The goldfinch gay

Yesterday, in what still feels enjoy a targeted effort by scientists in a government laboratory to make 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 have a look, first:

Yes, as if it wasn&#;t enough to cast Finn Wolfhard &#; whom I own, in plush develop &#; 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 speak 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

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 speak about this, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

The number one extremely important thing you should never forget 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 mention 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 take 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 shine through.

punkerplus:

the thing is that its not just a little gay? i can assure you that anyone who told you that has a very clear misunderstanding of the novel. i reccomend @mandarinastronaut’s analysis of boris and theo’s relationship because they can tell it much better than i can.

sure it’s not fluff, it’s not a happy termination (in the traditional sense, but there are many, many hints that boris and theo Verb end up together), but it IS a love story, one of which loves is the romantic and sexual love between boris and theo, and erasing that is EXACTLY what the director of the movie wanted.

cheesebearger:

here’s the thing I don’t care abt the goldfinch being a little gay. the obstacle w it is the fact it’s only a little gay. it didnt go the complete mile it quit halfway down the highway and exited on the “possible wife and children” parkway below for loser authors who want to make bank off baiting us gays but not give us actual gay happy endings and that’s the tea

Yes thank you! While I’d absolutely argue that there&rs

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 proceed to survive 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 create 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 argue 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