I was going to write a quick analysis of what smoking in The Goldfinch means but like always I got very carried away and I think I found basically every time smoking gets mentioned in the book. For the sake of my non tgf followers I’m putting this under a readmore, but here is an essay length examination of the thematic importance of cigarettes. In The Goldfinch. And in general.
A cigarette is one of the more thematically loaded props a character can have. For years smoking and was used as shorthand to mean lower class, then turned into a symbol of decadence and vice as smoking became more common. An air of bohemian intellectualism- intelligence with a touch of depravity- is not complete without a cigarette in hand. For a while cigarettes were code for homosexuality, eventually loosening to general sexual promiscuity and eventually loosening even more to show a character was ‘cool’ with a touch of moral ambiguity. And cigarettes will never shake free of the looming shadow of Freudian psychology- a cigar is never just a cigar, and neither is a cigarette.
Anyway, you could go on about cigarette symbolism for days, but we’re here, as per usual, to talk about The Goldfinch. Because Theo smokes- we learn that on page one- too many cigarettes in his Amsterdam hotel room. Now Theo isn’t exactly cool- though he is morally ambiguous, but more importantly later in the book we see who got him started smoking. And as with all of Theo’s vices besides Pippa, it’s Boris.
Are cigarettes cool? Oscar Wilde once said that a cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? Oscar Wilde was also sent to prison on indecency and sodomy charges- a sentence that eventually killed him. Cigarettes were a key fashion statement in Dadaism, Decadence, and Bohemia. Yet while smoking was adored by the ‘artistic crowd’ most upper class society folks wouldn’t be caught dead with cigarette in hand. A pipe perhaps, but not a cigarette. After all, cigarettes were first made by those who couldn’t afford tobacco picking up discarded cigar butts and retooling them thinner- easier to move with- a history still reflected in the name. A working class activity. In the late 1800s cigarettes were thought to cause insanity, among other forms of ‘degeneracy’- yet still people smoked. The allure was too much to deny. And by the advent of the silver screen smoking was accepted. Cigarettes are cool.
So Boris smokes. His room in Vegas reeks of Marlboros (gee Borya, why is your brand of choice the one most heavily marketed to rugged masculine sexuality), and that first afternoon Theo turns down the cigarette Boris offers him- though he does take him up on the beer. So far this fits with Theo’s first impression of Boris as a homeless looking kid passing cigarettes back and forth, slotting Boris more in the morally grey badass zone of cigarette smoking. Safe, familiar.
But this changes quickly- it is specifically pointed out that Boris lost his virginity to someone he’d bummed a cigarette off- a story he tells Theo while blowing smoke out of the corner of his mouth. There’s a clear connection now between sexuality- specifically Boris’ sexuality- and cigarettes. And not just sexuality, but vulnerability, Boris is smoking specifically as he admits that he doesn’t think she liked it very much, something a so-called Marlboro Man would be reticent to admit. There’s also an obvious Freudian allegory here about phallic objects, but we’ll come back to that.
The next time we hear about Boris’ smoking, it is when he and Theo are lying in bed together listening to Mr. Pavlikovsky have sex with or otherwise terrorize two sex workers. As if that wasn’t loaded with sexuality and vulnerability on its own, Boris has Theo light the cigarette for him, and they pass it back and forth as they listen to whatever is going on down the hall. So somewhere between learning about Boris’ sexual history and becoming comfortable enough to share a bed with him, Theo has taken up smoking- though he’s obviously not completely comfortable with it since he mentions it makes him feel light-headed and sick. And now we get to talk about sharing a cigarette!
So passing a cigarette back and forth, or lighting it for someone else has been used as a shorthand for intimacy and sexual tension basically as long as cigarettes have existed. Back when the Hays code was in effect film-makers used cigarette sharing as a way to imply two characters having sex- especially same sex pairs who couldn’t even embrace on camera. Along with sharing a drink (something else Boris and Theo do often) it’s an indirect kiss. They lean in, breath hot on each other’s faces, and do a favor for each other with just a thinnest shroud of plausible heterosexual deniability.
Huh. I promise we will get to phallic imagery eventually.
There are more scenes of cigarette sharing between the two in Vegas- after the night it’s implied they first have sex they share one, and there are a few other instances we don’t have time to touch on one at a time. Suffice to say they’re intimate now.
But to say that cigarettes are sex is reductive. When it’s Boris smoking, yes, it is sexually loaded, but Boris is not the only character who smokes. Xandra and Larry smoke too. And it’s not just that they smoke, but more specifically that they provide the cigarettes for Boris and Theo. The night after the pool they aren’t smoking just anything, they’re smoking Larry’s Viceroys. Boris steals Mr. Pavlikovsky’s lighter for Theo. Their intimacy, their vulnerability, is stolen from beneath the noses of their fathers- it’s a secret, a transgression, something that they are getting away with rather than just doing. Xandra actually calls Theo out for stealing her cigarettes. It’s one of the few actually positive interactions between the two- after she promises to bring him and Boris some food for Thanksgiving, practically setting them up a date. “Fine. I’ll hook you guys up. Just stay out of my cigarettes. I don’t care if you smoke.” In fact it’s maybe the only time anyone besides the two of them acknowledges and accepts their relationship- implying she knows exactly what is going on between them. For all the awfulness of Theo’s house it is something of a safe haven, especially for Boris, they aren’t taken care of, but they’re left alone, and the freedom of isolation is what allows them to find each other. And cigarettes are not merely sexual intimacy, but emotional intimacy, and perhaps just a shred of domesticity, something that hints at a promise of a different life- the kind their father’s would never condone- together somewhere.
The beginning of the end of their Vegas safe haven is foreshadowed with smoking as well. After Boris and Theo share a joint (not technically a cigarette but functionally the same act) Larry comes in, and not only remarks on the smell “you reek a bit Theo” and that Boris is definitely involved “where are you boys getting this stuff?” but he goes so far as to take what's left of the joint out of the ashtray and pocket it. Not only does he intrude on Theo’s private moment, he takes it away. Metaphorically, he has stolen the safety of his home from his son- and when next he appears he hits Theo and forces him to ask for money- the final deconsecration of the Vegas sanctum. But the damage is done as soon as he takes the butt out of the ashtray- Theo is no longer safe.
This has been a lot of talk about cigarettes as they relate to sex- but as with Theo returning to New York, we have to pry ourselves from Boris’ embrace eventually and talk about other characters.
Hobie smokes as well. When Theo first meets him he lights a cigarette, and when he catches Theo staring says “Don’t tell me you want one too.” Theo also specifically mentions Hobie smoking while cooking, one of the first times after his mother’s death that he feels safe, accepted once again. So again cigarettes are an expression of vulnerability, not sexuality but rather a loving, compassionate vulnerability. Theo and Hobie find each other after experiencing profound loss, and for Theo those days of healing, of first learning to put his hands to good use in the workshop, are entangled with the smell of Hobie’s cigarettes. Cigarettes as safety, cigarettes as sanctuary. Cigarettes as metaphor for emotional vulnerability, a way to feel close. Common ground.
Hobie is obviously gay coded, he lives with another man, raises a child with him, cooks-he would fit right into the gallery of what gay characters looked like before gay characters could be explicit- and cigarettes are just another detail of that. In some ways it’s another common ground between him and Theo- an uncomfortable conversation about men they have loved and lost that they skirt carefully around, yet to have a straightforward conversation about what exactly they felt for the men they shared their lives with, the men they lit cigarettes for and mourned bitterly. Theo turning down Hobie’s offer of a cigarette in some ways exemplifies the opportunity missed by the both of them struggling to discuss their true feelings with one another. Perhaps someday they can sit down for a smoke and finally talk about everything.
Neither Pippa or Kitsey smoke. It’s another thing that makes Theo’s relationship with Boris seems so much more intimate than his relationship with either of them- even though has sex with Kitsey they still have each other at arms length, not sharing with each other, not even having this shared experience of vulnerability with each other. In fact, Kitsey dislikes it when he smokes in her bedroom, slamming the door shut on one of the few ways that Theo actually can express himself, one of the few islands that occasionally crests over his waves of repression. When he learns of her infidelities he grinds out a cigarette butt on her dresser- a passive aggressive note- he may say he’s fine but everything is not well, and all his rages and aches are compressed into a streak of ash on a Limoges box. Doubt she’ll have anything to say about it. Beyond that note of anger, there is barely any mention at all of Theo smoking in his adulthood- you could almost be fooled into thinking he was quitting.
Yet as soon as Boris reappears, so do cigarettes. Just before he confesses to stealing the painting- one of the most honest scenes in the book- as he talks about how he was trying to have fun and be happy. [Theo] wanted to be dead. and moments before broaching their relationship as teenagers, Boris is toying with a cigarette. Not smoking it, not quite going that far, Theo isn’t ready yet, but reminding him that it’s there, that rekindling that sort of relationship is an option that he is more than willing to choose. At the engagement party he appears with unlit cigarette dangling from his fingers- another promise he has yet to keep, a hint to Theo at what might come next, come along and find out, the only thing that’s made sense all night. When he does eventually smoke a cigarette it is in Amsterdam, when he finally has Theo back in his good graces, ready to make the next move.
Also in Amsterdam, in their most triumphant moment, just having retrieved the painting and as Boris demands Theo ride alone with him, he lights a cigarette. And now we can finally talk about phallic imagery, because as Boris puts this cigarette to his lips, he tells Theo that now we can go and get you a real blowjob. It’s almost comical.
So anyway, cigarettes look like dicks. Only a little bit off topic, let’s talk about Edward Bernays. He was an ad executive back in the 20s, and the campaign he was most well known for was for Lucky Strike Cigarettes. You see, most women at the time didn’t smoke, it was considered unladylike. But Eddy knew that he was missing out on half the market, and decided what is considered one of the first great PR campaigns, series of ads with the slogan ‘Torches of Freedom’ that took advantage of the first wave feminist movement and branded cigarettes as symbols of rebellious independence, glamour, seduction and sexual allure. It was insanely successful, and where many of our pop culture views on cigarette use stem from (along with the decadence art movement in the late 1800s).
But Bernays was more than just a lucky guy- he was actually working off of the ideas of his more well known uncle, a real piece of shit named Sigmund Freud. And based off of Freud’s theories of subconscious desire, Bernays put two and two and realized that cigarettes are an obvious symbol for a penis- same as a gun or a paintbrush or maybe even a tiny sausage balanced precariously on a toothpick that your best friend has developed an odd taste for. Bernays dove head first into the Id, because he was marketing to women, and it was safe for him to acknowledge that cigarettes are incredibly sexually suggestive without upsetting the delicate heterosexual identity of the smoking American male. And the Marlboro Man, resplendent in his denim and cowboy hat, continued to be one of the most successful ad campaigns in history. But cigarettes, unlike guns, don't penetrate others- they are delicately placed between your lips, held daintily as you suck and blow and taste the slightest hint of the Vodka aftertaste he left behind before he passed it onto you. It’s intensely homoerotic- the man in the Marlboro ad puts a penis to his lips, adjusts his Stetson with a wink- don’t worry I’m straight. Just like all the other cowboys. Queer scholar Dennis Altman once put forward that because same-sex comradeship was particularly important in American life, there was a particular revulsion for anything that exposed the sexual nature of such relationships.
And my word, doesn’t that sum up Boris and Theo just perfectly. An insistence that when Boris’s bloody lips met Theo’s raw knuckles they became blood brother’s, nothing more. An assertion that it happens at that age sometimes, whatever, unfortunate mistake. But in that moment, as Boris lets the cigarette touch the tip of his tongue, flicks a calloused thumb roughly over the edge of the lighter- so similar to the one he stole from his father and gave to Theo all those years ago- and lets his mouth smile around the promise of a real blow job- for a moment things are exposed, if only just in that secret Vegas language only the two of them know. Rubbing his knuckles on my sleeve. He insists on getting Theo alone- well and truly alone, come let’s get back to your hotel and then, well... who knows what he had planned. What both of them were hoping for. But he is smoking, he is making promises he intends to keep, inviting Theo back into that private little world of shared cigarettes that Larry tore them out of long ago.
And when they are interrupted by Martin and his goon squad, Boris- cigarette in mouth- stood frozen. He has been caught with his hairpins down- interrupted in a moment of intimacy that was just beginning. It is the same as Larry pocketing that joint- sorry boys, smoke break’s over. In the fight he spits his cigarette in Frits’ face, defiant. Weaponizing what he feels for Theo- risking death to reclaim what is rightfully his because he WORKED FOR IT GODAMMIT.
Neither Boris nor Theo light a cigarette for the rest of the book.
Of course, we don’t know what exactly happens in Antwerp.
But, perhaps rather than meaning that that is a promise that remains unfulfilled, maybe they have moved beyond them. They don’t need a Freudian stand-in anymore, because they can actually talk to one another. Boris spat out his cigarette, showed without a crutch that he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for Theo, and Theo sees a half-smoked cigarette in a puddle of blood and answers Boris’ question with a bullet in another man’s brain. A thresh-hold is crossed, and when they reunite things are changed. They can admit their importance to each other and perhaps, in Antwerp, though Theo draws the curtains on the scene quickly, perhaps things are not nearly so symbolic as before.
So cigarettes are communication, vulnerability, understanding and intimacy? To smoke is to love, to feel fully and hope for a better world? Sadly, no. Because smoking kills. And so far this analysis has had a massive hole in it in the very conspicuous shape of a dead mother. Or at least the shape of a box of ashes and porny newspaper ads abandoned somewhere in Central Park.
It’s much rarer to see smoking on film nowadays. Partially this is a reflection of real life- smoking rates have been on the decrease since the 50s, and since most public places now can smoking, you have to go out of your way to see a character lighting a cigarette. Much of this, though, comes from external forces. Cigarette advertising has been banned on TV for decades, and since the 90s there have been stricter and stricter rules on how smoking can be portrayed in media. Smoking cannot be shown at all. Smoking can only be shown if the character eventually faces consequences in the form of bad health and social rejection. Smoking can only be shown if the character smoking is portrayed as irredeemable, undeniably the villain, and perpetrates other unforgivable acts.
The reason Theo and Audrey were at the museum the day of the bombing is because Theo got suspended. And though he fears it was for breaking into houses, he is pretty sure it was because he got caught smoking. Or rather, standing around with Tom Cable while he smoked. Had Theo never faffed around with cigarettes in the first place, his mother might still be alive.
Which he feels all the more guilty for because Audrey hated smoking. Lung cancer killed both her parents- banished her to an aunt’s house the same way her own death sent her son languish in Las Vegas. Generational orphaning, all because of smoking. No wonder Theo turns down Hobie and Boris’ offers at first- it is one of the ways he betrays his mother. His first cigarette kills her, and each one after that pushes him further and further away from the version of himself he thinks she would be proud of. When he shares that cigarette in Boris’s bed- surrounded by smoke and spilled beer and the smell people get when nobody cares about them- he dreams about her. What are you doing here? Go home! Right now! He has let her down in the most fundamental way he can- letting himself indulge in a vice he knows she wouldn’t forgive him for. Another way he has let himself become like his father, just as he prayed never would be.
And yet Theo smokes. He melts into Hobie’s cooking, into the sharp curve of Boris’ smile, into the forbidden pleasures of street corners and friendly faces lurking in doorways. Each drag buries his mother deeper, hacking at his leg to free himself from the trap of loss, of what he will never be able to become. Sorrow inseparable from joy. Theo burns and is lungs fill with museum ash and chlorine and to clear his throat he lights a cigarette.
Or, as they call them in Europe sometimes, fags.
