Friendship and Family Theme Analysis

Many of the main characters in The Goldfinch, including Theo, Boris, Pippa, and the Barbour children, have at least one deceased parent. Meanwhile, the parents and other family members who are alive tend to be neglectful at best and toxic at worst. Yet at the same time that the novel starkly highlights the failures of family, it also celebrates the vital importance of friendship. Rather than simply painting friendship as something that can take the place of family relationships, the novel celebrates friendship on its own terms, as something that connects people across huge differences and brings unexpected joy. Friendships can assume a form similar to familial relationships (there are ways in which Boris and Theo are like brothers, for example, and Hobie is something of a father-figure while Mrs. Barbour is a mother-figure). However, the novel also emphasizes that these friendships are not exact simulations or replacements of familial relationships, but rather valuable in their own right.

Despite its emphasis on friendship, the book does emphasize that familial relationships can be deeply important. Although Theo’s mother, Audrey, dies very early on in the book, the novel still emphasizes how much Theo adored and idolized her through his recollections about their life together. For Theo, Audrey was not just a loving mother but a person he sought to emulate. His whole life revolved around her, and when she dies, he feels totally lost. Although he is rarely actually alone, he feels very isolated from the people around him.

Yet while the novel shows that family is important, it also presents family as something that is more often a failed ideal than actually successful. Neither Theo’s father, Larry, nor his paternal grandparents seem to care about him and do not want to take care of him after Audrey dies. When Larry takes Theo to live with him in Las Vegas it seems possible that he is trying to actually be a good parent, but once they are there Larry neglects him, and in the end it turns out Larry only took him in because he thought that Theo had a “fortune” that Larry would be able to take for himself.

Before moving to Vegas with Larry, Theo is temporarily taken in by another family, the Barbours, but—while they care for Theo—the Barbours become another way in which the novel demonstrates how families fail. Theo is connected to the Barbours via his schoolfriend Andy, who receives rather brutal treatment from both his parents and siblings. While Andy’s siblings mercilessly bully him (Theo compares the way his older brother Platt treats him to a form of torture), Andy’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Barbour, are constantly trying to turn him into something he isn’t. Whereas Andy is a highly intelligent, bookish child, his parents try to force him to be athletic and outdoorsy. After Andy and Mr. Barbour die in a sailing accident, Mrs. Barbour finally realizes that she did not make Andy feel loved for who he was. Instead, she was trying to mold him into someone he was not. 

Yet while the Barbours demonstrate the failures of family, they come to show the value of friendship. The Barbours are arguably not exactly a surrogate family to Theo, but people whose friendship he comes to treasure. This is best shown when he reconnects with them after Andy and Mr. Barbour’s deaths. Theo becomes especially close to Mrs. Barbour, but even though she tells him that she has always seen him as a son, the relationship he has to her is almost the reverse, with Theo as the parent and Mrs. Barbour as the child. Because she is so traumatized by the loss of her husband and son, Mrs. Barbour is extremely vulnerable. Theo takes care of her, repaying the care she showed him when he was a boy. Indeed, it is arguably the fact that Theo is not her son that allows him to care for her in a way that her actual children cannot.

Theo’s early experience bonding with people outside his family sets the stage for the novel’s deepest, most complex celebration of the friendship: his relationship with Boris. To some extent, the whole novel could be read as an unconventional love story with Theo and Boris as its central couple. Theo notes: “Before Boris, I had borne my solitude stoically enough, without realizing quite how alone I was.”

In many ways, Boris and Theo could not be more different. Yet this difference actually brings them together. Theo is fascinated by Boris—by his stories of living all over the world, by his reckless approach to life, and by all the activities that Boris introduces Theo to (most of all drinking and taking drugs). While Boris seems like exactly the kind of figure that a concerned parent would label a “bad influence,” this would be a misinterpretation, or at least an oversimplification, of the impact Boris actually has on Theo. In reality, Boris enables Theo to be free, have fun, and take control over his life after having been surrounded by adults making decisions on his behalf.

Boris and Theo’s friendship is celebrated because the boys truly love and care for each other (even if they sometimes express this in strange and indirect ways). Although due to their shared parental neglect they have little (to the point that they even have to resort to shoplifting food), they always share everything they have with each other. When Theo has nightmares, Boris soothes him, and later in the novel it is revealed that Boris would clean up Theo’s vomit when he would drink to the point of passing out, as well as intervene when Theo’s suicidal tendencies drove him to reckless behavior. It seems very possible that without Boris’ intervention, Theo may well have not survived his teenage years.

It’s also notable that Theo and Boris connect over having parents who are alcoholics and/or dead, the primary thing they have in common. Their friendship makes the pain of losing family members more bearable, but it’s important to note that they do not replace each other’s missing parents—in particular, Boris is certainly the furthest thing from a father figure imaginable. Instead, their friendship gives them a new model of connection, one that proves to be just as meaningful as family bonds are supposed to be.

Perhaps the most important aspect of Boris and Theo’s friendship, however, is the fact that Boris majorly betrays Theo and ultimately manages to redeem himself. Conventional wisdom states that while familial connections are forever, friendship is conditional, and can dissolve if one friend lets the other down. Yet The Goldfinch suggests that friendships can also involve a form of unconditional love. Although Boris betrays Theo by stealing The Goldfinch, he still loves him, doing everything in his power to right this wrong. Meanwhile, although Theo is shocked and hurt by Boris’s theft (and the fact that he kept it secret for so long), he forgives Boris because Boris fulfils his promise of getting the painting back. This restores the bond of unconditional love that exists between them.

Overall, the novel shows that friendship can provide a lifesaving balm when family fails—not as an exact replacement of family, but as a mode of connection that shares many of the same qualities as the ideal familial relationship. These qualities include care, generosity, loyalty, and unconditional love. Theo may have a particularly troubled family situation, but he is able to flourish anyway through friendship.