Latest Posts by thelostgoldfinch - Page 6
A lot of people seem to cite Boris as the character who gets Theo into drugs and kind of brings about his subsequent drug addiction, but this is ignoring that by the time he meets Boris, almost every adult who is supposed to take care of him has already drugged him.
Page 111, "Mrs. Barbour had started giving me a little green pill called Elavil that she explained would keep me from being scared at night...(it strikes me now, though it didn't then, that Mrs. Barbour was well out of line by giving me unprescribed medication on top of the yellow capsules and tiny orange footballs Dave the Shrink had prescribed me.)"
His caretaker, Mrs. Barbour, teaches him that he should treat his grief with drugs. His mental health care team assigned by the state treats his grief with drugs (I think Xanax, which is pretty addictive.) Granted, he's in therapy at this time as well, and I'm not trying to malign the sometimes necessary decision to put minors on prescription drugs for mental health, but combined with Mrs. Barbour, it contributes to the sense that adults give him drugs for being sad.
Page 218, just a couple hours into his father's custody of him (and after his father and Xandra have already once let him get drunk), his father and Xandra see he's scared in the airport, link it (partially correctly) to his trauma from the museum explosion, and conclude:
"Why don't you give him one of those, you know."
"Got it," said Xandra smartly, stopping to fish in her purse, producing two large white bullet-shaped pills. One she dropped in my father's outstretched palm, and the other she gave to me.
By the time Theo meets Boris, every adult responsible for him since his mother's death has seen his grief and trauma, and told him, through their actions, that medication is the answer.
When Boris gives him alcohol and drugs, he's doing it for similar reasons, (page 333-- "I slightly wished we had picked another night to take them, but Boris had insisted it would make me feel better." and page 351, offering him coke, "It'll make you feel better!") But Boris is about the same age as Theo, and, like Theo, has learned to self-medicate from the adults around him. Out of everyone who offers Theo drugs (actual prescriptions from Dave aside in this point), he's the only one who believably doesn't know better.
But one key difference is that Boris, of all the people who give him drugs, is the only one who really engages with and witnesses Theo's grief and trauma. Getting drugs from Mrs. Barbour and from his father are both intended to dampen his outward symptoms because they are inconvenient to others. It's to help him push everything down. When Boris gives Theo alcohol, it actually brings out his true feelings, and Boris never seems inconvenienced by this or unwelcoming of it (page 280-281, "Sometimes, in the night, I woke up wailing...Happily, Boris never seemed annoyed or even very startled when I woke him").
So, while Boris imparts bad drug and alcohol use habits to Theo, he's not the one who gets him started self-medicating. Of all the people around Theo, he has the most limited resources by far (financially, psychological coping mechanism-wise, etc). In fact, he needs help himself that he never really receives. Despite this, he's the only character who really hears Theo's experience and offers all the resources he does have to help.
Goldfinch obession has surpassed "Damn, someone I know needs to read the Goldfinch already so I can scream about it!" And reached a new, previously unknown level of "In truth, maybe it's better no one has, because it stops me from grabbing their arm and begging them to get in the car, come on fuck it, one seven hour flight, we'll be eating breakfast over Amsterdam when the sun comes up? A forty-five minute drive to the Hague, and we'll be on a transformative journey to the Netherlands, looking at the Goldfinch?"
every day i discover the meaning of life and then i lose it again and then again a new day and i discover the meaning of life and lose it by night time and then again and so on
NEVER be vulnerable. FLUSH your medication down the toilet. LIE when people ask how you’re doing. SUPPRESS your feelings. ALWAYS be irritable and abrasive. MAKE SURE you push away anyone who’s close to you. CANCEL your therapy appointment.
Me gifting you a book is the highest form of compliment and I hate that we live in a society where books are considered a "lazy" or "boring" gift
I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.
- Sylvia Plath
i started isolating myself and ignoring people as always, great to know I'll never get better
thinking about how theo used boris’ home phone number as the passcode to the locker where he (thought he) kept the goldfinch painting aka the physical manifestation of his heart... so every time he went to see the painting he would have to think about boris... donna you really crossed a line with that one... !
These photos are giving the exact same energy
a novel about falling in love in the desert doing drugs and commiting art crimes is something that can be so personal
We are an awful lot alike, Theo.
nooooo !!!! theooooo dont give in to smoking cigarettes which indirectly caused the death of your mother!!! nooo!!!!
haircuts were too expensive when we can shack each other’s hair in the bathroom or whatever the excerpt was
in bed. straight up "watching it." and by "it," haha, well. let's justr say. it (2017)
idk if this is a boomer take but I think ppl should make more of an effort to go see movies in theaters bc I couldn’t bear it if the movie theater industry went down and the only way to watch movies was through streaming I’m not strong enough
I engage with fiction in a normal way. don’t look at my blog
sorry for how i acted when i was being myself
If I had a nickel for every time I deeply related to a Finn Wolfhard character who has horrible internalized homophobia, I would have two nickels!! Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice!
cats and libraries ۫ ꣑ৎ