“The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt (post 7): Both the protagonist, Theo, and his romantic interest, Pippa, have unacknowledged multiple personality

Theo and Pippa first encounter each other under traumatic circumstances: at an art museum when it is bombed by terrorists. Subsequently, he would like to marry her, but she does not think that two people who both have posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) should marry each other.

Donna Tartt appears to have misunderstood Pippa’s diagnosis. Pippa has arguments with herself, a typical symptom of multiple personality: “I talk to myself, have arguments with myself in different voices” (1, p. 612).

Theo’s multiple personality—a condition clinically known for its hiddenness and secrecy, with memory gaps often camouflaged by alcohol and drug abuse—has its first veiled reference with the words “second self” in this passage about illicit drug dealings: “The fetishism of secrecy. These people understood—as I did—the back alleys of the soul, whispers and shadows, money slipping from hand to hand, the password, the code, the second self…” (1, p. 528).

Theo’s best friend confronts Theo with his long history of memory gaps:

“You’re a blackout drunk…you know that?”

“Give me a break,” I said, after an incredulous pause…

“You were a mess, Theo…Probably you should have been in hospital…You would lie on your back in the road at night, no streetlights, no way for anyone to see you, waiting for a car to come and run you over, I had to fight to get you up and drag you in the house…” (1, pp. 553-555).

And the following incidental remarks are suggestive of multiple personality:

“…my thoughts…were galloping in several…directions at once” (1, p. 560).

Theo speaks in “Someone else’s voice, not mine” (1, p. 593).

“No.” “Somebody else talking, not me” (1, p. 682).

Finally, Theo is revealed to have memory gaps (cardinal feature of multiple personality) even when he is not intoxicated: “It happened before it even happened, like a skip in a DVD throwing me forward in time, because I have no memory at all of picking the pistol off the floor…and I can’t remember if I shot him because somehow it was a completely different moment…” (1, p. 678).

Actually, the whole portrayal of Theo is of a split personality. On the one side, he is a likable first-person narrator. He would have to be likable to engage readers for the full length of this 771-page Pulitzer Prize novel. But his Jekyll has a Hyde, a crook who cheats many customers of many thousands of dollars for fake antiques: “I’d always worked so hard to screen my double-dealing self from him, to show him only the improved-and-polished version, never the shameful threadbare self I was so desperate to hide, deceiver and coward, liar and cheat” (1, p. 751).

“A self one does not want. A heart one cannot help” (1, p. 761).

1. Donna Tartt. The Goldfinch. New York, Little Brown/Hachette, 2013.