Lawn Boy

The boy’s unexpected adventures teach him (and, by extension, the reader) about finance, economy, and capitalism. As the boy’s business grows, he inevitably enters complicated adult systems. When Arnold explains the boy’s financial situation, he says, “Your problem […] is both simple and a bit complex” (42), encapsulating the tension between comprehending marketplace operations and actually profiting from them. Even Arnold sometimes struggles to turn a profit in the stock market, as he admits. The boy is an attentive listener as he processes Arnold’s explanations, but the economy’s complexities frustrate him. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t always have simple answers, and the boy must draw upon his new business partners and family to navigate the adult world’s challenges.

The more the boy understands, the more he enjoys the world of money. Yet, he repeatedly wishes for his old, simpler life, where he understood the rules, his role, and how to fix problems. The boy’s family most clearly represents this straightforwardness. Despite their financial problems, their home is not a stressful environment. The family’s solutions always follow the principles of compassion and basic human decency, which the boy applies to his relationships. The lawn mower also represents simplicity. The mower causes the boy’s success, but he regards it as a humble, benevolent machine that he can understand and operate. The mower doesn’t have hidden nuances; it runs when he starts the engine, and if something doesn’t work, he can identify a specific reason.

The boy is more comfortable working with limited resources because of his background. The more moving pieces, the more complicated the operations are, we see as the boy’s business grows: Mowing jobs are simple to track while the business consists of the boy and his mower, but as he accumulates more clients, employees, and money, his work becomes increasingly intricate. The stock market also teaches him the macro side of his business—supply and demand between customers and employees impacts business growth, a random company’s net worth affects their stock’s value, etc. By the end, the boy’s family, Pasqual and the employees, and Joey all depend on the boy. The more the boy participates in the world, the more of it he affects.

The boy spends the first half of the book mostly mowing lawns and landing more customers. His summer job consumes his time, and the full-time workload’s effect on the boy’s subconscious generates a theme about the nature of work itself. The first month of summer passes uneventfully, and the boy reduces those days to accumulating numbers:

Two weeks passed Fourteen days passed, three hundred and thirty-six hours flew by, twenty thousand one hundred and sixty minutes whistled past, twelve million ninety six thousand seconds roared away…. Numbers, all numbers. And that’s what happened to the time. It turned to numbers (30).

The boy’s trade is repetitive: He spends all his waking hours driving a mower, making grass lines, and maintaining the machine. The higher the client numbers grow, the faster time passes. His mind begins working in loops and patterns, fixating on lawns. Time the boy would normally spend perusing Sports Illustrated athlete profiles is replaced with studying photographs of baseball diamonds’ mowing patterns. The boy burrows so deeply in work-mode that even his mom half-jokingly asserts she hardly recognizes his face anymore. Work doesn’t necessarily make the boy mature faster, but it does strip him of leisure.

The boy needs to step back a few paces to consider his work’s ramifications: “Mostly the work cycle took over and I kind of missed the bigger picture” (34). The boy only starts seeing a broader perspective when Arnold simplifies operations, sending mowers directly to their first jobsites. As the boy and a worker take an inspection drive, the boy realizes that his summer gig “was bigger than just a few people running around mowing lawns” (34). The boy now bears responsibility for a network of lawns, as well as his employees’ livelihoods. The boy’s awareness further increases when he bikes to Arnold’s house on a rainy day. The boy used to hate summer rain, but now the hammering rain helps him escape the monotonous work cycle and acknowledge beauty. As Arnold explains what has been happening to the boy’s business and investments, the novel shifts and the boy becomes a more active participant in his own enterprise.

Work ethic does not always directly correlate to income earned. The boy’s parents apply their intelligence to important work, but their jobs pay less. Arnold, despite successfully investing the boy’s money, doesn’t have cash available when the boy first meets him. Pasqual works creatively and diligently, but his social status bars him from higher-paying work. Nevertheless, they’re all passionate about their work. The boy recognizes that his inadvertent entrepreneurship has created an income and community out of a modest lawn mower. Regardless of paychecks or job titles, work assist people and communities, whether that work includes mowing lawns, expanding a business and making jobs, or providing for a family.

The boy doesn’t shirk hard work—alongside his employees, he rides his trusty old mower from sunup to sundown—but the extent of the boy’s success boils down to dumb luck. By far the largest share of the money he makes comes from stock market. Paulsen uses capitalism to explore how characters use their resources. Paulsen applies the rags-to-riches plot trope—a standard narrative that traces a poor character earning wealth through hard work and a great deal of luck—to give the boy unsolicited responsibility. This plot cliché comes from 19th-century author Horatio Alger, who wrote paeans to capitalism featuring poor boys devoting themselves to toil and integrity and receiving wealth and acclaim through rarely acknowledge coincidence and luck. Lawn Boy’s implausible plot relies on luck more than on hard work to catapult the boy to financial success, calling on readers to suspend disbelief so the narrative can focus on character.