I just finished reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt yesterday. Interestingly, I stopped at the nadir of the book Monday morning, the point in the book where the hero is in the worst possible situation and shape ever. It sunk my mood for the entire day. I was depressed on behalf of Theo Decker. I felt horrible for this fictional character, as if I knew him.
This reminds me of the time my friend Heather and I were in high school and watching It's a Wonderful Life for the first time. We started watching it kind of late, and it is a long movie, more than two hours. We got to the point where Jimmy Stewart was wandering the streets disheveled and looking for a bridge to jump off. It was late. We decided it was too depressing and turned it off. This was before It's a Wonderful Life became a holiday staple and was shown on television almost everyday on some channel in December.
The next morning, my mom asked what I thought of the movie.
"We didn't finish it," I said. "It was a downer."
"You need to watch the end," she said. I was leaving for college in a few weeks, and didn't get around to it. I saw it at A&O Films, the campus film society, in Fall Quarter. I should have guessed it had a happy ending by the title.
Fortunately, I learned my lesson on not finishing movies and books from It's a Wonderful Life. Interestingly, two of the characters in the book watch It's a Wonderful Life at the end of the book.
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