44 pages • 1-hour read
Billionaire Boy
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying.
The Irreplaceable Value of Genuine Friendship
While Joe Spud’s life seems enviable from the outside, he is deeply lonely. Splitting his time between Bumfresh Towers, a mansion so big he has not even seen all of it, and St. Cuthbert’s School, where he is bullied for his weight and “new money” family, Joe has little meaningful human connection in his life. By finally making a real friend in Bob, Joe learns the value of genuine friendship.
At the beginning of the story, despite his riches, Joe realizes that he would be more fulfilled if he had a friend. His father lets Joe change schools, and his wish comes true: Joe immediately connects with Bob when they meet. He appreciates that Bob is unconcerned with Joe’s vast fortune. Bob kindly tells Joe, “I don’t care about your money. I just liked hanging out with you today” (75). However, due to his father’s example and his years of isolation, Joe is unsure of how to behave as a friend. Even though he is a kind and caring person, he sometimes struggles with social skills and how to relate emotionally to others. For instance, when Bob reveals that his dad passed away, Joe becomes anxious: “All Joe could hear was the sound of his own heart beating. He couldn’t think of anything to say. All he knew was that he felt awful for his new friend” (62). Joe’s anxiety here isn’t unusual, but instead of working through the discomfort, he falls back on money as a way to connect with others.
Joe’s naivety about friendship is clear when he bribes the Grubb twins behind Bob’s back. While this shows his good intentions toward Bob, it also reveals his mistaken expectation that his money will always be happily accepted by others. After Bob scolds Joe for his mistake, Joe doesn’t understand Bob’s hurt feelings: “He had paid off the Grubbs to help Bob” (140). After being betrayed by his father and Lauren, Joe realizes the precious and irreplaceable nature of his friendship with Bob. While they sometimes disagree, Bob likes Joe for who he is. At the end of the story, Joe understands that genuine friendships survive disagreements when they are based on mutual care, honesty, and respect. By following Joe and Bob’s ups and downs, the story leaves reflects on the importance of authentic friendships.
Material Riches Versus Social Wealth
In Billionaire Boy, Joe Spud and his father learn through experience that social wealth makes life more joyful and interesting than even the most extravagant material riches. Joe’s unusual life experience of suddenly moving from his working-class home to a palatial mansion and private school gives him a window into both worlds. He remembers his simple but stable childhood with his parents, when his dad worked at a toilet paper factory and they lived on a council estate. Joe fondly remembers these years when he lived with both parents and had school friends as “the last time he was truly happy” (228).
Now, living like princes due to their Bumfresh fortune, Joe and Mr. Spud have a completely different lifestyle. Mr. Spud embraces the lifestyle of the ultra-wealthy and goes to great lengths to ensure he is living the way he imagines rich people should. While Joe’s father lavishes him with all kinds of luxuries, Joe still feels a void in his life since he has no friends.
Joe’s journey to find real friendship causes him to fall out with his father. While Joe tries to choose relationships over money, his father continues to live with spending and consumption as his top priority, causing tensions between the two. For instance, when Joe suggests that he leave his fancy school behind and attend a regular public school, his father is horrified, telling him, “I could build you a school in the back garden if you like” (34). By rejecting his father’s suggestion, Joe shows that he isn’t really interested in a new school, but rather in a way to find friendship. He tells his dad, “No. I want to go to a normal school. With normal kids. I want to make a friend, Dad” (34). By becoming polarized in their goals, Joe and Mr. Spud become disconnected, fracturing the one central relationship left in Joe’s life. Joe sadly thinks that “[w]hoever his dad had been was lost years ago” (228), showing his belief that his dad’s wealth has permanently changed his personality.
In the end, Joe’s example prompts his dad to change his mind about the importance of his wealth, easing the pain of losing his fortune in an abrupt bankruptcy. When Joe reveals that Mr. Spud’s homemade rocket means more to him than “all that expensive stuff” his father bought him, Mr. Spud realizes how skewed his priorities have become (275). Mr. Spud admits that no matter how much he spent, his money never brought him lasting happiness—only his relationship with his son did. By reuniting father and son without their fortune, the novel sends a strong message about the importance of valuing relationships over wealth.
Confronting Social Inequality With Humor
By describing Joe Spud’s outrageous wealth and how it changes his social reality, the novel Billionaire Boy uses humor and satire to confront social inequality. Joe’s exaggerated hobbies are meant to make readers laugh, but they also capture the real ways in which the lifestyles of the ultra-rich can be unrecognizable to middle- and working-class people.
For instance, Joe attends the exclusive school St. Cuthbert’s which costs “200,000 a term,” and “all the boys had to wear Elizabethan ruffs and tights” (26). At the school Joe goes through a rigorous curriculum of “Latin (29)” “[b]ow-tie tying (29)” “[p]olo (29)” and “[a]ntique furniture appreciation hour” (31). While these examples are funny, they also point to real cultural differences between the aristocratic and working classes, inviting both to laugh at this over-the-top stereotype. Joe’s private school curriculum is contrasted with his strict and more academic curriculum at his public school. For instance, Joe has to write a history essay, and when he forgets it at home, he is punished with litter duty by his teacher, Miss Spite. By contrasting the useless, extravagant activities of his private school with the mundane but practical activities of his public school, the novel suggests that aristocratic culture contributes little to contemporary society.
When Joe returns to ordinary life, it’s a rude awakening. The food at his public school is a far cry from the meals his butler delivers to him at home. Again using comedic exaggeration to make his point, the book describes the disgusting food on offer at Bob’s public school, including “Macaroni Snot (94)” “Road Kill Bake (94)” and “Mouse Mousse” (97). Joe struggles to contain his disgust—or find anything on the menu he is willing to eat.
The school chef who makes these awful concoctions also adds to the book’s depiction of social inequality. Mrs. Trafe, a kindly elderly woman, asks Joe for money for her hip surgery, but she betrays his trust and spends it on beauty treatments instead. Joe is stunned to notice that suddenly “[h]er nose was smaller. Her teeth were capped. The lines on her forehead had been erased. Her eye bags had disappeared. Her wrinkles were gone” (173). This passage suggests that with enough money, anyone can buy beauty, and that in a culture that worships wealth, people strive to imitate the ultra-rich, valuing appearances over their health. By using exaggeration and comedic scenarios to describe Joe’s experiences in the social circles of the wealthy and working class, the novel confronts real-world social inequality in an accessible way.
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