Through its examination of highly-valued artworks (such as The Goldfinch) and depiction of Hobie’s antique restoration business, the novel explores the question of why and how authenticity is valued over fabrication. Of all the characters, Hobie is the most dedicated to the importance of authenticity. Theo at first has a more relaxed attitude toward the issue of fabrication; yet after this gets him into deep trouble, he comes to realize the important of authenticity. Indeed, it takes Theo being tricked himself over the thing that matters the most to him—the painting The Goldfinch—to realize that authenticity provides the meaning, logic, and assurance that are vitally needed in a cruel and chaotic world.
The novel conveys the importance of authenticity through the character of Hobie, who shows how devotion to authenticity can provide calm and meaning in a confusing world. Hobie finds everything about antiques inherently fascinating, including all the factors that make a piece authentic. Hobie’s pure love for his work as an antiques restorer, dedication to his craft, and skill as a restorer earn him a reputation as a particularly upstanding, trustworthy dealer. When Theo comes to stay with him as a 13-year-old, Hobie teaches him about his trade. Theo explains, “I learned about veneers and gilding, what a mortise and tenon was, the difference between ebonized wood and true ebony.” Throwing himself into this trade soothes Theo in the wake of his mother’s death. Indeed, the ability to tell when an antique is authentic gives him a purpose and sense of meaning when the rest of the world seems totally chaotic and cruel. At one point Theo links Hobie’s skill as a restorer to his ability to perceive Theo’s true feelings. Hobie is a deeply attentive person, both in his restoration business and in his relationship with Theo, and the novel indicates that prioritizing authenticity is equally important in both cases.
However, Theo eventually discovers that fabrication seems to offer many benefits of its own. When Theo is 26 and has joined Hobie’s business as a partner, he begins selling fabricated antiques as real. At first Theo does this to save the shop from financial ruin. However, after he realizes how easy it is to dupe customers into buying the fakes, he can’t stop and ends up making a fortune. Theo even comes to enjoy selling the fakes to gullible customers and inventing elaborate ways to make it seem as if the fakes are real. Indeed, Theo develops a level of skill in selling fabricated antiques comparable to Hobie’s skill in restoring them. He comes to know the different kinds of customers and applies different methods to each of them. Theo gets a thrill out of developing this skill, as when he observes: “With this species of cheat—whom I took great pleasure in rooking—the trick was to play dumb, look bored, stay engrossed in my book, act as if I didn’t know what I had, and let them think they were rooking me.”
Theo’s skill as a fabricator highlights how falsehood has its own appeal that can seem like it outweighs the value of authenticity. Theo also comes to learn about the common qualities that make people vulnerable to being tricked. Not only do people feel like they want a deal, but they tend to ignore signs pointing to the truth: “Four times out of five they would look right past what they didn’t want to see.”
What’s more, Theo discovers that in many ways, fake antiques really are as valuable as real ones—particularly when they are valued not as works of art, but rather as status symbols. Theo takes advantage of the fact that objects gain real value when people simply think they are valuable. For example, he uses inventive ways to produce “paper trails” that indicate that the fake antiques he is selling were once part of the collections of important people. This convinces customers that the antiques in question are real, and perhaps more importantly, it makes them want to buy them more because they crave elite status more than they crave genuine beauty or craftsmanship. Based on this experience, Theo concludes, “An object—any object—was worth whatever you could get somebody to pay for it.”
Yet while Theo develops great skill in selling fabrications and even comes to act as though that fake antiques are just as valuable as real ones, he is ultimately forced to confront the importance of authenticity. This occurs when he is blackmailed by a customer, Lucius Reeve, who knows he has been sold a fake (and who, as the reader later learns, knows Theo took The Goldfinch). Theo is forced to tell Hobie the truth about selling fakes, a devastating moment in which Theo realizes how much he has betrayed Hobie and, in particular, the values Hobie has passed on to him. He realizes that even though many people will accept fabricated antiques as real, he cannot live with himself by participating in this deception. This is because, to Theo himself, authenticity is important, and what makes art meaningful.
Theo also gets an even more forceful reminder of the importance of authenticity when he gets tricked himself. Toward the end of the novel, Boris reveals that he stole The Goldfinch while he and Theo were in high school, and that the package Theo has been carrying around ever since does not contain the painting at all. Boris is shocked that Theo never looked inside the package to see, a fact that serves as a further reminder that people “look right past what they don’t want to see.”
The experience of being tricked forces Theo to appreciate the importance of authenticity, and eventually leads him to use the reward money for The Goldfinch to buy back all the fakes he sold to Hobie’s customers over the years. Theo’s decision to buy back the fakes mirrors Boris’ promise to return The Goldfinch, which he does at great personal risk to himself. Both Theo and Boris learn that it is important not to deceive people through fabrication. In the redemptive act of buying back the bad antiques, Theo is able to undo his descent into dishonesty and greed, and remind himself of the values that give his life meaning. Indeed, it is his year of journeying around the world buying back the antiques that prompts Theo to deliver the long passage at the end of the novel in which he reflects on the way in which caring for art brings meaning to life. Through Theo’s experience, the novel demonstrates that there’s truly no substitute for authenticity, no matter how tempting falsehoods might seem in the moment.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Fabrication vs. Authenticity ThemeTracker
Fabrication vs. Authenticity Quotes in The Goldfinch
I learned about veneers and gilding, what a mortise and tenon was, the difference between ebonized wood and true ebony, between Newport and Connecticut and Philadelphia crest rails, how the blocky design and close-cropped top of one Chippendale bureau rendered it inferior to another bracket-foot of the same vintage with its fluted quarter columns and what he liked to call the “exalted” proportions of the drawer ratio.
One commentator, in London, had mentioned my painting in the same breath with the recovered Rembrandt:… has drawn attention to more valuable works still missing, most particularly Carel Fabritius’s Goldfinch of 1654, unique in the annals of art and therefore priceless…
Anything too evenly worn was a dead giveaway; real age, as I came to see from the genuine pieces that passed through my hands, was variable, crooked, capricious, singing her and sullen there, warm asymmetrical streaks on a rosewood cabinet from where a slant of sun had struck it while the other side was as dark as the day it was cut.
I sold heavily altered or outright reconstructed pieces as original; if—out of the dim light of Hobart and Blackwell—the collector got the piece home and noticed something amiss […] then I—grieved at the mix-up, while stalwart in my conviction that the piece was genuine—gallantly offered to buy it back at ten per cent more than the collector had paid, under the conditions and terms of ordinary sale. This made me look like a goody guy, confident in the integrity of my product and willing to go to absurd length to ensure my client’s happiness, and more often than not the client was mollified and decided to keep the piece. But on the three or four occasions when distrustful collectors had taken me up on my offer: what the collector didn’t realize was that the fake—passing from his possession to mine, at a price indicative of its apparent worth—had overnight acquired a provenance. Once it was back in my hands, I had a paper trail to show it had once been part of the illustrious So-and-So collection […] I could then turn around and sell it again for sometimes twice what I’d bought it back for.
It was the secret no one told you, the thing you had to learn for yourself: viz. that in the antiques trade there was really no such thing as a “correct” price. Objective value—list value—was meaningless. If a customer came in clueless with money in hand (as most of them did) it didn’t matter what the books said, what the experts said, what similar items at Christie’s had recently gone for. An object—any object—was worth whatever you could get somebody to pay for it.
I did know. Because if possible to paint fakes that look like that? Las Vegas would be the most beautiful city in the history of earth! Anyway—so funny! Here I am, so proudly teaching you to steal apples and candy from the magazine, while you have stolen world masterpiece of art.
Because this is closed circle, you understand? Horst is right on the money about that. No one is going to buy this painting. Impossible to sell. But—black market, barter currency? Can be traded back and forth forever! Valuable, portable. Hotel rooms—going back and forth. Drugs, arms, girls, cash—whatever you like.
Because—they are saying, ‘one of great art recoveries of history.’ And this is the part I hoped would please you—maybe not who knows, but I hoped. Museum masterworks, returned to public ownership! Stewardship of cultural treasure! Great joy! All the angels are singing! But it would never have happened, if not for you.
Where’s the nobility in patching up a bunch of old tables and chairs? Corrosive to the soul, quite possibly. I’ve seen too many estates not to know that. Idolatry! Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? And isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another?
