The Goldfinch discussion

(I'm on p. 240, so please beware of spoilers.)

Is it me, or is there something weird--let's say "underhanded"-- about the way Tartt deals with Theo's theft of the painting?

OK maybe the 1st one is on me: I simply missed the moment he puts it in his bag! When the painting becomes an issue (ch. 4.xiv, Theo's conscience troubling him), I had to go back. Yes, it's there, but it's quite furtive.

Then, when Theo goes back to the apartment with his father (ch. 4.xviii), he remembers setting the painting on his mother so that she would see it right away when she came home. Yet this is not mentioned in ch. 2, which goes into details into what Theo does upon making it home.

Any thought? Is it maybe because Theo does all that without thinking?

I think the absent-mindedness of Theo throughout the entire museum "scene" is supposed to point out the fact that he's overwhelmed. My take is that he just sorta grabbed it without processing what he was doing, almost like he was moving in a haze. Just one woman's take.

I personally think that Theo was too shaken to realise the gravity of the situation. He was not even able to process the whole thing. So I guess it would be a little too much to expect Theo to notice the painting immediately after an explosion.

I completely missed him taking the painting as well! I feel like it shoud've been a larger moment considering how the rest of the story centers around this decision to take it.

I read Goldfinch when it first came out and loved it -- until it tacked on the philosophy about art at the end of the story. The voice (in that section) didn't really fit any of the characters. It seemed preachy and so out of place after the Dickensian romp we'd been pulled through. I'm guessing the author was trying to offer a reason as to why she wrote what she wrote. That little out-of-the-blue philosophical section aside, the world Donna Tartt created in Goldfinch is wondrous and held my attention throughout its 700+ pages.