The Goldfinch - Commentary

        “Change means the unknown” (Eleanor Roosevelt). This text is an extract of the novel The Goldfinch, a fiction that could however be real, by Donna Tartt. It is a description, with some dialog, divided in six paragraphs. The author chose to use the past tense. It is written in the first person and is mostly singular, but it is sometimes plural as there appear to be three characters in the text. A general audience may be the audience of the novel. The tone is critical, pessimistic and ambiguous. The mood could be defined with pity, worry, incomprehension and confusion. The extract takes place in Las Vegas. It is not clearly explain but some elements do help the readers to guess it. The text is about a child, probably a teenager (who is the narrator) and his (we don’t know if it is a boy or girl so we will imagine that it is boy to make it easier) vision of the world and especially of Las Vegas. He is in a car with his dad and Xandra, a woman that we understand to be his father’s girlfriend. They are heading to the dad’s house after the child’s mother death. This text is a reflection on the unknown, inner and outer, and on a hurt child contrasted vision of the world.

        First of all, the inner unknown is broached in this text. In fact the narrator is lost. He is not receptive to what is going on around him. He is in his own world. It says “I still felt numbed and weightless from the pill.”. We can assume that he is sick, but with the later information of the text we will more likely say that he is depressed further to the loss of a beloved being. The landscape he sees going by do not seem to belong to the same planet. Indeed, the author uses a comparison to describe the teen’s feeling of being somewhere else. It says “as if we had touched down on another planet”. Moreover he does not see the skyscrapers as buildings but as dunes which “met the sky”. His perception of the city around him is not the same as everyone. Another example would be his lack of interest in the exciting infrastructures of Las Vegas. It says “the Eiffel Tower, too overwhelmed to take it in.”. He even compares it to “a pyramid” sailing past his window. Moreover, this idea of disinterest is accentuated with the contrasting excitement of Xandra. Indeed, it is written “See there—check it out, […] There’s the volcano. It really works.”. It looks like she is the child, and the protagonist the adult. Furthermore, the narrator pays attention to unimportant details. For example, the sense of smell is often present in throughout the text. He is kind of obsessed with odors. It is written “she said, exhaling a strong breath of Juicy Fruit” or “expensive-smelling leather interior” or even “the air of boxed, bleached sameness”. Another interesting example is his interest in his dad’s car. As a matter of fact, at the beginning of the extract, he focuses on the “smoothness and chill of the ride” or how the car starts  “The car-- which started with the push of a button” while outside there are way more exciting things to look at, to concentrate on. Moreover, the narrator is unfamiliar to his own family: his father especially as we understood that he was very close to his mother in New York “In New York, everything reminded me of my mother”. It seems that his father is a stranger. He does not know anything of him and of his life. Indeed, he asks “Um, you’ve had this car how long?” and his father answers that he had had it for “over a year now”. Moreover, it is the first time the narrator asks information in the text, the first time he seems interested in something. It proves how bad he knows his father. Besides, in the beginning of the last paragraph of the text, the narrator is trying to figure out what has happened in his dad’s life. It is written “A year? I was still chewing this over-- this figure meant my dad had acquired the car (and Xandra) before he’d disappeared”. We also learn that Xandra is someone he does not care about. In fact, the only time he talks (he thinks) about her, the author puts her name between brackets. That proves his indifference towards her. The narrator is lost and is unfamiliar to his own father. The author thus tries to explain that the unknown can be very close, that there is always something to discover in your inner circle. The unknown can be inner.

        Secondly, the unknown can be outer: the discovery of a new place or, sometimes, a different vision of this place. As a matter of fact, the idea of space is omnipresent in the text. This can be proven with the presence of the lexical field of places: “space”, “New York”, “two miles”, “stucco homes”, “endless”, “Eiffel Tower” and many others. Moreover, in the text, it is not clearly explain that the city described is Las Vegas. Indeed, the name of the city is not mentioned but some clues let the readers figure it out. For example, the author talks about the Strip, one of the main street of Las Vegas, or the Eiffel Tower replica or even the Mirage Volcano “There’s the volcano.”, “Hot lava”. This uncertainty accentuates the idea of a new place yet unknown. The readers discover the city at the same time as the narrator. They see it through his eyes. One thing that is sure is the greatness of the city. Many adjectives highlights its grandeur: “giant clowns”, “XXX signs” as well as the words chosen to describe it: “superstructures”, “dunes”, etc. Furthermore, we understand that Las Vegas is new for the narrator but not for his father and his girlfriend. As a matter of fact, they know, for example, when the volcano is working “On the hour, every hour.” and that it is under construction “Actually, I think they’re renovating it.”. Moreover, they ask the protagonist what he thinks of Las Vegas: “So, whaddaya think?” proving his unfamiliarity to the city. He also notices every little details of the landscape: “parking lots and outlet malls, loop after faceless loop of shopping plazas, Circuit City, Toys “R” Us, supermarkets and drugstores, Open Twenty-Four Hours”. This enumeration proves how unknown Las Vegas is for the child. Another interesting fact is the constant comparison of the city with the desert. It is so big that it seems to be endless. As a matter of fact, the protagonist thoughts about the city can be resumed in one word: wild. Indeed, he says “It’s wild.”. Throughout the text, the author describes the city as wild as the desert. In fact, the notion of space is absent: “depthlessness”, “wilderness”, “no saying where it ended or began”, “endless”, “wide”, “trackless”. Moreover, the word “desert” appears three times in the text accentuating the idea of wilderness. Everything the teen sees is so unknown and unfamiliar that it looks like it does not have shape anymore. For example, the skyline “dwindled into a wilderness of parking lots and outlet malls”. The loops of shopping plazas are faceless “loop after faceless loop of shopping plazas”. The way the stucco homes in Las Vegas’ suburb are placed remind him of a cemetery: “sameness row on row, like stones in a cemetery”. The author uses a comparison. Besides, we understand that the three characters are heading to the house of the narrator’s father. It is as well, an unknown place for him: “it would be something new to live in a house with a yard”. We also figure out that he is going to stay there a little while. As a matter of fact, his father tells him to wait to see the illuminated volcano: “Just wait until you’re gonna see it lit up at night.”. The readers can suppose that the narrator is moving to his father’s house. Las Vegas is an unknown place for the child, so big and unfamiliar that he compares it to the desert.

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