Freedom

“Didn’t her dad tease her and ridicule her in ways that would have been simply cruel if he didn’t secretly love her more than anything? But she was seventeen now and not actually dumb. She knew that you could love somebody more than anything and still not love that person all that much, if you were busy with other things.”

After Ethan rapes Patty, her mother tells her that her father will want what is best for her. As Patty remember the endless instances of her father’s cruelties, she believes that he loves her, even though she cannot remember him showing it. His actions show that he prioritizes his reputation and business more than anything. Similar to her father, she will later find reasons to put her own desires and appetites before the good of the people she loves.

“Patty knew, in her heart, that he was wrong in his impression of her. And the mistake she went on to make, the really big life mistake, was to go along with Walter's version of her in spite of knowing that it wasn't right. He seemed so certain of her goodness that eventually he wore her down.”

Walter puts Patty on a pedestal to such an extent that she keeps hoping that he will be right about her. However, she never completely trusts his instincts about her goodness. She knows that she will fail him eventually but uses his trust to aspire to more. When Patty is finally able to change and take control of her life, she does so for herself, not to conform to anyone’s ideas about who she should be.

“It takes a while for a person to sort out what she actually wants. Please don’t blame me for that.”

After Patty chooses Walter over Richard, Walter fixates on the road trip she took with Richard. She tells him that she needed the trip with Richard to figure out that she truly wanted Walter. This foreshadows her return to Richard late in the novel after Walter kicks her out. Patty asks not to be penalized for a decision that eventually allowed her to give herself to Walter.

“Nice people don't necessarily fall in love with nice people.”

Patty stages a mock trial in her head during which she tries to justify and defend her reasons for marrying and staying with Walter. She cannot accept the fact that she is a nice person simply because a nice person fell in love with her and proposed to her. She falls in love with Richard while fully aware that he is relatively cruel when compared to Walter.

“There was a more general freedom that she could see was killing her but she was nonetheless unable to let go of.”

Patty knows that she should be grateful for the amount of freedom she has. She can so whatever she wants with her time. However, without clear goals or ambitions, her freedom is a reminder that she is not making progress on anything that is important to her. She does not want to relinquish her freedom, but she does not know what to do with it either. The misuse of her freedom torments her more than the lack of freedom might.

“USE WELL THY FREEDOM.”

Patty sees these words engraved on a statue at Jessica’s college campus. The quote is a reminder to students, but it feels eerily applicable to Patty in her current state. Unsure whether she has ever used her freedom well, she wonders if she might be better off without it. Every choice she makes—choices that are only possible because she is free to make them—leads her into greater depression, confinement, and self-loathing.

“Few things gratified depressives, after all, more than really bad news.”

Depression is almost another character in the novel. It is both a condition and a sense of identity for Richard and the Berglunds. They are so accustomed to unhappiness and malaise that they can be gratified by bad news. After all, bad news is familiar to them—and expected by them—and there is comfort in routine and predictability.

“He wasn't worried about having given offense; his business was giving offense. He was worried about having sounded pathetic – too transparently the washed-up talent whose only recourse was to trash his betters. He strongly disliked the person he'd just demonstrated afresh that he unfortunately was. And this, of course, was the simplest definition of depression that he knew of: strongly disliking yourself.”

Richard gives his inner perspective on the aftermath of the interview with Zachary. He delivers what might be the novel’s most accurate depiction of depression. People may dislike themselves for different reasons, but it is difficult to imagine a person experiencing genuine self-loathing who is not also depressed. Part of the tension in Richard’s life is that people adore him, even as he acknowledges that he is an inconsiderate person who is not worthy of adoration.

“Kids have always been the meaning of life. You fall in love, you reproduce, and then your kids grow up and fall in love and reproduce. That’s what life was for. For pregnancy. For more life. But the problem now is that more life is still beautiful and meaningful on the individual level, but for the world as a whole it only means more death.”

During their meeting about the Trust, Walter explains his worries about overpopulation with Richard. Walter loves his children but does not pretend that having more kids would be good for the planet. In Walter's view, the creation of more life can fulfill individuals, but only via global destruction. As his cynicism and dislike for humanity grows, his opposition to overpopulation takes on new meaning. Later, he will call people a cancer on the planet. Having more babies, from that perspective, would be like purposefully producing a greater malignant force.

“It’s more like a situation where I would hate the absence of the thing but I don’t like the thing itself, either.”

Richard explains his complicated relationship with fame and fans. A young man has just approached them on the subway platform to announce his admiration for Richard. Richard knows that fame is both good and bad for him. He does not have an identity outside of music and womanizing. However, because he makes it difficult for people to know him, they do not have any sense of his identity, either.

“Integrity's a neutral value. Hyenas have integrity, too. They’re pure hyena.”

Richard describes the nature of hyenas. He believes that they cannot act with integrity as a choice; they can only act as what they are: hyenas. Richard extends this metaphor to himself. He is an untrustworthy, acerbic womanizer, but he never pretends otherwise. It is his version of living authentically, even if his actions are not commensurate with traditional definitions of integrity.

“Words made everything less safe, words had no limits, words made their own world.”

Once Joey and Connie begin talking about sex, it becomes more real to Joey. He could ignore all of his misgivings about Connie during sex as long as they reduced themselves to creatures indulging in their appetites. For Joey, words remove the purely animalistic element of sex and place it in the realm of critical thinking and scrutiny.

“He didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know how to live. Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive's sake.”

Walter's desire for Lalitha torments him. He is highly suggestible to persuasive arguments, which can be useful unless every persuasive argument charts a new direction. He is free to make his own choices but feels that he has no control. Walter spends most of the novel in a state of directionless existence, rather than living a thriving life.

“He and Patty couldn’t live together and couldn’t imagine living apart. Each time he thought they’d reached the unbearable breaking point, it turned out that there was still further they could go without breaking.”

Walter and Patty behave as if they are addicted to the miseries they created for each other. They believe they have exhausted their capacity for suffering, only to find that there are new lows. Patty and Walter know each other so well and have shared so much that it enables them to hurt each other more deeply than anyone at a greater emotional remove could.

“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.”

Walter tells Lalitha about his stance on why impoverished people cling to freedoms like guns and hunting. The poor have fewer options and less control over their lives, given that they have limited choices. Their ability to make mistakes in whatever fashion they choose can be a source of control. They obsess over small freedoms because the larger freedoms of the privileged and wealthy are out of reach.

“I admire your capacity for admiring.”

Richard responds to Walter’s enthusiastic response to the new Bright Eyes album. Richard has grown so jaded and resentful about music that he struggles to enjoy art that usually matters deeply to him. Walter’s admiration is always pure and authentic, qualities that are increasingly foreign to Richard.

“This wasn't the person he'd thought he was, or would have chosen to be if he'd been free to choose, but there was something comforting and liberating about being an actual definite someone, rather than a collection of contradictory potential someones.” 

After Joey retrieves his wedding ring, he has a moment of freeing clarity. He went through a revolting experience to retrieve the symbol of his marriage to Connie. He made a hard choice, and the fact that he is the sort of person who would make that choice—regardless of his other mistakes—grounds him in a sense of identity. He suddenly believes that he knows the sort of person he can be, and he wants to be better than the sum of his previous decisions.

“But nothing disturbs the feeling of specialness like the presence of other human beings feeling identically special.”

Einar’s rigid belief in the American dream sours when he realizes that everyone is pursuing the same ideals as he is. He eventually comes to blame America for failing to make him feel unique in his success. His affluence does not make him feel grateful, but resentful of others who achieved greater wealth and happiness through similar actions as his.

“There is, after all, a kind of happiness in unhappiness, if it’s the right unhappiness. Gene no longer had to fear a big disappointment in the future, because he'd already accomplished it.”

Gene makes a series of poor decisions before and after investing in the hotel. He finds some relief in the fact that, even though he made mistakes, his worst mistakes might all be behind him. He can take solace in the fact that he may no longer even have the opportunity to make massive errors.

"You did the worst thing you could possibly do to me. The worst thing, and you knew very well it was the worst thing, and you did it anyway."

Walter berates Patty after reading the manuscript. He reminds her that she was aware at every moment that she was choosing to do the thing that would wound him the most. She chose to satisfy her own desires and hurt the man who had always been good to her, rather than appreciate him. His words remind Patty that she has no defense for her actions.

“People talk about the peacefulness of nature, but to me it seems the opposite of peaceful. It’s constant killing. It’s even worse than human beings.”

Lalitha is perplexed by Walter's adoration of nature. She does not see animals as serene and peaceful, but as engines of violence that run on pure appetite and instinct. Animals may lack the ability to wound each other emotionally, but they are far more likely to resort to killing than humans.

“She sank down into sadness and loneliness, because Richard was always going to be Richard, whereas, with Walter, there had always been the possibility, however faint, and however slow in its realization, that their story would change and deepen.”

Patty finally accepts a fact about Richard that he already knew: Like the hyenas he mentions in an earlier quote, he was always going to act according to his nature. Richard was always predictably selfish and shallow, while Walter was always predictably generous and supportive. Richard’s nature does not permit the possibility of growth in the same way that Walter’s does.

“She now sorely regretted her the hard time she’d given him about his crusades for other species; she saw that he’d done it out of envy—envy of his birds for being so purely lovable to him, and envy of Walter himself for his capacity to love them. She wished she could go to him now, while he was still alive, and say it to him plainly: I adore you for your goodness.”

The death of Patty’s father puts her in a reflective mood. She regrets all of the years in which she took Walter for granted. Her final, failed attempt at a relationship with Richard shows her that he was never going to change. But it also shows her that Walter never needed to change, and she wishes she could have appreciated him for exactly what he had always been.