The Goldfinch is filled with different forms of illegal activity. Yet part of Theo’s coming-of-age experience involves learning to differentiate between illegal and immoral acts. This process starts at the very beginning of the novel when Theo commits an act (stealing The Goldfinch) that is illegal but arguably not immoral. Haunted by guilt and terror over this act, he rebels more and more against both moral and legal norms. Yet as the novel overall makes clear, not every illegal act is immoral, and it is far more important to focus on ethics than it is to focus on the law. Indeed, the novel suggests that learning to distinguish between morality and legality is an important part of growing up.
Even at the very beginning of the novel, Theo is both inclined to break rules and afraid to do so; he senses that rules and morality might not be exactly the same thing, but he’s not sure how to tell the difference. After his friendship with the wayward Tom Cable leads Theo to commit various misdeeds—such as smoking a cigarette and breaking into someone’s house in the Hamptons—Theo and Audrey are called into a meeting at Theo’s school. It is on the day of the meeting that they go to the Met to kill some time before they have to be at school—a trip that results in Audrey’s death. As a result, Theo blames himself for his mother’s death, reasoning that if he hadn’t rebelled, he and his mother wouldn’t have gone to the Met and she wouldn’t have died. Irrationally—but understandably—Theo feels that he’s being cosmically punished for rebelling, as if breaking rules and behaving immorally always go hand-in-hand.
The first serious crime Theo does commit is a perfect example of an illegal act that is not necessarily immoral. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack at the Met, Theo meets a dying man, Welty, who tells him to take The Goldfinch. The fact that Theo is young and was instructed to do so by an older, dying man arguably means he has diminished responsibility for the theft of the painting. Having stolen The Goldfinch, Theo knows that the legally and morally correct thing to do would be to tell an adult that he took the painting and then give it back. Yet as Theo himself points out, the vulnerable position in which he is left following the bombing makes him feel unable to admit the truth: “In my homeless limbo, it seemed insane to step up and admit to what I knew a lot of people were going to view as very serious wrongdoing.” Because Theo is only 13, it is unlikely that he would be in serious trouble for stealing the painting, yet understandable that he feels afraid that admitting the truth would make his already precarious circumstances worse. This further emphasizes how people can commit illegal acts due to being in a vulnerable position.
The illegal activity that Theo goes onto commit with his best friend, Boris, further explores the idea that even frequently committing crimes does not necessarily make one a bad person. At only 14, Theo and Boris drink, take drugs, and shoplift. In many ways, they resemble typical teenage delinquents. Yet at the same time as the two boys engage in a range of illegal activity, they also develop a close, loving friendship, filled with loyalty, care, and generosity. Depicting Boris and Theo’s illegal activity side-by-side with the evolution of their friendship is another way to show that committing crimes is not necessarily evidence of moral bankruptcy.
At the same time, the book does show that illegal activity, even when it is not in itself particularly immoral, can lead to immoral behavior down the road. This is something Theo learns the hard way as a teenager and young adult. When Theo leaves Las Vegas, Larry’s girlfriend Xandra comments, “You’re headed down a bad road… [Boris is] going to end up in a jail by the time he’s eighteen, that one, and dollars to doughnuts you’ll be right there with him.” Although Theo never ends up in prison, Xandra’s prediction is not totally inaccurate. Later in life Theo develops an opioid addiction. The novel does not portray his drinking and drug use as necessarily immoral; at the same time, it does suggest that there is a link between Theo’s carelessness about the law and his carelessness about morality. In the midst of his addiction, Theo begins selling the fake antiques without telling Hobie. This is one of the most immoral acts in the book, as it betrays the trust and damages the reputation of someone who loves Theo so innocently. Although it is illegal, this doesn’t really matter as much as the fact that it is a devastating betrayal.
Finally, the novel also shows that although illegal acts are not necessarily immoral, there are many cases in which illegality and immorality go together. This is true of Theo selling the bad antiques and Boris stealing The Goldfinch from Theo—two illegal acts that involve betraying a friend. The character who combines illegality and immorality to the highest degree, meanwhile, is Theo’s father Larry. Larry uses illegal drugs, steals, and evades debt, and the book shows that these illegal acts are immoral because of how they intersect with Larry’s selfishness and greed. Whereas Theo starts stealing because he doesn’t have enough money for food and uses drugs to deal with the pain of losing Audrey, Larry’s criminal activity is produced by his lack of empathy for others. Crucially, whereas Theo tries to right his wrongs after seeing how they hurt people, Larry continues to avoid responsibility, to the point that he kills himself drunk-driving while trying to abandon his family for a second time.
Ultimately, the fact that Larry is an alcoholic and a gambler matters far less than the fact that he is a selfish and uncaring father who abandons Theo (although of course the two issues are not totally unrelated). For all his faults and all the mistakes he makes, Theo never wants to hurt other people. When he does—such as by selling the fake antiques—he makes it right again. Indeed, when Theo uses the reward money from the return of The Goldfinch at the end of the novel to buy back the fake antiques he sold, it is obvious that Theo has gained a strong sense of ethical duty—and one that encompasses an understanding of the distinction between immoral and illegal acts.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Immorality vs. Crime ThemeTracker
Immorality vs. Crime Quotes in The Goldfinch
It would be much easier to explain to Hobie how I had happened to take the painting out of the museum in the first place. That it was a mistake, sort of. That I’d been following Welty’s instructions; that I’d had a concussion. That I hadn’t fully considered what I was doing. That I hadn’t meant to let it sit around so long. Yet in my homeless limbo, it seemed insane to step up and admit to what I knew a lot of people were going to view as very serious wrongdoing.
Before Boris, I had borne my solitude stoically enough, without realizing quite how alone I was. And I suppose if either of us had lived in an even halfway normal household, with curfews and chores and adult supervision, we wouldn’t have become quite so inseparable, so fast, but almost from that day were together all the time, scrounging our meals and sharing what money we had.
Well, kid, guess what? I’ve been around the track a few times—I do know. He's going to end up in jail by the time he’s eighteen, that one, an dollars to doughnuts you’ll be right there with him.
That was your father that died. Your own father. And you act like it was, I don’t know, I’d say the dog, but not even the dog. Because I know you’d care if it was the dog got hit by a car, at least I think you would.
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…
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.
Good doesn’t always follow from good deeds, nor bad deeds result from bad, does it? Even the wise and good cannot see the end of all actions. Scary idea!
