Uch! How they love money, thought Wilhelm. They adore money! Holy money! Beautiful money! It was getting so that people were feeble-minded about everything except money.

These are Tommy's thoughts in Chapter II, in response to his father's bragging about how Tommy had made up to "five figures." The quote indicates Tommy's contempt of money and it also points to the level of importance that money is given in the society in which Tommy lives. The quote suggests a negative attitude toward the "they" in the quote, those that love money. The "they" refers to his father, Dr. Adler, his "friend" Mr. Perls.

Although he criticizes those that can only think about money, Tommy himself spends much of the later chapters of the book worrying himself into a state of severe nervousness about the money he has invested in the market. Moreover, money seems to be something he cannot get away from, or break away from rather, within the consumer society in which he lives. Furthermore, as the book progresses, Tommy will have to shed himself of various roles and ideas to become his true self and allow that true self to surface. He will have to be abandoned by his father and surrogate father, Dr. Tamkin, for example, for him to stop seeing himself solely as a "son in the eyes of a father." In this case, he will also have to lose all of his money so he can be freed from it and its grip.

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