David Copperfield and The Goldfinch: The Coming of Age Novel in Two Centuries

Abstract

In The New York Times, Stephen King writes that like the best of Dickens, the novel turns on mere happenstance, with Theo Decker a twenty-first century Oliver Twist and Theo's father a Fagin in Theo's life, along with Dickensian dollops of suspense. While The Goldfinch can be called Dickensian, not least of all because of its length and number of coincidences, it is its charaterization and plot that invite comparison to Dickens, and rather to David Copperfield and, structurally, to the long tradition of the Bildungsroman novel. Among other things Heineman shares that perhaps Theo has written his story, as David Coppergield did his, to find out whether he shall turn out to be the hero of his own life.