Wealth and Greed Theme Analysis

E. Lockhart’s novel We Were Liars documents the wealthy Sinclair family’s fall from grace. The Sinclair sisters—Penny, Carrie, and Bess, all of whom stand to inherit a lot of money from their father, Harris—become greedy and jealous of one another after their mother, Tipper Taft, dies, and they begin to split up her prized possessions. Such greed dominates their lives, as the sisters spend most of their time drinking and fighting with one another. When Cady Eastman, the eldest Sinclair grandchild, suffers an accident that leaves her with significant memory loss, her investigation into the accident further reveals the ways in which wealth can destroy family ties. Through the stories that Cady uncovers in her investigation, the novel ultimately demonstrates the destructive power of greed and the ways in which extreme wealth can tear a family apart.

Lockhart quickly establishes the Sinclair clan as an upper-class family highly concerned with wealth and privilege. This wealth is evidenced not only by the Sinclair sisters’ top-quality educations, but also by the fact that none of them has a real job or provides for herself; they are all, in one way or another, living off of their father’s trust fund. Carrie ran a jewelry boutique until it failed, Bess was a divorced stay-at-home-mom, and Penny ran a dog-breeding business that hardly brought in any income at all. None evidence a particularly strong work ethic, which connects their wealth to a sense of entitled laziness.

Penny, Carrie, and Bess also spend their summers on Beechwood Island, the island their father owns near Martha’s Vineyard. They have houses built especially for each one of them but often bicker about whose house is due for renovations, seeing the state of their summer homes as a symbol of their father’s love for them. Clearly this family has wrapped up its sense of value with material possessions, further setting the stage for the sisters’ bickering over their inheritance. While their mother had been involved in many different charities in her lifetime, the Sinclair daughters have no such interest in using the family money for charitable causes, and are only concerned about using their inheritance to maintain their lifestyles. Growing up in an atmosphere of extreme wealth and privilege, Tipper’s daughters never learn the value of charity or generosity, and instead focus on their own needs and wants.

It comes as no surprise, then, that after Tipper’s death, the sisters spend most of the following summer arguing about money and possessions. They argue about who took care of Tipper when she was ill, suggesting that their respective convalescent care has helped them earn a larger share of the inheritance. Bess argues that she should have their parents’ house in Boston because she was with Tipper in her last days: “Who drove Mother to her doctor’s appointments? Who sat by her bedside?” The sisters are essentially monetizing the love and care of their own parents in an effort to gain more money. Their desire for money and privilege is an essential part—possibly the most essential part—of their relationship with their parents, by which the novel further reveals how wealth and greed erode familial ties.

The sisters also use their own children as pawns in this scheme. Penny, for example, wants her daughter, Cady, to support her argument that the Eastmans should hold on to Windemere, one of the larger summer houses on the island. But Cady refuses, telling her grandfather that the house is too large for the two of them, which upsets Penny. Cady’s cousin Johnny feels the same pressure from his mother and also refuses to play the family game. As this new generation of Sinclairs begins to diverge from the family obsession with wealth and privilege, the sisters’ narrow-minded greed fractures the family further still. This intergenerational tension ends in tragedy when three members of the younger generation of the Sinclair clan are killed in a fire, symbolically illustrating the devasting effects of greed on families. Gat, who is not actually a member of the Sinclair family but rather the nephew of Carrie’s boyfriend, Ed, is the first to rail against the Sinclairs’ rampant materiality. One evening, he asks how it is possible that Harris owns land—not in the legal sense, but philosophically. He mentions the level of poverty that he saw on a recent trip to India, which changed his perspective on ownership. Gat’s influence helps the Liars—as the family calls the younger generation—recognize the destructive potential of wealth, and eventually turns them against the greed their parents are exhibiting.

As the Liars observe the corrupting influence of money that surrounds them, they hatch a plan to destroy the main house on the island, known as Clairmont, which they describe as “the symbol of everything that was wrong.” Harris had threatened to withdraw Carrie’s inheritance if she married Ed, Gat’s uncle, and the Liars are worried that this will tear apart the family and separate Gat from the cousins. The four decide to burn Clairmont down, figuring that without anything left to fight over, the family will come together.

The Liars’ plan goes awry, however, and the fire kills all of them but Cady, who is left with little memory of the incident and symptoms that are consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder. In her fragile state, Cady begins giving away all her possessions, almost as an attempt to purge her connection to the family and its material excesses. It is only when she has rid herself of nearly everything she owns that she begins to recuperate her memory and starts to come to terms with the tragedy. Cady’s cathartic process helps her to find redemption and freedom through simplicity and suggests that countering the corrosive influence of greed is possible if one rejects wealth, privilege, and materiality.