Theo panics. He fears that he will be tossed into human services again and he just can't deal with it. So he decides to run away back to New York, without really knowing what he will do when he gets there. He and Boris steal money and drugs from Xandra and Theo makes his way on his own, by bus, with his little kick dog Popper.
I mentioned before that Tartt is really good at giving the book a real sense of place. The New York of Theo's youth was pleasant and cultured, Las Vegas was empty and bright, decadent and lonely. Now, as Theo returns to New York, Tartt's characterization of the city has changed. It is cold, raining. The cities building looms close, predators roam in the parks. If we must draw parallels with Dickens the newly orphaned Theo has arrived in a city as dark and perilous as Victorian London.
Unable to reconnect with the Barbours (his wealthy benefactors) Theo winds up being taken in by Hobie. Theo enrolls in an early college program, and studies his brains out -- mainly math and science, which he doesn't seem to enjoy. But in a way, he seems to be punishing himself for the death of his parents, especially as he feels both of them could have been avoided if he had only done one thing or the other, to somehow alter the march of time in a way that would save either.
He gets in, but doesn't apply himself. And...
And then it's eight years later. Theo is twentyish, done with school, and working at Hobie's. Hobie owned an antique store with his partner Welty (who died in the explosion...it was he who encouraged Theo to take The Goldfinch painting out of gallery and also gave him a ring to take back to Hobie). Since Welty's death the store has languished, as Hobie really doesn't understand or care for the business side of things.
Theo starts to turn things around, and soon the store is profitable. But he's done it an underhanded way, selling restored items of furniture as original works for outrageous prices. He's a cunning salesman, but always seems to be scheming someone. There is one person (Lucius Reeve) who sees through all this. Normally when a person discovers they have been duped by Theo (if they ever do) the complain and Theo buys back the piece often at 10% less than the person paid for it. How he manages to do this I am not sure...but he does it. But Lucius Reeve won't budge, and we find out that he has made the connection, he knows that Theo still has The Goldfinch based on the fact that Theo obviously met Welty in the gallery (the story of the ring is well known) and that Welty died in the gallery where The Goldfinch was placed.
Meanwhile, it seems that Theo is engaged to be married to Kitsey Barbour, who he first met when the Barbours took him in after his mother's death. Theo did eventually reconnect with the Barbours only to find that his two favorites (peer Andy and the manic-depressive Mr. Barbour) died in a sailing accident.
Theo is an odd character, it's had to know what to make of him. He seems to be truly a combination of his mother and father...he has his mother's love of art and all things old, but he's inherited his father's knack for running a scheme, for stealing, for running away, and also his addictive tendencies. Theo struggles with drugs (mostly oxycontin and the like) and while I think for the moment he's clean I am not really sure.
What does it all mean? I don't think Donna Tartt is ever going to make that clear. So I've given up on trying to decipher a "cause" or a "meaning for the book" and instead try to look at things symbolically.
I do ask myself (as I guess I should as this is for a church book club) where is God in all this. In all the 569 pages thus far he's hardly mentioned. Mrs. Barbour, I think, seems to be devout but the death of her son and her husband has left her a shell of who she once was. For the rest, there is really no discussion or religion or lack thereof. It is the opposite of, say, the Brothers Karamazov, where a single event (the death of the elder Karamazov and subsequent trial of Dimitri) kick off a host of metaphysical discussions.
So often in the midst of tragedy we ask "where is god in all of this?" The answer is usually something along the lines of "God suffers with us" or that God somehow has the power to redeem something horrible by making it meaningful in some way.
But here? There is only nothingness and the feeling that such a thing could happen again at any instant, which is engrained in Theo's psyche. Theo needs the drugs to fill the nothingness (there is an excellent description of how a depressed person would view humanity and its struggles as essentially meaningless when he tries to kick the habit) and keep his fears at bay. There is love now, perhaps with Kitsey Barbour, and attempt to move on and out of Hobie's and into the real world....but I get the sense that the painting, which he still has, is going to drag him back into the darkness and that maybe his love for Kitsey isn't as real as he thinks it is.
You want to see redemption for Theo. You want to see him snatch something beautiful out of so much loss and apparent meaninglessness....but I get the sense that maybe we aren't going to get such satisfaction here. It would be a bold statement for Tartt to make. In doing so I don't know if she is pointing to the perils of an outlook on life where redemption is not possible, or if she is saying that we must adopt an outlook where redemption is possible if we are to survive.
Perhaps by next post I will have finished the book? Stay tuned. All 12 of you.
