56 pages • 1 hour read
Rufi ThorpeMargo's Got Money Troubles
Rufi ThorpeFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Margo Millet
Content Warning: The source text depicts drug use and addiction. It mentions sexual assault and contains offensive and derogatory language surrounding sex work.
Margo Millet is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. She speaks in the first person as the book’s narrator, who is narrating events from her past. However, she speaks of her past experiences—which make up the bulk of the novel—in the third person, saying she prefers this narrative distance. This switch between the first- and third-person narrative voice distinguishes the two. Margo the narrator is of unspecified age, while Margo the character is a 19-year-old single mother who dropped out of college to have a baby. She winds up becoming a creator on OnlyFans to support herself and her child.
Margo is an intelligent, creative, and resilient young woman. Her impressive writing skills catch the attention of her professor, Mark, and his compliments are the start of their affair. Margo’s intelligence helps her to quickly learn and grow as a creator on OnlyFans. She is able to use the specifics of the platform to her advantage; additionally, she also draws on advice and insights—such as Jinx’s experience in professional wrestling, or the discoverability of TikTok—to maximize her reach on the platform. She observes that celebrities are the highest earners on OnlyFans, so Margo smartly builds celebrity status for herself through her writing skills and creativity. The art of storytelling, specifically, is central to Margo as both a character and a narrator: As Margo the character grows from strength to strength as an OnlyFans creator, Margo the narrator retells this story in a way that earns the reader’s support and sympathy.
Equally central to Margo’s character is her nuanced understanding of the world. This is a quality that is highlighted in her psychological evaluation by Dr. Sharp. Margo sees the people in her life, including herself, as flawed. However, she does not condemn them for their flaws; she is able to understand each person’s motivations. She treats all the people in her life with this same level of understanding, including Shyanne, Jinx, and Mark, all of whom cause Margo extreme distress; still, she is able to forgive them because she can empathize with them. Her ability to see the layers and complexities in people and situations also contributes to her lack of strong moral judgment. This is seen in not just her choice to become an OnlyFans creator, but also in the acceptance and love she shows Jinx despite her disappointment in his relapse. Although Margo does grapple with questions about her own goodness following the constant judgment she receives from people like her mother, she is able to detach the notion of supposed morality from the situation as she makes choices that are in her best interest.
While Margo never bows to social expectations, this is one important way in which she is deeply contrasted against her own mother. Margo is fiercely independent in thought and action. She chooses not to involve a clearly reluctant Mark in anything to do with Bodhi, and she only approaches him when she is financially desperate. However, she holds no expectations that he is to provide for her and Bodhi, especially because Margo has independently made the decision to have the baby. Margo’s independence is also evidenced in her willingness to eschew other people’s opinions and judgment in favor of what she believes is right for her. In contrast, Shyanne constantly succumbs to society’s opinions and her husband’s ideas of morality, sacrificing her own views and her relationship with her daughter just to toe the line.
Margo’s intelligence and independence is tempered by her deep capacity for empathy and her dedication as a mother. While Patriarchal Standards of Women’s Morality often portray women as being either sexual and immoral or maternal and pure, Margo is a complex character who combines these traits and therefore subverts these ideas about women and sex.
Jinx
Jinx is Margo’s father. A former professional wrestler, Jinx moved into managing other wrestlers after a back injury ended his wrestling career. He also struggles with addiction; he enters Margo’s and Bodhi’s life right off the heels of a stint in rehab for heroin addiction.
Jinx is a contradictory character from the outset. Margo is the result of a one-night stand between Jinx and her mother, Shyanne, despite the fact that Jinx was married with a family of his own at the time of Margo’s conception. He is not a dependable partner to either his own wife or Shyanne, confessing that he always struggled to stay faithful. Although Shyanne describes how Jinx visited and helped out as much as he could when Margo was growing up, Jinx still prioritized his career, wife, and other family, leaving Shyanne to do the bulk of the parenting. Additionally, Jinx tells Margo that his wife, Cheri, is divorcing him, showing that his failings as a partner extended into his marriage as well.
Despite this, Jinx is a loving, involved, and supportive father to Margo and grandfather to Bodhi. He accepts Margo’s decision to have her baby without censure, and although he initially reacts in shock to Margo’s OnlyFans work, he is quick to reassert his unconditional love and support for his daughter. Recognizing that this is what Margo truly wants to do, Jinx sets aside any judgment and personal misgivings to help his daughter out in whatever way he can. This extends across babysitting Bodhi so Margo can work, to giving her advice and insight to grow her account, and helping manage her taxes and finances.
Despite this, Jinx displays that he is still unreliable as an individual, and this is rooted in his addiction. When he relapses, he confesses to Margo that he has been battling addiction all his life. However, the love and understanding Jinx shows his daughter is repaid in kind when Margo refuses to give up on her father. She, too, suspends judgment to help him get the treatment he needs, choosing to stand by him as he did for her. As the novel ends, Jinx and Margo’s relationship continues to be a close one, and while he has moved out after starting methadone treatment, he continues to be a loving and involved father and grandfather.
Shyanne
Shyanne is Margo’s mother. Like her daughter, Shyanne, too, is a single mother, having conceived Margo after having a one-night stand with Jinx. However, although some of their life experiences share similarities, Shyanne and Margo are very different as people.
From the outset, Shyanne is established as being insecure and selfish. Although she does love her daughter, she prioritizes her own needs and conveniences over her child’s well-being. To this end, Shyanne refuses to help out after Bodhi is born, and she even hides the fact of her grandchild’s existence from her conservative partner, Kenny, as she worries about his reaction. While Margo is a mother who is focused on her child’s needs, Shyanne is concerned only about herself, and she even chooses to cut her daughter out of her life to protect herself.
As dissimilar as Shyanne and Margo are as mothers, they are also opposites as people. Margo’s independence is contrasted with Shyanne’s dependence on someone else to take care of her. Shyanne hides numerous aspects of who she truly is from Kenny, fearing that he will not accept these parts of her and will thus leave her. In turn, she shows this same lack of acceptance toward her own daughter, when she is horrified by Margo’s OnlyFans work and asks her not to attend her wedding. Ironically, however, it is Shyanne with her deep concern over society’s opinions and judgments who ends up unhappy. She admits to feeling trapped in her marriage, having made every decision to please and appease Kenny, as she believed she had no other option. Margo, on the other hand, ends up with freedom and independence and is able to live her life on her own terms.
Mark
Mark is the father of Margo’s child, Bodhi. He was her professor at Fullerton College, and despite being married with a family of his own, he initiated an affair with Margo. When he discovered that Margo was pregnant, he refused to take any responsibility: He asked her to have an abortion, and he cut off all contact with Margo when she refused.
Mark and Margo’s relationship is inherently a problematic one owing to the power imbalance between the two. Although Margo doesn’t see it at first, she later recognizes that what Mark did was exploitative. She only had sex with him because he was her professor, even though she was not particularly attracted to him. This is highlighted during the mediation session, where Mark’s hypocrisy comes through: He believes Margo is too young to be a fit mother, although, as Margo points out, he did not think her too young for him to sleep with.
In some ways, Mark and Jinx mirror each other. Like Jinx, Mark, too, was not adequately supportive of the woman with whom he fathered a child out of wedlock. Like Jinx, he, too, is in the process of getting a divorce—he reveals as much during the mediation. Additionally, like Jinx, he, too, is a good father despite his failings as a partner. He initiates the custody suit genuinely believing that Margo is an unfit mother. Although his reasoning is flawed—he quotes Margo’s age, line of work, and father’s behavior as problems—his convictions are strong, and he does want what is best for Bodhi despite his initial disconnect from his son. This is reiterated by the eventual truce between Margo and Mark, when Mark is convinced of her capabilities as a mother. Mark’s obvious love for Bodhi and his desire to be involved in his life is also evident in the first meeting between father and son. The dynamics between Mark and Margo, and Jinx and Shyanne, parallel each other in some ways, and these comparisons flesh out and distinguish Margo’s character.
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