The Goldfinch Literary Elements

Drama, bildungsroman

Present Time, New York City, Las Vegas, Amsterdam

Theo Decker, First-person limited

Tone: resigned, defeated, nostalgic, mournful

Mood: anxious, worried, gloomy, hopeful

The main protagonist is Theo. The main antagonists are Theo's father, Naaman Silver, and Lucius Reeve.

Most of the conflict in the novel surrounds Theo's theft of The Goldfinch after the death of his mother in the bombing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The painting holds immense sentimental and metaphorical value to him, and he cannot easily get rid of it. Theo is also coping with the tragedy of his mother's death, and the pain and guilt he feels surrounding her death.

After Theo and Boris retrieve the painting during a planned heist, Theo and Boris are confronted by Martin, a hitman hired to murder them. During the standoff, Boris is shot and Theo murders Martin, and Boris leaves Theo to walk through the streets of Amsterdam alone.

Theo foreshadows the tragic events of the novel in the first chapter, but we do not yet know how Theo's mother died, or what events led to Theo's isolation in Amsterdam.

1. After Theo sees Boris for the first time in several years, Hobie says, "Well that was certainly a surprise last night," an understatement of how improbable their reunion is.

2. When Theo's father dies, Xandra says “Your dad’s had a car accident,” an understatement of the fatal car wreck.

1. "Great Expectations," a bildungsroman about an orphan named Pip, resembles aspects of Theo's story.

2. "Harry Potter," a famous children's book series about a young wizard; Boris constantly refers to Theo as Potter.

3. "Orpheus," an ancient Greek legendary poet and musician, who makes a deal with Hades that allows him to save his wife from the underworld, as long as he does not look back at her until he ascends; when Theo dreams his mother is standing behind him, he knows he cannot look behind him as "to look at her directly was to violate the laws of her world and mine;" (3).

4. "The Idiot," a 19th century novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, follows Prince Myshkin, a man who does not follow societal conventions but attempts to be good in a cruel and often unjust world.

Theo's father often speaks in paradoxes, including "sometimes you have to lose to win" (946).

1.“Blue spangles, white spangles, tracers, cascades of white lights and Christmas stars, blazing, impenetrable, no more to do with me than the implausible pinky diamond glittering on my hand.” (820)

2. “It’s not about outward appearances but inward significance. A grandeur in the world, but not of the world, a grandeur that the world doesn’t understand. That first glimpse of pure otherness, in whose presence you bloom out and out and out...A self one does not want. A heart one cannot help" (950).

Metonymy: The novel makes heavy use of metonymy, especially in dialogue. One example of metonymy is in chapter 9, when Platt comments that Kit has a "good head on her shoulders" – a stand-in for her intelligence and shrewdness.

Synecdoche: The novel also uses synecdoche fairly often. Theo wears eyeglasses, and "glasses" is a synecdoche, as the glass piece of the spectacles stands in for the whole. Similarly, in chapter 10, "Kleenex," a specific brand of tissue paper, refers to all tissues.

1. "Rain peppering and driving in our faces" (103).

2. "On game day, until five o’clock or so, the white desert light held off the essential Sunday gloom—autumn sinking into winter, loneliness of October dusk with school the next day...” (374-375).

3. “The words hovered over the wrecked breakfast. Distorted reflections in the domed cover of the silver dish” (916).