Literature / The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch is a Pulitzer Prize-winning 2013 novel by Donna Tartt, the author of The Secret History. Like The Secret History, The Goldfinch is an introspective, confessional neo-romanticist novel that focuses on aesthetic beauty, guilt, and the inner thoughts of the protagonist against a troubled situation filled with strikingly picaresque secondary characters.

When young Theo Decker's mother is killed by Western Terrorists in an attack on a New York art museum, Theo finds himself moving between a variety of guardians, including his mother's wealthy but emotionally distant friends and an abusive father with a gambling compulsion. All the while Theo makes a number of quirky and unusual friends, including a charming old antiques craftsman Hobie, an irreverent and anti-intellectual globe-trotting European druggie named Boris, and his true love Pippa - every bit as broken and confused as himself. Just as he makes unusual, morally dubious friends, Theo faces challenges to his well-being from a number of equally quirky and morally complex antagonists, including Bobo Silver, a soft-spoken but intimidating and flamboyantly-dressed Loan Shark, and Lucius Reeve, a mysterious and manipulative blackmailer tracking Theo's movements. As Theo, perpetually traumatized and always deep in his own thoughts, moves between one amoral and dangerous situation after the other, one overlying current defines his life: the stolen painting of a goldfinch that Theo carries with him from the museum where his mother was killed, and his fear of being caught.

A film adaptation was released in 2019.

---

This work provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Theo's father, and Boris' family as well. Theo's father is neglectful and abandons him and his mother. Boris' father is physically abusive.
• Affably Evil: Mr. Silver - despite his profession and threats to Larry's life, he is consistently and sincerely praised by both Larry and Boris for being a great guy.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Theo manages to feel pity for his father after it's all said and done.
• The Alcoholic: Larry Decker, Boris's father, and Boris himself all have pretty serious drinking problems.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Kitsey is in love with a deadbeat conman. Theo's father, an irresponsible gambler, is in a relationship with Xandra. Boris has a number of conquests to his name. Theo, something of a bad boy himself, also notes that he has no shortage of romantic opportunities.
• Alternate History: The War on Terror includes the terrorist bombing of the museum but doesn't include the 9/11 attacks. 9/11 still happens in universe though; Theo mentions it when discussing the penalties for art theft.
• Ambiguously Bi: As per usual in Tartt's books. Theo and Boris experiment sexually as teens, and Theo admits to himself that he loves Boris. When they meet again as adults however, Boris is quick to deny that he is anything other than straight, and that he used Theo as a substitute for girls. The truth of this is... debatable.
• Ambiguously Gay: Theo and Boris wonder if Hobie is gay, since he seems to have no love life. Theo isn't sure whether Hobie is discreetly involved with a woman or just very close friends.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Well, adoptive sibling. Toddy and Kitsey both have some of this while Theo is living with the Barbour's.
• Anxiety Dreams: A near-constant problem for Theo.
• The Artful Dodger: Boris to a "T." Upon meeting him, Hobie, who has heard about him from Theo, admits that he had literally been picturing him as the Trope Namer from Dickens' Oliver Twist.
• The Beautiful Elite: The Barbours are a wealthy, elite and beautiful family.
• Big Applesauce: Most of the action takes place in Manhattan. Theo writes that until age 13 he had only been outside of New York City for 8 days.
• British Teeth: Theo notes that Boris, who has lived all around the world, has grey, crooked and "un-American" teeth. In adulthood, Boris has received a new set of pearly white, very American choppers.
• Broken Bird: Theo and Pippa. In Theo's case, it leads to his becoming more introspective and focused on beauty, but also - not unrelatedly- more likely to find himself in harm's way.
• The Cameo: Francis Abernathy from The Secret History.
• Character Filibuster: Hobie has a huge one about art in the last chapter after Theo confesses his secrets.
• Condescending Compassion: Toddy, after the Barbours reconnect with Theo. He mentions how Theo living with them for a while inspired him to try and help out "disadvantaged" children.
• Cool People Rebel Against Authority: Part of Boris' appeal to both Theo and the reader - he pays little attention to teachers in school, filling his homework assignments with snarky quips. He later shows more interest in pursuing gratification in the criminal underworld than pursuing any socially accepted or legally legitimate goals.
• Cut Himself Shaving: Boris has become an expert at inventing cover stories for the bruises his father leaves on him.
• Deadly Road Trip: There is a section of the book involving a trip to Amsterdam where Martin tries to kill Theo and Boris, and is killed himself instead.
• Death Is Such an Odd Thing: Theo's reaction to the death of his mother.
• Department of Child Disservices: Theo's social workers in New York after his mother's death are distant and incompetent.
• Despair Event Horizon: Crossed by Theo's father after he is unsuccessful in obtaining Theo's educational fund to pay off his debts.
• Died Happily Ever After: Heavily implied with Theo's mother, in his vision of her in the mirror.
• Disco Dan: Larry Decker is a subtle example. He still affects the manner of a Sunshine Noir style 80s playboy and ignores the decay around him in the doomed pursuit of a big-shot lifestyle that no longer has a place in the 21st century.
• Door Stopper: At over 800 pages, it definitely counts as this.
• Drugs Are Bad: Downplayed. Theo and Boris take quite a lot of drugs from their early teens and on. While it doesn't send them into a Afterschool Special-style tailspin of self-destruction, it still has a deleterious effect on their lives. In adulthood each is a different variant of Functional Addict - Theo is reliant on pharmaceutical opiates to manage his PTSD, and Boris by his own admission has been an alcoholic since the age of thirteen.
• Emotionless Girl: Mrs Barbour is an adult example. She never seems to express any emotion and always has a detached and proper demeanor. However, she becomes more emotional after her husband dies.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: Kitsey is admired as extremely beautiful and has platinum blonde hair.
• Evil Debt Collector: Mr. Silver, who goes so far as to communicate threats to Larry through teenage Theo.
• Faux Affably Evil: Lucius Reeve gives the impression (sometimes) of being affable but it is very clearly all on the surface.
• Figure It Out Yourself: A rare Tear Jerker example when the protagonist finally reunites with his beloved deceased mother in a dream:
  And I knew that she could tell me anything I wanted to know (life, death, past, future) even though it was already there, in her smile, the answer to all questions, the before-Christmas smile of someone with a secret too wonderful to let slip, just yet: well, you’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?
• Financial Abuse: Attempted when Theo's The Gambling Addict father Larry demands that he call the lawyer overseeing the trust fund that his late mother left him and asking for $65,000. The lawyer not only reveals that his father has been trying to get access to the money, but fortunately, that his mother decreed that the money not only be used solely for his education, but it be paid to the school directly
• First Girl Wins: Played with. Theo falls instantly in love with Pippa at the age of 13, but they never get romantically linked. In the end, we don't learn whether he'll end up with her.
• Fish out of Water: Theo attends an early college program for high school students, but due to his unusual life situations and untamed personality barely earns his degree and shows nowhere near the level of interest or ambition as his classmates.
• Foreshadowing: Andy Barbour hates coming along on his father's sailing trips. Guess how he dies. Lampshaded when, after his death, Theo sees a photograph of Andy and his father standing by a boat model under unlit lamps and a clock showing five to twelve, and realises how intensely foreboding it looks.
• Freak Out: Theo's sense of guilt and fear of being caught clash with his fondness for the stolen painting
• Freudian Excuse: The story follows Theo through his youth with all its nasty events (the terrorist attack, his mom's death, his separation from people he loves like Hobie and Boris, his father's attempt at robbing him and death, and the death of Andy), which makes the reader more predisposed to feel sorry for him when he grows up to do quite a few bad or shady things (drug addiction, selling forgeries, stalking Pippa even though she is in a relationship with someone else).
• Functional Addict: Theo as an adult has a pill addiction, but still manages to keep his life together, or at least look like he does.
• The Gambling Addict: Theo's father fancies himself a big-shot gambler, but he's heavily in debt and convinced that his next shot will take him all the way.
• Generation Xerox: Both Larry and Theo get mixed up in crime, have massive substance abuse problems, cheat on their partners (Theo cheats emotionally) and both go through life with a broken moral compass.
• Gentle Giant: Hobie is frequently described as a giant of a man. He has a sedate, kind and almost meek personality, preferring quiet meals with close friends and working in his shop.
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • Theo is intensely jealous of Pippa's boyfriend.
  • A teenage Theo bitterly resents that Boris, with whom he has been inseparable and even had sex with, takes up with Kotku.
• Jerkass: Theo's father abandons his wife and son without paying any kind of alimony. He also steals his wife's precious heirloom (a pair of emerald earrings) and gives them to his mistress. Later, he neglects his son and attempts multiple times to steal money from a fund reserved for his education, and threatens him when he hesitates.
• Heroic BSoD: Theo at several points in the story, especially in Amsterdam.
• Hopeless Suitor: Theo is hopelessly in love with Pippa, but she doesn't give him the slightest bit of encouragement. In the end it's revealed that she does love him, but thinks that a relationship between them could be disastrous. It's left open whether they do decide to get together.
• Informed Attractiveness:
  • Theo spends some time talking about how attractive his parents were.
  • Kitsey is described as flawlessly beautiful by several characters.
  • Pippa is described as pretty, but not as classically attractive as Kitsey
• Karma Houdini: Theo stole the painting as a child, and as an adult he is involved in an elaborate forgery scheme that could ruin the man who took him in as a Troubled Teen, and even eventually kills someone. Despite all this, things mostly work out for him: he's able to get off scot-free for both the murder and stealing the painting after turning in someone else, and pays off his debts from the forgery scam with the reward money.
• Kosher Nostra: Theo's father owes money to a Jewish loan shark who dresses like a cowboy.
• Left Hanging: The identity and motivations of the group who destroyed the museum are never revealed, and numerous potential plot threads and background details alluded to by Lucius Reeve are left in the dark.
• Lonely Rich Kid: Andy Barbour is very much this - the Barbours are obviously very rich and Andy doesn't really have friends other than Theo.
• Lovable Rogue: Boris all the way.
• Love at First Sight: Theo for Pippa.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Subverted by Pippa, who is quirky and just as damaged as Theo. He's hopelessly in love with her, and a relationship with her just might finally make Theo happy, but she's hardly ever around and never becomes romantically involved in him, though the future remains open.
• Maybe Ever After: Theo and Pippa.
• My Nayme Is: It's "Xandra," not "Sandra." Theo finally discovers that her legal name is actually still Sandra.
  • Inverted with Boris: as a Ukrainian, his name should technically be transliterated "Borys," but he explains that he goes with the Russian transliteration with an I, as being more familiar in the USA.
• Mysterious Past: It's never made explicitly clear what Boris' family's background involves (other than them being laborers), but it may or may not be savory.
• No Ending: In the end, the painting issue is resolved and Theo talks about the lessons he's learned about life, love and beauty, but most other plotlines are unresolved: Does he end up with Kitsey or Pippa? Does he manage to smooth over the issue with the chimeras and Lucius Reeve?
• Now or Never Kiss: Boris and Theo right before the latter returns to New York.
• Occidental Otaku: Reclusive young Andy Barbour's hobbies consist mostly of reading manga, which is stated as the reason he wants to learn Japanese.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Theo refers to Boris' girlfriend by Boris' nickname for her, Kotku, because at the time of writing he can't remember her real name.
• Parental Favoritism: The Barbours each have a favorite child of their four.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Two for the price of one with Audrey Decker and Welty Blackwell in the opening chapter.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: A lot of the things Theo and Boris get up to over the course of the novel are pretty reprehensible (e.g. Boris stealing the painting from Theo, Theo passing off the Chimeras as legitimate knowing full-well it would ruin Hobie's credibility if discovered) but when these things come to light, no one is particularly bothered by them in the long term. Boris even speculates that if they hadn't done some of these bad things, later good things would never have happened.
• Romantic False Lead: Both Theo and Pippa become involved with "safe" romantic partners, but Theo is in love with Pippa and the story suggests he may also have feelings for Boris. Theo's fiancée is also in love with someone else. Whether they'll all choose a safe life of comfort or a passionate and risky life is left unresolved.
• Rule of Symbolism: At the engagement party, Theo's fiancée Kitsey wears white (and is compared to a snowflake by Boris), whereas Pippa, the woman he really loves, is in warm colours (green dress and red hair).
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Sensitive Theo to the more impulsive and assertive Boris.
• Shout-Out:
  • Theo drops the names of a wide range of shows, books, authors, and films that he enjoys.
  • Boris refers to Theo by the affectionate nickname "Potter", because of his apparent similarity to a certain teen wizard.
  • The Goldfinch is a real painting and takes a central role in the plot.
  • At one of Hobie's dinners and at Theo's engagement party to Kitsey, one of the guests is Francis Abernathy from Tartt's previous book The Secret History.
• Smoking Is Cool: Boris exemplifies this trope.
• Stalker with a Crush: Theo is this for Pippa, going as far as to keep a few strands of her hair that he found in the shower. He yearns to know everything about her life, and sees his relationship with Pippa in a way that is divorced with reality. The book lampshades this, and so does Theo in his rare moments of lucidity regarding his behaviour.
• Stepford Smiler: Kitsey, of the depressed variety. Behind the appealing, enthusiastic facade is a deeply unhappy young woman who blames herself for the deaths of her father and brother.
• Survivor Guilt: One of the things that connect Theo and Pippa is the fact that they both lost a parental figure (Theo his mother, Pippa Welty) to the bombing after convincing them to come along to the museum, while they themselves survived.
• Time Skip: After following Theo's life very closely from the ages of 13-16, then the story jumps about eight years.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Platt after the time skip.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Played with. Boris leads Theo into a number of self destructive lifestyle habits and eventually a potentially fatal situation, but is also the one person who genuinely treats Theo the best in the entire book.
• Turn Out Like His Father: Theo comes to closely resemble his hated crook of a father in looks and behaviour, but he ends the story a fundamentally better man.
• Trauma Conga Line: Theo, so very much.
• Troubled, but Cute: Theo, among other characters.
• Two Decades Behind: The description of Theo's father Larry recalls '70s and '80s actors typecast in "bad boy" roles, such as Don Johnson or James Caan. Theo's narration describes him as a "relic" of that era. Fittingly, his risky, decadent lifestyle is rooted in the late 20th century and hasn't budged for a present that demands more resourcefulness and caution.
• The Unfavorite: Andy Barbour is the odd man out in his family. Interestingly, his mother claims he is her favorite after his death.
• Viva Las Vegas!: Theo's father Larry moved to Las Vegas after his divorce to become a professional gambler. He lives in a derelict McMansion and is heavily in debt to local thugs.
• Western Terrorists: an attack by unnamed violent right-wing extremists is the impetus for the rest of the events in the novel. We never do find out much about who they are or what they want.
• White Guilt: Theo briefly muses that his slot at an early college high school program, which he does not seriously invest time or thought in, would be better suited for a lower-income minority student more intelligent or talented than he is.
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: Boris makes this excuse to Theo after Boris's girlfriend comes to school with a fat lip.
• Would Hit a Girl: Boris hits his high school girlfriend, giving her a fat lip. Amazingly, he remains somewhat sympathetic, though he's always a rather unsavory character.
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: Xandra (not "Sandra") spells her name with an X in a rather silly attempt to be edgy.