The Dangers of Freedom

Although freedom is commonly seen in our society as a good thing, something that should be defended, in Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom, freedom is not always good. Characters often feel free right before terrible things happen to them, and characters who have too much freedom are miserable.

Patty is a prime example of a character who feels free right before terrible things happen to her and take away her freedom. In her autobiography, Patty recalls how “she’d been feeling so wonderfully free” at a party (38). At that party, she lost all of this freedom when she was raped. Years later, after exposing Eliza’s drug problem and lies to her parents, Patty felt free, and so she “sprinted down Eliza’s street in sheer exhilaration at her freedom,” only to slip on ice and sustain a basketball career-ending injury (97). Patty’s feelings of freedom were quickly taken away from her.

Patty and other characters felt miserable when they had too much freedom. In her autobiography, Patty recalls, “All she ever seemed to get for all her choices and all her freedom was more miserable. The autobiographer is almost forced to the conclusion that she pitied herself for being so free” (192). Patty felt that she had too much freedom, and this was one of the causes of her depression. At one point in Richard Katz’s life, “he was at once freer than he’d been since puberty and closer than he’d ever been to suicide” (205). Richard had nothing tying him down, so he was one of the freest characters, but he was unhappy. Freedom is commonly believed to make people happy, but when Richard had too much of it, he felt miserable.

Walter sums up the idea of freedom being dangerous when he says, “The one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to” (383). Having too much freedom causes characters put themselves in dangerous situations and mess up their lives. Joey breaks free of his family, but ends up in a corrupt business deal. Lalitha, “in the freedom of the open road,” drives recklessly, and this does not end well for her (364). Throughout the novel, freedom is often portrayed in a negative light.

Berglund men are not polar opposites

Though at first Joey and his father Walter are presented as being nothing like one another, as Freedom progresses, it becomes apparent that they are more similar than either of them would like to believe. The problems in their relationship start early, with Joey showing signs as an adolescent that he will turn into the type of Republic, profit-driven capitalist that Walter abhors. Walter wants a son who "enjoy[s] playing the role of child," who "want[s] a dad who [can] teach him things" and "side[s] with underdogs," (149), and cannot accept that Joey is not this child.

However, when Walter, after alienating his son from him so much that Joey moves out and insists on paying his own college tuition, disparagingly calls Joey "Mr. Independent," Patty points out that Walter was supporting himself "the exact same way" when he was Joey's age (327). Though Walter had different reasons for breaking free from his father's control (his father was an abusive alcoholic), by failing to understand his son, Walter "find[s] himself replicating his relationship with his own dad" (139) without realizing it.

Additionally, both Joey and Walter possess angry, brooding personalities that make it difficult for them to carry on in the real world. Walter, after realizing that he is in love with Lalitha yet does not want to leave Patty, sits by himself calculating when doomsday will occur: "Net population gain: 60,000" (342) since he has been awake, Walter projects. Though Joey is not an alarmist environmentalist like his father, he is also often struck by feelings of hopelessness. While his new wife Connie pines over him, Joey spends his days thinking about how much more intrigued he is by his friend Jenna and "generally feeling doomed" (384). Unfortunately, Joey and his father are much alike, but only in that they both end up hurting each other and the other people who they try to love.

The Curse of Freedom

          I would like to address what I believe to be one of the most shocking (and perhaps one of the most thematically honest) quotes in Franzen’s Freedom.  It occurs during Katz’s meeting with Walter, Lalitha, and Jessica , when they are discussing ideas for an anti-overpopulation movement.  Walter says:

“People came to this country for either money or freedom.  If you don’t have money, you cling to your freedom all the more angrily.  Even if smoking kills you, even if you can’t afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles.  You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life  whatever way you want to.” (383)

This is quite a statement.  It is not the kind that would have necessarily been believable from Walter before now.  However, for all of its bitterness, it is reflective of many of the novel’s characters – Patty is miserable with her amount of free time; Joey, once liberated from his family, makes a long series of poor life choices until he returns and admits to his father that he needs help; Katz, though unbound by familial or romantic ties, lives an aimless and less than satisfactory life.  According to Walter, and exhibited by the aforementioned people, freedom is a curse, and people have a tendency, when they have freedom, to misuse it.

            While I know that this class is not intended to have a specific theme or idea that runs through it, I have come to hesitate to refer to the novels we have read simply as “21^st century American literature.”  That title, to me, seems too arbitrary to cover the threads that bind these books together.  I’ve thought about the moniker, “post-9/11 literature,” yet, while all of our novels have, in many ways, been shaped by the idea of the unthinkable, this too seems to put too much weight on an event that is not included in every single novel.  (“Adults-behaving-like-children literature” was also an option I discarded early on.)  While I have not yet formulated a category in which to put all of these disparate yet similar novels, Freedom seems to be at the center of some web of ideas that connects each of them, seems to bring to just below the surface some declaration about what it means to be an American in a century where the unthinkable happened and continues to happen each day.  Yes, Franzen and other authors’ novels are populated with people who use their freedom to “fuck up” their lives, or to simply do nothing with them, but that has yet to explain away the fact that most of them continue to survive, or that what they meant to others continues to endure.  Where does “freedom” fall on the balance between realism and idealism?  Where does it fall on the spectrum between repulsion and redemption?  What does freedom truly mean in Franzen’s 21^st century America?

How External Perceptions of Stupidity Determine One's Own Stupidity

   In Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, many characters call one another stupid.  Yet this may be less telling of those being judged than it is about those doing the judging.  Connie explains how "people complain about stupidity because of their own stupidity" and that "smart people don't call others stupid" (247).  Throughout the novel, many characters seem to comment on the stupidity of Patty, even Patty herself, which makes the opposing claim that Patty in fact is not stupid.  After Patty is raped, her mother, Joyce, tells Patty that it is her personal decision if she wants to prosecute her rapist, yet Patty knows what her mother actually means is that, "don't blame me and Daddy when you ruin your life with your stupid decisions" (50).  Her parents actively engage in victim blaming in order to avoid the discomfort of acknowledging that they are putting their own careers ahead of their daughter's wellbeing.
  In the final section of the book, Walter is staying at the house on the Nameless Lake when Patty arrives at his doorstep to make amends.  Walter refuses to let her in, and Patty waits on the porch in the freezing weather.  Walter instead goes out back to look out at the lake until he can no longer take the cold and returns to the house to find Patty practically frozen.  As he takes her inside, Walter continually calls Patty stupid for being outside so long in the cold, even though he was outside as long as she had been.  Walter would rather call an emotionally-distraught Patty stupid for waiting outside for him than admit he was stupid for not allowing her to come into the warm house.
  When other characters insist that they are not stupid, it seems to hold the opposite effect.  Once Walter and Patty begin to date, Walter confronts Patty about her trip to Chicago with Richard, claiming that "[He's] not stupid.  [He] has eyes and ears, [he's] not stupid" (136).  However, for the rest of the novel, it is clear that Walter is stupid about Patty and Richard.  For years, he is completely unaware of their affair until Patty admits it to him.

Competitiveness and American Capitalism

            One of the most interesting contradictions I have seen thus far in Franzen’s Freedom is that almost all of the characters, aside from the college-aged Joey, consider themselves liberal-minded. While perhaps this is true for their political views (although I am not yet convinced), it is certainly not an accurate description of the way they behave. On the contrary, the characters are so viciously competitive that they create the perfect portrayal of cut-throat American capitalism.

            On Monday we discussed the competitive relationships that had emerged so far: Patty versus virtually everyone and Walter versus Richard. Now, as the book progresses, practically the only relationships that have developed are, indeed, more competitive ones. Lalitha must constantly compete with Patty, as well as Jessica, for Walter’s affection. Walter transitions from competing with Katz to competing with his own wife, Patty, for control in their relationship. Joey, the only character who is actually meant to represent capitalism, constantly and cruelly fosters competition in Connie who must fight to keep him interested in her.

            One passage in which this atmosphere of cut-throat competition is blatantly clear is when four of the characters – Walter, Katz, Jessica, and Lalitha – sit down to discuss business and not one of them can get through a sentence without directly provoking someone else. When Walter defends Jessica’s argument instead of Lalitha’s, Franzen writes that Lalitha “turned on him,” and later Jessica “rolled her eyes impatiently” (382). The language throughout this scene evokes an intense sense of competitiveness, and demonstrates that truly almost none of the characters can get along.

            In addition, Walter and Patty’s entire relationship falls apart during this section of the book, and what is one of the primary catalysts of this disaster? Competition between them, of course. When Patty is too apathetic to compete whole-heartedly with Lalitha for Walter’s love – knowing that that fight would be a hopeless one – she instead directs her competitiveness in another direction. Patty and Walter begin to compete insanely for control in their relationship, especially in regard to their children. Patty’s secret financial assistance to Joey triggers immense anger in Walter, and Walter and Patty have one of their worst brawls at this point. As they argue over whose parenting method is better, Patty declares “You’re just as competitive as I am, you just won’t tell the truth about it” (350). Indeed, almost every character is just as competitive as Patty is, which is why the novel turns into such a high-wired, depressing configuration of arguments and hatred.

            I do not think Franzen made these “liberal” characters so competitive without a purpose, however. I believe the reason he throws in so much discussion about capitalism throughout the novel is to prove that everyone in American society has turned competitive, even the ones who claim not to be so. Not even the liberal-minded are safe today, because every American is trained to be relentless and vicious in the path to getting what they want. Competitiveness in the novel represents the way of the modern world.

Immature Jews

I noticed in Jonathan Franzen’s novel, Freedom, that many of characters had some form of Jewish ancestry.  Richard, Jonathan, and Patty (along with her children) all had Jewish roots.  To me this seemed to be a disproportionally large amount of Jews, especially because Richard, Patty, and Jonathan were not related and did not connect through their shared Judaism.  After some reflection, I noticed that the Jews in the novel shared the common trait of lacking maturity.

Walter noticed Richard’s Jewfro their first night of college, his most obvious identifier of being Jewish, and later that night Richard says misogynistic comments about girls (140).  His misogyny, which had came from the relative absence of his Jewish father, defines him throughout the novel.  This causes him to never be able to develop a strong, long-term relationship with another woman, so he never is able to marry and move on to his next stage in life.  Patty’s mom is also mentioned to have been Jewish, thus making Patty half-Jewish.  Patty also never had a close relationship with her mom, a slight rejection of her Judaism.  Patty’s immaturity is seen through how she never is capable of getting over Richard throughout the course of Freedom.  Both of their perpetual childish attitudes prevent them from moving on with their lives.

By having a Jewish mother, Joey is also technically Jewish.  Jonathan even exclaims that Joey “could immigrate to Israel right now, no questions asked” (268).  Jonathan himself is a full-blooded Jew, and it is interesting to compare the maturity of Joey and Jonathan in relation to their Judaism.  Joey discusses his views with Jonathan’s dad, who likes him a lot for his curiosity for his religion.  Jonathan later freaks out on Joey because he was jealous.  Joey, in turn, thinks that Jonathan needed to “fucking grow up already” (289).  Joey is less Jewish than Jonathan is and he happens to be more mature in dealing with bad situations.

I do not believe Franzen intentionally meant for his Jewish characters to be less mature than the other people in the novel.  However, their Judaism seemed to catalyze the exposure of their immaturity.

What does Freedom mean in the novel?

Why is Jonathan Franzen's vast, all-encompassing novel called Freedom? It is a book he began writing in 2001 that was published in 2010; Franzen witnessed significant change in that decade of American society. Few words can sum up the experience of the early 21st century more effectively than freedom. And for a book that captures the national and family landscape of such a time, few words could have served as a more effective title.

The decade from 2000-2009 experienced a seemingly perpetual conversation about freedom. The nation was involved in two wars over the era, both of which involved getting freedom to people in other countries. Since 9/11 the issue of personal privacy versus national security has never been the same, with legislation like the Patriot Act challenging the freedom and privacy Americans thought they would always have. To contrast the loss of civil liberties citizens faced, economic liberties were gained as financial regulations were loosened and loans became easier to get and homes easier to acquire, resulting in an economic crisis that has sent residual effects into the current decade.

While Freedom does not address these civil and economic liberties head on on such a large scale (or at least not yet), the book does examine similar liberties in its own way. Walter's job creating the conservatory calls into question just how free humans should be to destroy the earth for their own sake. It considers modern moneymaking methods, how far people should be allowed to go in making their money before considering the potentially damaging repercussions they create for the future, and the ethics involved with the balance of caring for the future while being prosperous in the present. The complex relationships among Patty, Richard, Walter, and Lalitha highlight the extent of freedom people have within marriage to seek out affection from others, while Walter and Patty's family situation with Joey emphasizes the freedom (or lack thereof) people have to break away from traditional family dynamic and create their own.

Freedom is a book about freedoms of every kind during a decade fixated on freedoms of every kind. As such, the novel is appropriately titled. All the issues of freedom the book addresses boil down to the ultimate question that its parallel decade tried to answer: what does it mean to be free? While America is a nation founded on the principle of liberty, the book suggests that maybe choosing to restrict one's own freedom can be healthier than allowing oneself to indulge in total freedom which, as the novel suggests, can lead to a life and a nation that spiraled out of control.

Right in Society's Eyes

     Throughout The Known World, the word "right" is continuously used in many different forms.  The sense of what is actually right or wrong is very misconstrued in the novel.  Slavery is something that is seen as normal and culturally expected in the setting of the novel.  Today, though we consider slavery very wrong and inhumane.  To the slave owners in the story, slavery is great and of course the right thing to do is own slaves.  Robbins is even able to convince a black slave that owning slaves himself is right and a good idea.
     The actual treatment of the slaves is an issue of being right or wrong, also.  The owners believe everything they do is right and everything they say should be followed.  Robbins uses manipulation and threats to ensure his slaves stay in line.  When he wants Rita to watch Henry he says, "you see things go right" (16).  He did not tell her to make sure he stays, but that he acts "right."  Augustus does the same thing with Henry, too.  He tells him to "try harder to remember, son, to know the right way."  He knows how terrible slavery is and wants Henry to be safe, so he knows the right thing for him to do is just do as Robbins says and be a good slave.  Elias did not do what was right and ran away and suffered by having his ear cut off.  When the slaves do something the owner sees as wrong, they are punished.
     The concept of what is right and wrong in the novel is all based on what society accepts.  That is how the owners and others in the county justify slavery and their treatment of the slaves.  The owners base how good a slave is on how much he or she obeys and does the right thing in their eyes.  When Robbins is telling an overseer about the slave Sam.  He tells him, "once he learned right from wrong, he gave me good work" (93).  Skiffington's judgement is also clouded by society as he is expected to uphold the law, as long as it is in the slave owners' favor. He claims, "I take no side but the right side," but the right side often is against the slaves and for the owners (158).