The Goldfish by Donna Tartt

Description

In the final chapter of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, Theo Decker, the protagonist, reflects on his adventure with the painting of The Goldfinch, and tells us the following: “Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important whatever teaches us to sing ourselves out of despair. But the painting has also taught me that we can speak to each other across time. And I feel I have something very serious and urgent to say to you, my non-existent reader, and I feel I should say it urgently as if I were standing in a room with you. That life – whatever else it is – is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway; wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping our eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch” (771)  How does this relate to Theo’s adventure with The Goldfinch? Does it underscore the idea that the painting is the novel’s antagonism? Or does it show that Theo has found a way to reconcile his connection to the painting so that it is no longer an antagonism? How does this relate to the idea of change in the novel?