#the goldfinch by donna tartt

[chaoss-incarnate]

i don't think I've ever seen anyone talking about this but all i can think about since finishing the goldfinch is how theodore decker never truly left new york.

okay so we have 13 year old theo, whose mother just died in the museum, living at the barbour's, and meeting hobie and seeing pippa again. this much is obvious, he's still living in new york, wandering the streets and places where he and his mother frequented, being a shadow of his previous life. at night he dreams of the museum, and wakes up screaming.

his father appears, takes him to vegas. and despite meeting boris and doing all sorts of things with him (drinking, drugs, you name it), he's still 14 year old theo believing his mother is waiting for him back home. he wakes up from the museum more often than not, but i believe this is also when his dreams take a different turn; back in new york, places he would go with his mother, knowing she was there but never seeing her, never being in the same place as her. he longs for her, longs for his old life, believes her death was his fault. he tries to distract himself. like boris says: 'i drink to be happy, but you wanted to die'. boris, who has lived in so many countries, always moving, and theo, with his longing to return to the place he knows.

and then his dad dies and he goes back to new york. 15 year old theo is back in his home city, around the places he knows. places he was with his mother. and of course he goes to hobie's. what else can he do? he goes to college, learns the furniture dealer's way, and for the next eight years he lives in new york, working, wandering the streets. his longing for his childhood with his mother has subdued, mostly, thanks to the controlled (as he believes) substance abuse. he gets engaged to none other than kitsey barbour, and he continues to live his life. he takes her to places he went with his mother, places she never appreciated ('the dingbat'). he continues to love pippa (though, as we all know, that love wasn't healthy - it wasn't really love. he appreciates pippa, her friendship, but he latched on to her because they both share the same trauma and he believes no one will understand him better than she, now that his mother is gone. as the narrator in fight club says: 'you met me at a very strange time in my life.')

the boris appears. he's there and it turns out that he stole the painting. because the painting had followed theo since he was 13, going wherever he went. and now? its halfway across the world. and so now theo follows the painting, all the way to amsterdam.

new york used to be called new amsterdam until the english took over the dutch that lived there and renamed it new york. coincidence that theo ended up in the former namesake of the city he can never escape? the country where fabritius, the painter, was from. it would make sense for the painting to maybe be in delft, the place where it was discovered, where fabritius died, to make it a full circle, but no. amsterdam.

there, theo saw his mother again. he actually saw her. halfway across the world and yet he's somehow still in new york. with her.

the end of the novel is very open. theo travels, of course, to rectify the false furniture he sold, but everything ties him back to new york. his engagement to kitsey isn't over, the barbours expect him to return, someday. he still works with hobie.

'but vivian,' you might think, 'what about pippa? she went through the same thing theo did and yet she spends most of her time out of new york.'

the truth is that we don't know much about pippa. she wasn't present during most of the novel, mostly in theo's mind. we know some things about her: her parentage, music she likes and so on, but we barely know how the explosion affected her.

as she remarks in her letter at the end, she and theo would be bad for each other due to their extreme similarities. she has difficulties because of the explosion. she goes to texas, then switzerland, then london, then california. she can't seem to stay in new york, but she's there a lot of course, hobie's there, and so is theo.

i believe that in this, pippa and theo are opposites: theo, no matter what he does, is always in new york, always returning. somehow he wants to be there, for the memories of his mother. he wants to walk those streets and go to those places they went to together. its painful for him but he'd rather that than be somewhere new. pippa, on the other hand, leaves voluntarily. a lot. of course she wishes to be close to hobie, but she just can't stand to be in new york for the same reason theo stays. pippa walks the streets of new york and thinks 'welty used to take me here, and here' and its unbearable for her.

even so, most nights they both return to the same point, and they both know they'll never leave it, or rather, it'll never leave them.

[dumb-zombie-girl]

Kinda wanna write a au where Theo and Boris actually end up running away to California but I don't know how to go about doing that

[speak-now-girlies-unite]

oh my GOD you guys i canNOT EXPRESS THIS LOUD ENOUGH😭

I WENT. TO BARNES N NOBLE WITH MY SCHOOL. AND I SAW. A SINGULAR COPY OF THE GOLDFINCH. AND I WANTED TO SCREAM. AND I HAD ENOUGH MONEY TO GET IT. BUT THE CASHIER DIDNT LET ME GET IT BECAUSE I LOOKED TOO YOUNG😭😭 SCREAMING CRYING THROWING UP

(i also found stephen kings It but i didn’t even try w that one cause a friend of mine tried to get it and she got denied :(( )

(HOWEVER i got a copy of red white and royal blue so i’m very excited to consume some more Very Gay content$

[luciferslilith7]

You said home & I embraced myself

@luciferslilith7

Source:📍 pinterest

[lenainwonderland]

- Donna Tartt

[urfavoritedcwhore]

“it’s starting to smell like pumpkin spice!”

“it’s starting to smell like scary movies!”

no.

it’s starting to smell like, the snow in the mountains was melting and bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to realize the gravity of our situation.

[cataclysmictide]

In Another Life...

Warsh_Tippy and Zelda - Whatever, Dad/Unknown/A Nest of Quiet: A Notebook-Anna Kamienska/The 1 - Taylor Swift/ghost, zero, suitcase, and the moon - richard siken/Last Kiss - Taylor Swift/Unknown/rebecca malakai/Warsh_Tippy and Zelda - Whatever, Dad/everything everywhere all at once /Scott Street- Phoebe Bridgers/the 1 - Taylor Swift/c. t. salazar/unknown/unknown/ The Goldfinch-Donna Tartt/Warsh_Tippy and Zelda - Whatever, Dad

[stardustanddiamonds]

Young Donna Tartt. You’re welcome.

[bandoftheives]

crazy how donna tartt (author of the secret history) and bret easton ellis (author of american psycho) went to the same college (bennington) AND were good friends and then went on to write two of the most misinterpreted satire novels by the media

[wienners]

[she-wrote]

Putting down Donna Tartt novels feels like a real break up because boy, I was possessing your spirit for 700 pages straight and now...poof, you're gone like a ghost.

[mysteryofvampires]

How can I tell not tumblr people I want to be like Donna Tartt?

Like yeah I want to be a intelligent, classy and stylish unmarried woman who publishes a banger of a novel every ten years and disappear into the void between two books.

[luciferslilith7]

"How many graves will I need,to bury everything that died inside of me?"

~Naya Aknis

@luciferslilith7

[tmin-n]

"I never took it out except when Dad and Xandra weren’t there and I knew they wouldn’t be back for a while—though even when I couldn’t see it I liked knowing it was there for the depth and solidity it gave things, the reinforcement to infrastructure, an invisible, bedrock rightness that reassured me just as it was reassuring to know that far away, whales swam untroubled in Baltic waters and monks in arcane time zones chanted ceaselessly for the salvation of the world."

the goldfinch by donna tartt

commission info

speedpaint here

[nekromenel]

They are so toxic yaoi

[butchkaramazov]

WHY HADN'T I GRABBED HIS ARM & BEGGED HIM ONE LAST TIME TO GET IN THE CAR, COME ON, FUCK IT BORIS, JUST LIKE SKIPPING SCHOOL, WE’LL BE EATING BREAKFAST OVER CORNFIELDS WHEN THE SUN COMES UP? I KNEW HIM WELL ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT IF YOU ASKED HIM THE RIGHT WAY, AT THE RIGHT MOMENT, HE WOULD DO ALMOST ANYTHING; AND IN THE VERY ACT OF TURNING AWAY I KNEW HE WOULD HAVE RUN AFTER ME AND HOPPED IN THE CAR LAUGHING IF I’D ASKED ONE LAST TIME. BUT I DIDN’T. AND, IN TRUTH, IT WAS MAYBE BETTER THAN I DIDN’T—I SAY THAT NOW, THOUGH IT WAS SOMETHING I REGRETTED BITTERLY FOR A WHILE. MORE THAN ANYTHING I WAS RELIEVED THAT IN MY UNFAMILIAR BABBLING-AND-WANTING-TO-TALK STATE I’D STOPPED MYSELF FROM BLURTING THE THING ON THE EDGE OF MY TONGUE, THE THING I’D NEVER SAID, EVEN THOUGH IT WAS SOMETHING WE BOTH KNEW WELL ENOUGH WITHOUT ME SAYING IT OUT LOUD TO HIM IN THE STREET—WHICH WAS, OF COURSE, I LOVE YOU.