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nowhereclosetoit · 4 years

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Pippa and Theo’s Relationship in “The Goldfinch”

(Or: Why Theo believes he’s in love with Pippa when he’s not)

I really enjoyed writing my last shitshow of an essay so now here’s another overly long essay on Theo and His Issues in “The Goldfinch”.

It’s 3,000 words so...good luck!

Pippa and Theo have a close bond, there’s no doubt about that, however, Theo misconstrues this bond in his head. He ends up perceiving the bond he shares with Pippa, on his end at least, for that of romantic love. Interestingly enough, this is not the case – Theo is not in love with Pippa, despite his belief, and Pippa herself understands this too.

One reason as to why Theo may be mistaking their close relationship (even though it’s never that close really) for romantic love is because of the similarities in each of their childhoods. There are many parallels that can be drawn between each of their childhoods, ranging from the death of a parent or guardian to their shared traumatic experience of the museum bombing.

Pippa’s mother, like Theo’s, is dead, as well as her legal guardian Welty (her uncle), who died in the museum bombing - Already they have some common ground through this which is the only established knowledge they have of each other on their first interaction in Hobie’s flat.

Pippa also stays with an adult (Hobie) who genuinely tries his best to take care of her until, right when things start looking up, another, estranged family member shows up to take her away from New York (Her Aunt Margaret who subsequently takes Pippa to Texas, then sending her to the school in Switzerland for “troubled girls”). This reflects the way that Theo was taken away from the Barbours by his father and Xandra to go and live in Las Vegas.

They are both also physically and/or emotionally abused and scarred from this event:

Theo, through his dad (and Xandra) who neglected him and also physically abused him.

Pippa through her Aunt emotionally manipulating her to make her stay at Institut Mont-Haefeli, and the school themselves for not having her best interests at heart.

In the film, Pippa states whilst at a restaurant after seeing a Glen Gould documentary, that “Welty was only with me that day because I was making him take me to an audition”, depicting her guilt – still as an adult – over the death of her uncle.

Theo makes it clear many times throughout the novel and the film how he feels it was his fault his mother died. (If you want an example check the excerpt above.)

How did they deal with it? Why is this significant in understanding their relationship?

Pippa’s grief manifested itself through her physical injuries which had lifelong lasting effects. Her injuries were extremely severe, reflecting the severity of her grief and guilt. (Hobie in Chapter 4 – Morphine Lollypop: “She’s had a bad crack on the head, a skull fracture, to tell you the truth she was in a coma for a while and her left leg was broken in so many pieces she came near to losing it. ‘Marbles in a sock,’ ” he said, with a mirthless laugh. “That’s what the doctor said when he looked at the x-ray. Twelve breaks. Five surgeries. ”)

Contrastingly, Theo was not as physically affected and internalised everything he felt. This illustrates itself through his lack of eating and sleeping due to his dreams that were plagued with nightmares of the day and his loss of his mother (firstly at the Barbours and also depicted in Vegas) and eventual demise into alcoholism and drug addiction (Vegas + the rest of his life dude’s fuckin popping pills – or crushing the pills then snorting them, I guess).

How Pippa and Theo’s grief manifested itself is significant as it foreshadows the later scenes in the narrative and how they each cope once they’re adults and should no longer be grieving. (I say should no longer be grieving as it’s clear that Theo only really lets go of his grief and guilt once his mother visits him in his dream in Amsterdam after the murder - in the book anyway.) By physically showing her grief to the world – by choice or not – Pippa illustrates a healthier way to deal with grief and negative feelings – getting it out there and receiving help. This also allows us to understand, whilst Pippa also never fully recovers too – See: her crying in the restaurant over the Glen Gould documentary - that she was able to deal with it significantly better than Theo did. She even manages to have a somewhat normal and healthy lifestyle as an adult. As we’ve already discussed, Theo’s grief internalised itself as depicted through his physical injuries/symptoms, or lack thereof. Theo chose, though whether he solely can be fully to blame for this, to internalise his grief and guilt through taking drugs and drinking alcohol. (I personally believe he isn’t fully to blame for ending up addicted to drugs because anybody who cared or was supposed to care about him offered him some form of drug or medication and said it would solve his problems, See: Mrs Barbour – sleeping pills, Xandra and Larry – pills for the plane, Boris – literally any drug they did together over the course of the novel.)

Mini Conclusion (for this part): The ways grief was expressed and dealt/not dealt with by Pippa and Theo explains why they behave the way they do, e.g: Theo internalises everything and never deals with anything fully or properly, Pippa on the other hand is better at reacting to things like an actual person as she was able to deal with her grief and guilt.

Why does Theo believe he is in love with Pippa?

I believe that there are four (4) main reasons as to why Theo mistakes his feelings towards Pippa as romantic love.

1. Pippa is the only remaining link Theo has, bar The Goldfinch, to his mother and before the bombing. He desperately wants to return to before the bombing happened - before his mother was killed. Theo met Pippa only moments before the bombing happened which irrevocably links her to Theo’s “Before: When life was perfect and beautiful” view of his life. This is explored, albeit briefly, in the following excerpts:

With Pippa being depicted in the same way as Theo’s mother, we get the sense that Theo associates her, unconsciously, with his mother, and, consequentially, sees her as a link to his mother, thus feeling no romantic love towards her in anyway.

An example of parallels between Audrey and Pippa is through how both of them had to go and live with an Aunt, with whom they did not have an enjoyable time with, in the South.

Chapter 4 - Morphine Lollypop: Theo was thinking about “my mother after her parents died and she had to go live with her aunt Bess, + the mention of horses in this excerpt and how "the horses [were] sold”.

2. Theo also links Pippa with helping lessen his grief.

E.g: Soon after he first visits Hobie and Pippa, his appetite starts to return,

Theo relates Pippa to easing his feelings of anxiety:

With Pippa helping Theo ease his grief, whether realised or not, she becomes a caring figure for him, this could relate to a motherly sense of caring – which the novel could suggest so with my previous point, but hey, maybe I’m grasping at straws, idk.

3. Theo’s personality is obsessive and all-consuming which is depicted through literally any relationship he has had with anything and anyone for any considerable amount of time within the novel.

This is depicted through the obsessive amounts he is able to recount about people and the minute detail in which he does so.

It can also be shown through the act of the years’ worth of letters he wrote to his mother after she died, as well as his relationship with The Goldfinch (obsessed with keeping it as it had a link to his mother and his heart etc).

4. (Again, maybe I’m grasping at straws here) He could be mistaking his love for Pippa as romantic as a result of compulsory heterosexuality (Once again, I’m using compulsory heterosexuality in this case as an LGBTQ+ individual feeling that they have to have romantic feelings/relations to people of the opposite gender/sex, and subconsciously forcing themselves to do so - due to the heteronormative society we live in). This can be found within his romantic relationships with women never fulfilling him and his constant depiction of them as cold (See: Kitsey quotes earlier in essay compared to the way he describes Boris in general) + We all know this motherfucker is queer af, if you don’t believe me check my essay out ;)

In conclusion, I feel like Pippa is able to realise that she is not in love with Theo/differentiate the love they have between them from that of romantic love as she is more aware of her issues and has dealt with them more than Theo has. Pippa managed to remove herself completely from a situation that was causing her pain (New York) and is able to see more clearly from doing so, whereas Theo didn’t. Theo was unable to remove himself mentally or physically and is stuck in the perpetual grief he feels for his mother’s death. The only time we get some sense of closure and complete removal of grief from Theo is after Amsterdam. (In the book this is after the dream he has where he can finally face his mother, and in the film, this is once Boris tells him that “[his] bird is back in the world”). Due to Theo being unable to fully receive any sort of ability to even attempt solving his problems, his judgment is clouded and he believes he is in love with Pippa.

#the goldfinch #theo decker #pippa tgf #boris pavlikovsky #hobie tgf #i'm so sorry this is so long it got away from me #idk how i keep doing this lolllll

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