In Jenny Offill’s Weather we are introduced to an almost passive yet observant main character. In many ways she is unlike a typical protagonist as she navigates through scenarios that kind of seem to happen to her, rather than her driving anything forward. However, her wit does not fail her, as she is obviously an intelligent person–at the very least very observant, which is evidenced by her reflections of the dinners and conferences she goes to with Sylvia. I think this passive attitude but awareness of the world is what makes Lizzie a good main character in a cli-fi novel, since she seems to reflect the attitude of many people today. We know about the climate disasters, of injustices, but we don’t really do anything about it–maybe because we feel stuck or not in control or have other things going on in our lives, just like Lizzie. For example, she notices at her first conference that there were “lots of people who were not Native Americans talking about Native Americans”; at another she reflects on the idea that when “older” generations die, there will be no unnerving feeling around technology because nothing will feel lost to the younger generations: “But wait, that sounds bad to me. Doesn’t that mean if we end up somewhere we don’t want to be, we can’t retrace our steps?” (24-26). Clearly, Lizzie sees the disconnect in speaking for cultural groups you aren’t part of, and worries about the future, but these thoughts are kept mainly to herself–they don’t speak some kind of movement, research, or anger in her. They just exist as the problems in the world. Similarly I think people today might feel this way about the things we are experiencing, where they are just things that exist and there isn’t much we can do about it, other than wait for doomsday. 

I think this lack of hope or lack of motivation to do anything is evident in another place in this novel, where Lizzie is talking about dreams. She gives an anecdote about how she had a dream she was in the supermarket, unable to find the switch to turn down the lights, “what happened to the flying dreams?” she asks (Offill 27). I think this is a nod to a concern Canavan also talked about, which is the societal loss of an ability to think of a future. The same way Lizzie has grown out of dreaming of flying (a common dream I am assuming)–or maybe depressed out of such whimsical thinking–we have also become too diluted to think up a plausible future for ourselves. We deal with the problems of the world as something happening TO us, and something we just have to live with, because there is no collective drive to envision a future where we adapt, are conscious about our autonomy or role as it relates to living along with nature, or “flying”. Instead, we look at the climate change clock in Union Square, take a deep breath out, immediately aware of all the history, paradoxes and injustices, and systems that got us here, and keep going along our day.