The impact of a choice in ones Journey through The Goldfinch

 The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt follows the story of Theo, a young boy who loses his mother to a bombing in an art gallery. The rest of the story follows his life and how it slowly and painfully ended with his fall into corroboration with the mafia and art smugglers. Several things lead young Theo through the journey to his eventual crime and drug filled ending, but I believe it all started with one decision, a decision that seemed so insignificant at the time yet snowballed into a life filled with grief and loss.

    Theo's life is a messy but happy one, he lives with his mother, his father long estranged. One faithful day, everything changes. His mother adores art, and so on this day they go to an art gallery and behold this is the faithful day a terrorist decides to bomb the museum. Killing almost everyone in the gallery, including Theo's mother. Theo survives, and in the chaos and confusion he is in, the world covered in debris and ash, Theo grabs a painting, one his mother loved, from the wreckage before exiting the building and facing the world. Throughout his life he carries this painting with him, at first not thinking anything of it, but as he grows older he begins to realize the gravitas of the situation. This is a priceless painting worth millions, presumed destroyed and mourned by thousands. If they find that he has it what will they do to him? Something terrible he presumes in his child brain.

    His life takes many horrible turns from this point on, being separated from a family he began to love, living with his abusive father, falling into drug use, before running away and restarting his life, all at a very young age. No matter what happens though, he has the painting. A constant reminder of what happened to him, a constant carrier of fear and dread. Despite being given the opportunity to restart his life, to grow into a good person with a hope for finding happiness, his past, and the pain that comes with it follows him. All of it trapped in the painting he so desperately holds onto, a past he refuses to let go and thus can never move on and learn to forgive himself and live his life once more.

    I think his decision to take the painting, and to keep it throughout his life, was his downfall. Regardless of all of the other things that happened to him throughout his journey, of all the things that he did, the painting is the one thing that stops him from ever being able to let go. He ties the painting into the very core of his identity, and with it, ties his trauma to his core identity. If he were to have let go of the painting, to return it to its rightful home, he would have been more likely to let go, to set himself free of the shackles of his past. The fate of his entire journey is decided through a single action, and because of that one decision he dooms his journey to one of pain and deceit. A journey can be so hastily condemnded to a fate of failure, all with one decision, and that is a terrifying thing to carry. 

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