The goldfinch book gay

Why The Goldfinch is undoubtedly gay

Now I’ve already written a long-ass serious essay on ‘homoromantic subtext in The Goldfinch’, but I still feel the need to talk about this, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

The number one extremely important thing you should never unlearn when interpreting/analyzing Theo, is that he’s an incredibly unreliable narrator. 

  • He forgets things due to his extreme use of drugs and alcohol (e.g. he forgot he’d shown Boris the goldfinch, THE FUCKING GOLDFINCH you know, the most significant object in the WHOLE novel, the painting that drives most of the plot, the name of this goddAMN BOOK-)
  • He manipulates reality to fit his purposes 
  • He deals with internalized homophobia
  • He’s literally intoxicated most of the novel

What this means, is that you shouldn't blindly trust him. You should always seize the things he says with a grain of salt. Especially when it comes to queerness. 

Theo and Boris were sexually intimate, and even though Theo tries to convince us that it meant nothing, his true feelings sparkle through.

The Relationship Between Gender and Trauma in Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch () by Donna Tartt is a novel that explores the conditions of grief and escalating lengths characters will go to withstand the traumas and mysteries of life. This story of guilt and loss—intermixed with love and longing—is far detached from the traditional coming-of-age trope. I argue that one of the most tantalizing aspects found in this piece of literary fiction is the fascinating and sometimes questionable relationship between main characters, Theodore Decker and Boris Pavlikovsky. Reading this novel through a queer/gender studies lens and the use of a dialogic journal reveals that this story is a representation of the tendencies gay-coded characters are portrayed as through the use of specific literary elements and intentional subtext. I verb that themes of gender and sexuality, trauma, and masking oneself contribute to the tumultuous yet once-in-a-lifetime relationship between Theo and Boris.

Donna Tartt’s novel The Goldfinch is a miraculous exploration of grief a

Yesterday, in what still feels like a targeted strive by scientists in a government laboratory to produce me, personally, weep myself into blindness, Warner Brothers released the second trailer for The Goldfinch. If you&#;re not familiar, I&#;ll catch you up in just a second &#; but possess a look, first:

Yes, as if it wasn&#;t enough to cast Finn Wolfhard &#; whom I own, in plush form &#; as a key character in a Donna Tartt adaptation, they had to go and sling &#;Terrible Love&#; by The National behind all these scenes of tender adolescent yearning and dead-mom trauma. If they were trying to hook me, it worked. I will be there opening weekend with bells on and travel-paks of Kleenex stuffed into every pocket of my jacket.

But I digress. Let&#;s talk about that brief moment &#; at the mark in the trailer above, and giffed below &#; where the protagonist, teenage Theo Decker, says goodbye to his best friend, juvenile delinquent and insouciant Ukrainian émigré Boris Pavlikovsky.

In the novel, this is how Donna Tartt describes the moment:

I was still babbling when Boris sai

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Philip Hensher, The Spectator

“The main problem with The Goldfinch is that it asserts lovability and wit without ever successfully enacting either. We are told, for instance, that Theo’s mother is a wonderful person, but when she speaks she seems quite boring. Hobie shares ‘the most enjoyable conversation’ with Theo when they first meet, but this turns out to be a routine exchange about school study. Boris can make Theo ‘laugh sometimes until my sides ached, and we always had so much to say’, but he doesn’t delight the reader at all. And Pippa, Theo’s great love, is first a ladylike invalid out of Tennessee Williams, and then nothing very much.”

Read full review

Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times

&#;The Goldfinch can read like a parody of a crime thriller. The solution to the predicament presented by Theo’s possession of the painting is glaringly obvious hundreds of pages before it is finally realised. The exorbitant amount of detail Theo heaps into his narrative is explained away with equal clumsiness when he belatedly discloses to the reader