The escalation to physical violence illustrates the extreme lengths to which Marcus’s jealousy and anger have driven him. The entire novel is a commentary on the corrosive nature of greed and, here, Marcus’s jealousy, which stems from his greed, almost causes him to kill his friend. For his part, McTeague remains clueless because he does not feel that the wealth has altered his life all that much. Even if it had, he does not understand Marcus’s frustration because he is not on the unlucky side of the situation.