Does money bring happiness?
How successfully has the novel Millions and the process of creating your own board game led you to your thinking about issues of money and happiness?
Millions is a very powerful novel written by Frank Cottrell Boyce. The story is made powerful by the fact we are hearing it from a personal point of view (Damian)! Damian appears to be a normal schoolboy along with his brother Anthony. But Damian has an unusual craze. He is enthralled by Saints. The story is set in the town of Runcorn near Manchester. The boy’s mother died when they were younger and they both like to be excellent. After meeting a group of Latter Day Saints Damian decides to build his own hermitage. But one night Damian can’t sleep and decides to go to his hermitage which is next to a railway line. As a train whizzes past a bag of money falls onto Damian’s hermitage! Antony and Damian count it up to be £229,370. They buy many things with this money. After visualising St Francis of Assisi, Damian decides he should give the money to the poor instead before the euro switch over! The two boys are worried that if they tell their dad about the money he will not let them have all of it so they try to hide it from him! Then one day a man comes to Damian. The boys realise the money had been stolen and then thrown off the train and now the robber has come back for it. After meeting the robber whilst performing, Damian rushes home. Dad is indeed very surprised when he finds out about the money. Then that night the robber comes again and tells Damian that he will call him after the Euro switch over expecting him to give him the money in Euros! The two boys, dad and his new partner Dorothy drive up to Manchester because there are more banks there. Using a cheeky little system Damian and Dorothy manage to get the money changed in large amounts! At the end Damian goes to the railway line where he visualises his mother. When asked what miracle she performed to become a saint she replies you! Then the family land in Nigeria and give water to the poor people in the Desert!
My board game was my countries version of Monopoly. Using the names of different places in my country (e.g. cricketer’s cliffs) to replace the normal names (e.g. Pall Mall) it has the exact same rules and objectives as a normal game of Monopoly. To have your competitors bankrupt and for you to have power over the board. However I strongly believe that winning a game of Monopoly is very different to owning an estate in the real world but is probably a lot more enjoyable than owning it in the real world!
Looking back on the book really makes you realise what family, loss, religious faith and money is. The loss of someone close to you is devastating and something nobody in the world likes or ever will like! I think having a strong family is very important in dealing with this loss. Faith isn’t always religious. But when it is it is extremely important to that person. A lot of people like Damian find comfort in believing that there is one man who rules over the world although they will never be able to prove that! A religious faith brings joy and peace to the people of that faith. In my mind, the most major things in life are things money can’t buy. Some people say money can buy you happiness but I am sure that happiness can’t be bought. Money can buy you physical things but not mental or spiritual things.
Frank Cottrell Boyce involves us in the story by making you think about the story. It’s not a book that you would just read. You would put the book down and think about what happens in the book means to you personally. You also feel the story from Damian’s point of view. Although you could suggest that getting one source of information is bias, it is in my opinion a stroke of genius from Frank Cottrell Boyce! The plot is brilliant to. The title suggests that this is a story about money. But I don’t think it is! It’s more about a family who has suffered a loss and is trying to get back to normality!
Personally I can’t think of anything invisible that I value. I am not that sort of person. In this story I think both the reader and the characters learn that money is not worth as much as we make it out to be in the real world. I think one thing the reader learns after reading millions, is how losing someone close can affect you and how deeply heartbreaking it is! Another thing I think the characters learn is how much a close family is worth. Although sometimes things don’t go smoothly, in the end your family is worth so much!
I enjoyed reading Millions a lot. As I said it really makes you think! To be honest I can be very materialistic. I get very excited at Christmas and in the run up to my birthday! But not because they are special, because they mean I will get presents when I waken up in the morning! I think the creation of a board game was a very good and fun thing to do. I enjoyed that very much and feel that my game was quite successful.
