Coming to Terms with Humans’ Double Role as Biological Beings and Geological Agents in the Anthropocene in Jenny Offill’s Weather

The Anthropocene, the geological proposition to name the current Epoch and to describe the massive impact of the human on the biosphere, has precipitated a shift in the way humans understand themselves. No longer only a biological agent, the human is now (also) a geological agent, capable of altering the Earth’s systems in much the same way as great natural catastrophes do, such as great volcanic eruptions, the impact of large meteors and tectonic shifts. In Weather (2020), by American author Jenny Offill, we follow Lizzie, a librarian, in her journey through the cognitive shift that leads her to ponder her role in the unravelling of the climate crisis, the sixth mass extinction, seawater rise and so on. In this paper, I explore both the cognitive transition of Lizzie in the novel and the role of realist fiction in tackling the nearly impossible category of the Anthropocene.