Freedom

Freedom has different meanings for every natural person.

Jonathan franzen's Freedom was called "the masterpiece of American novels" by Time magazine, and he was named "one of the greatest American novelists in the 20th century".

Through the interweaving of sadness and joy, the author dramatically shows the temptation and burden of having too much freedom: whether it is Patty, a housewife full of emotional entanglements, Walter, a husband who insists on being a good person, Richard, a rock singer with uncertain spirit, or Joey, a rebellious and confused teenager, the original definition of freedom brings them everything except happiness. ......

In addition to the main characters-Patty, Walter, Joey Lee and Richard, this novel also involves many characters and creates unique and diverse individuals. Through the plots and techniques carefully designed by the author, the individual characters under the definition of "freedom" show many complicated aspects.

Freedom "lost-refused-repented" is the index of this excellent work. When people are lost in emotion and ideology, it is inevitable that they will have greed for material things, and their desires are hard to contain; You lost yourself more or less without knowing it. As for desire, the author's exaggerated realism abandons some features of Fitzgerald and early aldous huxley, namely aesthetic asceticism.

Another prominent feature of characterization is nihilism. The ideology here refers to "getting rid of all laws, customs and religions, adopting all imaginable attitudes and keeping up with yourself step by step until you fall into the abyss". Then he refused and regretted it. Existentialists invented a kind of anthropology, which is also fictional: all factors that can be discussed in general, such as human physical attributes or rationality, were excluded.

Patty

The soul of the novel, a proud, fragile and insecure housewife.

Most faces are asymmetrical. She was a basketball star in high school and college, but she was both happy and sad. On the one hand, she is confident, and on the other hand, she is not confident, which is exactly reflected in her.

The unsuspecting "encounter" of adolescence-after being raped by the son of his parents' political ally, his parents chose silence instead of standing up for her. This may be the root of her inner insecurity. As an adult, it was her proud and rebellious character that made her indifferent and cold mother and her father who was not good at expressing her feelings leave her.

The poet Auden interprets this loneliness and anxiety, that is, the relationship between giving and being given, as the "ultimate goal". Being loved means becoming the "ultimate goal" of others, which helps to enhance the sense of self-importance, provided that you feel that giving love belongs to the free behavior of others. Patty found it hard to believe from Walter that his love for her was voluntary, just out of a responsibility. Insecure, she was swayed by considerations of gain and loss and fell into the abyss of loneliness and anxiety. She began to doubt her marriage, and on the spur of the moment, she cheated-with her husband's good friend Richard.

In the "degenerate" trance, Patty's hope for freedom is not to find the "ultimate goal" in mistakes and inferior goodness. She wavers between two hopes, one is to be completely self-sufficient like God, and the other is to find an idol who can take all the responsibility for her existence and become an irresponsible person. Addicted to the first hope, the result is loneliness and meaningless; Indulge in the second hope, the result will be constant psychological frustration.

Beauty is a limited quality that will be deprived by time. Just like Wagner's opera, the romantic passion between Tamino and Pamina can only be short-lived, which eventually leads to serious non-romantic love between husband and wife; The brief "passion" between Patty and Richard seems to belong to Tristan and isolde. Apart from romantic passion, there is no past and no future, which cannot be formed through limited qualities. It can only be formed through its own inherent limitations.

Nirvana, pluralism returns to the original unity, and "light is reborn from darkness"

Walter:

For Walter's father Einar (an immigrant from Sweden), the United States is a free country that Sweden can't compare with, and it is a place with a lot of open space, where a son can still imagine that he is special. However, the most unbearable thing about this special feeling is the existence of other special people who are also conscious. He hates blacks, Indians, well-educated people, self-righteous people, especially the federal government; He loves his freedom (freedom to drink, freedom to smoke, freedom to hide under the ice for fishing for a long time), and his infatuation with liberalism makes Walter lack sympathy for the plight of hard-working families.

As a student, he was Patty's silent guardian. He loves Patty so much that he has always been loyal to her and tried his best to please her. But this kind of consciousness is based on pride and self-satisfaction. In other words, he described himself as a kind of rejection of finiteness, a kind of desire for existence without essential defects. When the girl in his mind becomes an unhappy middle-aged woman, Patty is no longer his real partner. He began to feel bored and lonely.

Strategically, Walter chose a bad time to release his "free thoughts". The country has fallen into a serious economic depression, and he is still addicted to songbirds at this time, which seems almost disgusting. Shrinking investment has led nearby retired couples to cancel their plans to spend the winter in Florida or Arizona every year; The two young families on the street have been unable to pay the installment payment, and they are likely to lose their house, and so on ... anxiety hovers over Canterbridge Street like a group of midges; The Internet is full of worrying information, and the buzzing and flying world that Walter asked people to care about and protect is an unnecessary source of anxiety.

Walter killed one of his neighbor Linda's cats: Bobby. In his view, cats' small preference for the outdoors tramples on birds and their rights. He never liked cats. In his view, cats are anti-social elements in the pet industry, a scourge domesticated to control rodents, and then blindly obsessed, just like an unhappy country is superstitious about its own army. When cat owners touch their cats' beautiful fur and forgive their claws and fangs, it's like paying tribute to the killer's uniform. On the cat's face, he only saw two expressions: silly numbness and self-righteousness; You just need to Doby it with a mouse toy, and you will see where its heart is.

From the cat, he realized a fatal weakness in his character: even the creature he hates most will get his sympathy. The prejudice against cats began to swell into that kind of persistent distress and grievance. Obviously, he needs this kind of pain and grievance to bring meaning and texture to their lives. All his troubles are over. He needs something new.

Reality prevailed over poor Walter. The frustration of the free space project implies a great irony: in the United States, where capitalist interests dominate, true freedom is just a pipe dream.

Joey:

Son Joey seems to inherit Patty's rebellious character, but he is more like a combination of parents' personalities. He is against his mother everywhere, puppy love, skipping classes and doing some jaw-dropping absurd things. What everyone sees is his appearance.

His trip to South America: barren land, government corruption and inhuman monopoly of interest groups made him see the truth, goodness and beauty of human nature clearly. When the values of life were challenged and needed to be chosen, he made the right choice with his rational and kind side.

Richard:

A typical representative of the pioneer of liberalism, unruly but not irrational. For example, anyone who gives "the ultimate goal" (love for Patty) is described in the lyrics, just like the miller on the Dee River said: He can sing the joy of freedom and neutrality, but then he has nothing to do but silence. This ultimate goal is actually paranoia about things, but it is obvious that such people can only make arbitrary choices; Nothing in his nature and environment forced him to make a choice.

The relationship between society and family:

In the six years since she left Volvo, Patty realized for the first time that her parents were richer and more successful than any of their children, including herself. However, none of the children inherited the social responsibility of their mother Joyce and father Ray. Ironically, they have been inspired by this sense of responsibility all their lives. She knew that her mother Joyce felt guilty about it, and several outrageous children must be a terrible blow to Joyce's self-esteem. Joyce may blame his father's genes for his children's eccentricity and incompetence. Joyce's political career not only caused or aggravated her family problems, but also was a way for her to escape them. In retrospect, Patty saw something sad and even admirable from Joyce's determination to do something for the world and save herself at the same time. Isn't she the one who took extreme measures to save herself like her? Joyce, a poor Brooklyn Jewish girl, was attracted by Ray's Anglo-Saxon Protestant family background, family wealth and social idealism. She didn't know what kind of family she was involved in and what price she would pay in the end: in the next few decades, she endured all kinds of disgusting quirks, childish money games and Ray's bossy and rude treatment. Soon, like many politicians, she started her own life track with Emerson's money. Joyce is not a sound person. She's even worse than Patty. She needs to feel special, and the family that married Emerson enhanced her feeling. She needs to feel that her children are special, too Only in this way can she make up for some deficiencies in her heart.

"I don't think my life is always happy, or relaxed, or completely as I wish. At some point, I can only try not to think too much about certain things, otherwise, they will break my heart. " This is all the explanation Patty got from her mother at that time or later. Not a lot, and I have not dispelled any doubts, but I can only do so.

At my father's funeral. Those who paid tribute to Ray all said the same thing: He is not only the most capable lawyer they know, but also the friendliest, most diligent and most honest lawyer. Patty was not completely crushed by all this (she knew that in this world, doing good deeds is behind the huge price paid by her family), but she was still strongly shocked and couldn't help thinking of Walter. Now she just regrets that she gave Walter a hard time when he was fighting to protect other species; She found that she did it out of jealousy-jealous that birds are so pure and lovely in his eyes and jealous that he has the ability to love them. She hopes that she can walk up to him now and tell him clearly when he is still alive: I love you because of your kindness. She soon found that one thing she especially thanked Walter was his indifference to money. She was lucky when she was a child, which cultivated her indifference to material things. Then, just like a lucky person will have more luck, she married Walter, and she took it for granted that he was not greedy for material things until Lei died, and she was dragged back to the family's nightmare about money.

Neither Walter nor Patty can help her daughter Jessica's choice of literary publishing industry. To this end, like her father, she devoted herself to a declining, endangered and unprofitable career, and Joey became rich almost effortlessly, which made her feel depressed. She couldn't hide her jealousy of her daughter-in-law Connie. Joey still erected an iron gate in front of Patty, which was colder than ever and more difficult to break through. She knew that the door would only open to her if she could prove to her son that she had accepted Connie. There is something in Connie's way of treating Joey, something heartless, possessive, competitive and exclusive, something wrong, which makes Patty feel creepy. Although she wants to be a better person in all aspects, she has begun to realize sadly that this ideal may not be realized, and her failure will always be between her and Joey, endlessly punishing the mistakes she made on him.

Walter didn't divorce her during the six-year separation. She can think of several disappointing reasons-for example, he may still hate her, so he can't let himself have even a little contact with her. She was embarrassed to ask the child, and she was overjoyed to hear the "no" answer. Not because she doesn't want him to be happy, nor because she has any right or will to be jealous, but because it means there is still a little shadow of hope. Maybe he still thinks that she thinks that they are not only the worst thing that happened in each other's lives, but also the best thing. She has made so many mistakes in her life, so she has every reason to infer that her idea is unrealistic this time. She didn't see an obvious key factor that prevented them from getting back together. However, this idea refused to let her go. Day after day, year after year, she longed for his voice, his anger and his kindness.

Although Patty can't be the best person, a universe that allows her to do it at a relatively late age in life (doing what she likes wholeheartedly) can't be said to be completely cruel.

Social contradictions:

"Tumors on Earth" is exactly the kind of statement that we all think lacks constructiveness. Walter is actually sending a useless message, that is, opposing the environmental protection of uneducated people who are trying to improve their lives. He couldn't hide this emotion, but he said it out loud.

In fact, the absurdity of his situation troubled him. He finally vented his anger, first to Patty, and then to get rid of his marriage and the Blue Mountain Fund (interest groups seek the best interests under the guise of environmental protection). In this way, he got rid of two main reasons for his anger.

The essence of capitalist freedom is the balance between naked interest groups, indifference to life and blasphemy against legal rules. Faced with the temptation of naked interests, some people choose good, while others choose evil.

Life is like a game, unbalanced and balanced between freedom and seeking. A familiar sentence in Fortress Besieged: People in the city want to escape, while people outside the city want to squeeze in. Fortunately, the lost people finally found the lost happiness and the true meaning of human nature. Eupatty and Walter, Joey and Connie. The ending arranged by the author in good faith makes people find some comfort from mistakes and regrets.

Extended train of thought: The author seems to be calling (implying) the return of the American spirit: a complete spiritual building constructed by the Constitution, in which all people are born equal and have inalienable rights to life and freedom. But now, many people look up at this building, and few people know it. This is a blasphemy and betrayal of sacred and formal commitments.

It covers a wide range of contents and is a profound work, which cannot be elaborated by a small reading experience.

Excerpts from the original text:

For Seth Paulson, the Pegluns are super guilty liberals. They need to forgive everyone so that their own good fortune can be forgiven. They lack the courage of privilege. ? In Seth's view, Mr. and Mrs. berglund are liberals with a strong sense of guilt. They need to constantly forgive everyone, so that they won't feel guilty about their good fortune. They lack enough courage to enjoy their sense of superiority.

Once this interesting news spread around, the early walkers stopped bothering Walker-perhaps not because they were troubled by his extremism, but because his secluded life now has a strong sadness, the terrible sadness that is the safest to avoid; Like all forms of madness, this lasting sadness is threatening and may even be contagious. ? As soon as the interesting news spread, those who walked in the morning ignored Walter again-perhaps, mainly because Walter's extreme words and deeds made them uneasy, but because his hermit-like life now exudes a strong sadness, that terrible, escaping sadness-like all crazy expressions, that endless sadness makes people feel scared and may even be contagious.