Essays on literary works - 2024
What Led Père Goriot to Ruin? (Based on Honoré de Balzac's Novel “Père Goriot”)
Père Goriot was the original girl dad—except the girls grew claws and the dad got wrecked. Absolutely obliterated. Imagine Succession, but instead of Logan Roy throwing billions at his ungrateful offspring, it's a widowed noodle baron in Restoration-era Paris, holed up in a crusty boarding house, burning through his cash like it’s emotional incense for daughters who don't even answer his letters. The man simps himself to death. Literally.
Let’s talk about it.
Père Goriot: the Man, the Meme, the Martyr
At first glance, Père Goriot (from Balzac’s spicy little fever dream of a novel, Père Goriot) reads like an emotional PSA for parental boundaries. He’s an ex-vermicelli king who, once retired, drops everything for his daughters. And not in a cute suburban dad way. In a full-blown-sacrificial-lamb-with-no-personal-boundaries way. Think “Eat Pray Love” but instead of Julia Roberts eating gelato, he’s selling his silverware to fund Anastasie’s gambling debt.
Let me be blunt: Goriot’s ruin isn’t just financial. It’s spiritual. Existential. He becomes a ghost in his own life. A ghost haunted by two living daughters who treat him like a broken ATM.
Yes, I’m angry for him. And yes, this is still a novel from 1835.
Welcome to Paris, Baby—Where Empathy Gets Mugged
Let’s not skip the context. This isn’t just a sob story about daddy issues. This is Balzac’s Paris, which is kind of like Gotham City if Batman retired and left everyone to rot in morally grey gentrification. The city is a brutal capitalist maze, wrapped in brocade and body odor, where everyone’s trying to climb the ladder, but the rungs are greased with gossip, gold, and betrayal.
You want love? That’ll cost you. Want influence? Hope you’ve got a duchess in your contacts and a dowry in your pocket. Want a bed that doesn’t smell like soup bones and crushed dreams? Sorry, that’s extra.
Everyone in Père Goriot is playing Monopoly with real lives, and Goriot walks in holding flowers instead of dice.
Goriot's Downfall? Love, Weaponized
Let’s spell this out: Père Goriot is not stupid. He’s just… too human. Which, in this world, is terminal.
Balzac basically holds up Goriot as a bloodied sacrifice on the altar of unconditional love—but with the caveat that the people you love might sell you to buy nicer candles.
His daughters, Anastasie and Delphine, are Parisian It Girls, gilded and gorgeous, but also emotionally calcified. They love their father the way people love free shipping—only when it benefits them. They keep him orbiting their lives like a sad, broke moon, occasionally letting him buy their silence, their approval, maybe an afternoon visit—if it won’t ruin their social calendars.
You might think: “Why doesn’t he cut them off?” And the answer is, he can’t. Goriot’s love is chemical. Addictive. He’s a one-man Hallmark Channel movie on loop, but instead of a happy ending, he gets ignored on his deathbed.
You want to scream. I wanted to scream. And then I realized—I’d seen this story before. In every parent who overgives. In every person who thinks if I just love harder, they’ll stay.
Spoiler: They won’t.
The Boarding House from Hell (or TikTok House, Circa 1835)
Let’s talk about the Maison Vauquer, because this is where the rot sets in. Imagine the worst college dorm you’ve ever seen. Now subtract plumbing, add soup with questionable meat chunks, and top it off with seven emotionally volatile residents and a landlady who would sell your soul for two francs.
Here’s the cast:
- Eugène de Rastignac: hot young law student with big dreams and questionable morals (basically a 19th-century influencer-in-training).
- Vautrin: mysterious ex-con with toxic mentor energy and big “trust me bro” energy.
- Madame Vauquer: landlady with the personality of a dying radiator.
Everyone’s either climbing, hiding, or scheming. No one cares. No one listens. And Goriot? He’s the cautionary tale in Room Whatever—the one people whisper about when the soup’s too thin.
But this soup pot of dysfunction is where Balzac slow-cooks his metaphor: Goriot isn’t just ruined by love. He’s ruined by a system that commodifies everything, especially affection. The currency of love is real, and Goriot pays in full—while everyone else scams the bank.
Rastignac: The F*ckboy Prodigy of Paris
Now Eugène. Eugène Rastignac is what would happen if you crossed Harry Styles’ cheekbones with a finance bro's ambition and dropped him into an elevated morality play. He wants to climb. He wants to matter. He also kind of loves Delphine (Goriot’s daughter), but like… not enough to be decent.
His friendship with Goriot is this weird, shifting thing—part affection, part exploitation, part case study. Rastignac watches Goriot unravel like a slow-motion car crash and takes notes. He learns that love makes you weak, that kindness is not profitable, that Paris is a meat grinder for the sentimental.
And by the end? Goriot dies alone, sobbing about daughters who never come. And Eugène? He looks out at the city and basically goes: Okay. Time to play dirty.
No moral arc. Just vibes. Savage, Darwinian vibes.
Capitalism with Lipstick and a Corset
The real villain? Not Delphine. Not Anastasie. Not even Rastignac (though he could use a reality check and maybe some therapy). The villain is Paris itself, or more precisely—the economy of emotion.
Balzac’s Père Goriot is a manifesto about how affection gets monetized, and how love, in this world, is always transactional. Fathers aren’t fathers—they’re retirement plans. Marriages aren’t relationships—they’re LinkedIn connections in corsets.
It’s all fake. It’s all branding. And the people who believe in real love, like Goriot, get chewed up and spit out. Their vulnerability makes them cringe in this universe.
Sound familiar?
Yeah. It's giving 2025. It’s giving burnout. It’s giving “emotionally available” in the age of dating apps and ghosting and emotionally fluent narcissists who can cry on cue and then Venmo request you for half the sushi.
What’s Left of Goriot?
There’s this moment. Near the end. Goriot, skeletal, broke, abandoned, whispering his daughters’ names. Still loving them. Still hoping.
I hate it. I love it. It makes me want to throw the book and also tattoo it on my ribs.
He dies not with vengeance, not even bitterness—but faith. Delusion, maybe. But it’s also holy. A kind of emotional martyrdom. The man never stopped believing that love, if given enough, would come back. And that’s either the most beautiful or the stupidest thing a person can do. Maybe both.
Rastignac stands at his grave and throws out this killer line: “It’s war now.”
And that’s it. The torch passes. Goriot: the last believer. Eugène: the new player.
Roll credits. Burn the letters. Love is dead. Long live the hustle.
So What Ruined Père Goriot?
Everything.
But mostly? He did.
By choosing love over power. By giving instead of taking. By believing his daughters were humans, not capital.
But also? We did.
By creating a world (then and now) where love is a resource, not a refuge. Where parents are supposed to bankroll their kids’ dreams but disappear when the champagne pops. Where loyalty is quaint and power is sexy.
Père Goriot died believing in love.
And Paris said: “L.”
TL;DR (for Google, for Reddit, for the emotionally dead):
What led Père Goriot to ruin? Unconditional love in a conditional world. Balzac's novel is a masterclass in emotional capitalism—where Paris devours the gentle, and affection gets twisted into currency. Goriot’s daughters ghost him, society ignores him, and the man dies whispering names that will never echo back. It's brutal. It's real. It's timeless. It’s probably on your For You page, in a different font.
Want to cry more about classic literature and the horror of modern emotion economies? Smash that heart emoji. Or don’t. Just—maybe call your dad.