive tasks and routines that structure her experience. She argues that these patterns show how people try to maintain some sense of order and stability in uncertain times. I am using this source because it helps me see how the novel’s brief, fragmented glimpses of Lizzie’s everyday life reveal the constant effort and attention required to care for others and stay aware of the world. Kruger’s analysis gives me a way to connect Lizzie’s personal routines with the emotional weight of responsibility, showing how her day-to-day actions carry more profound significance.

Question: How does Weather portray the emotional and psychological labor of caring for other people and for the world as a gendered burden, and does Offill’s fragmented way of writing make that burden more visible or hide it?

work cited

• Murray, Jessica. “Women Navigating the Climate Catastrophe: Challenging Anthropocentrism in Selected Fiction.” Journal of Literary Studies 37.3 (2021): 15-33.
• De Cristofaro, Diletta. “‘How Do You Sleep at Night Knowing All This?’: Climate Breakdown, Sleep, and Extractive Capitalism in Contemporary Literature and Culture.” Textual Practice, vol. 38, no. 10, 2024, pp. 1601–23, https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2023.2265887.
• PEINADO-ABARRIO, R. U. B. É. N. ““FRAGMENTED AND BEWILDERING:” THE NEW RISK SOCIETY IN JENNY OFFILL’S WEATHER.”
• Bobis, Anne. “An Unfaithful Feminist: Neoliberal Feminism, Identity, and Postmodernism in Jenny Offill’s Dept. Of Speculation.” (2023).
• Declercq, Edith. Beyond “the Obligatory Note of Hope”: Buddhism, Ecology, and Affect in the Everyday Anthropocene Novel. Diss. Ghent University, 2021.
• Wharton, Amy S. “The Sociology of Emotional Labor.” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 35, 2009, pp. 147–65. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27800073. Accessed 20 Nov. 2025.
  At first, searching for peer-reviewed journals for my research question was honestly pretty hard and frustrating. I started with Hunter Libraries, but the keywords I thought would work, like “emotional labor,” “psychological labor,” “fragmentation in Weather,” and “gendered burden,” didn’t give me many useful results. Because of that, I tried other places. Google Scholar gave me more articles to look through, but I still had to be careful since not everything on there is actually peer-reviewed. I did manage to find a couple of good sources that were. I also checked JSTOR and ended up finding one more article that was helpful. Overall, the process took a lot of trial and error with different keywords and search combinations, but it helped me understand how to adjust my searches and where to look when one database didn’t give me enough results. I still feel like I have more research to do, to find better sources and fine tune my question.

How does Weather portray the emotional and psychological labor of caring for other people and for the world as a gendered burden, and does Offill’s fragmented way of writing make that burden more visible or hide it?

Reading the first part of this novel, I felt like I was watching someone try to hold their life together as the world fell apart around them. The narrator, Lizzie, jumps from one thought to another so quickly that, at first, it felt random to me. But then I realized it reflects how she experiences her life: scattered, overwhelmed, and always half in the present moment and half trapped in everything that could go wrong.

Lizzie appears to be leading an average life. She spends time with her husband, Ben, works at a library, and looks after her kid, Eli. Under the surface, though, she is always concerned about her mother, her brother’s sobriety, and those around her who need help. She’s the kind of person who always says “yes” even when she is exhausted. Her instinct is to fix everyone, even when she can’t fix herself. This makes her feel pulled in too many directions and feel like she is being drowned by all the responsibilities she has to care about.

Her life reaches a new level of pressure when she begins helping with her old professor’s podcast, responding to people who are scared about the future. She starts reading questions from people who are terrified about the future, parents asking how to protect their children, and others trying to prepare for social collapse. These people are scared, and somehow Lizzie feels responsible for calming them down or at least acknowledging their fear. As she reads more and more, her daily life starts to feel smaller but also more fragile, as if anything could break at any moment.

I find it interesting that Lizzie never talks about climate change directly to anyone in a big, dramatic way. Instead, it becomes part of her life, entering her world in tiny fragments: a question, a headline, a stranger’s fear. She might be helping her brother one moment, and then suddenly she’s thinking about what to do when society collapses. These thoughts wander in unpredictable ways; they come in quick flashes, almost like intrusive reminders that something bigger is always happening outside her life. This way of thinking feels very real: for most of us, conversations about climate change or other world problems don’t happen only through serious, dramatic discussions but also through random incidents like a phone notification, conversations we might overhear, or a random social media post. It hangs around in the background, shaping how we move through our day without us even realizing it.

Reading these pages, I kept thinking about how all her worries become their own form of expression. Even though she is overwhelmed, she is not hopeless; she still pays attention to small moments. She is funny, joking around with her son, noticing people around her, and caring about them. To me, that is a reminder that even when everything is overwhelmed, life keeps moving.

Silence plays a significant role in this novel, almost becoming its own language. Some of the novel’s essential events unfold without anyone really saying much. Whether it’s Piya and Fokir trying to communicate or Kanai trying to understand Fakir’s silence, these quiet moments speak to us. The novel began with survival, nature, and history, but as the story deepens, we see new relationships form, and the story becomes personal.  It became about people who are not supposed to be connected, who barely share a language, and yet somehow end up sharing something that looks a lot like intimacy. I’m talking about Piya and Fokir.

As we discussed in class before, we know Fokir is married. He has a wife. He even has a child. And yet, when Fokir and Piya travel together deeper into the tide country, there is this intimacy forming between them. They sit together in a boat surrounded by water, barely speaking but still understanding each other. They move like two people who have known each other for years. They keep a careful eye on one another. It’s strange because it doesn’t feel like cheating, yet it doesn’t feel innocent either. Their silence is almost romantic, in a way that is hard to explain.

It made me think about what draws people together. Is it talking with each other, attractiveness, culture, or their character?

A lot of times it is complicated, but sometimes it is as simple as giving someone attention and making them feel seen. It could be a feeling, the sense that someone sees the world the way you do, even without saying it. With Piya and Fokir, their bond comes from how they move through nature together. They look at the same water and the same dolphins and feel the same awe. They trust each other with their lives.

Their connection with one another raises a bigger question: what makes two people understand each other? Is language the only way, or can silence be its own kind of truth?

We see at the end of the novel that when the storm hits, everything becomes urgent, and survival becomes the only thing they have to focus on. Fokir and Piya can’t tell each other what they feel, and honestly, they never were able to. But what matters is how they act. Fokir chooses to protect Piya, even though he has a family waiting for him. It isn’t about romance, loyalty, or guilt. It’s just a moment where he decides that her life is worth saving. His silence becomes action.

Some relationships don’t fit into neat labels. Ghosh never lets us forget that this connection is complicated. And that’s the point. Not everything needs to be neat or easy to understand. Some relationships just happen, even when they shouldn’t. Piya and Fokir weren’t lovers, but they were more than strangers. Two people understood each other without speaking. Their connection wasn’t through language, culture, or even the time spent together. But it was the way they trusted each other and tried to understand one another through silent actions and small words. I learned that speaking isn’t always the highest form of communication. Sometimes people know each other best in quiet spaces where there’s nothing to prove or explain. Silence carries love, care, fear, and loss. It can be louder than words.