Freedom

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2010

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3, Chapters 1-3

Part 3, Chapters 4-6

Part 2, Chapter 4

Part 4: Canterbridge Estates Lake

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1 Summary: “Good Neighbors”

The opening section introduces the members of the Berglund family. Walter Berglund’s neighbors at Ramsey Hill in St. Paul, Minnesota read about him in the news and cannot always reconcile what they read with what they see.

Walter’s wife, Patty, is a fearless former athlete who went to college on a basketball scholarship. She never says anything bad about others—nor anything good about herself. She has a tense relationship with her neighbor, Carol Monaghan.

Patty is more devoted to her son, Joey, than to her daughter, Jessica. Joey has an independent streak and does not distinguish between children and adults. Patty believes that Joey thinks parents get the final say because they have money.

Connie Monaghan—Carol’s daughter—loves Joey. She exists solely to please him and is “like an imaginary friend who happened to be visible” (11).

After Walter’s mother suffers a pulmonary embolism, there is a rumor that Walter’s mother left her house to him, while also leaving his two brothers out of the arrangement. They let several neighbors use the house in the summer, which sits on an unnamed lake in Minnesota. Joey calls their lake “Nameless.”

Carol’s new boyfriend is a staunch Republican named Blake. Blake builds an “add-on” (19) in Carol’s backyard and a tacky great room. The work annoys Patty. She tells Blake it is hideous and that the noise is intolerable. At first, Patty calls the police, but soon gives up on the noise complaints. That winter, Blake finds the tires of his F-250 slashed. The neighborhood believes that Patty did it.

Walter, an attorney, left the large corporation 3M to become a development officer for the Nature Conservancy. As a result, he is frequently away on weekends, which is one reason why he is not involved in Patty’s escalating feud with Carol. He remains neutral until the following fall, when Joey moves in with the Monaghans. After working in Montana on a ranch run by a Conservancy donor, Joey returns, confronts Patty, and calls her stupid.

Carol recounts how Walter broke down crying when Joey told them that he wanted to move out. She and Walter take some satisfaction in the fact that no one in their neighborhood ever really liked Carol, so no one celebrates the Berglund’s difficulties. In fact, everyone pities Walter.

Part 1 Analysis

The novels of Jonathan Franzen often focus on the challenges of a smaller unit—the American nuclear family—to call attention to the challenges facing a larger unit, such as the United States of America. Freedom is no exception. By the end of the novel, it is possible to read the problems facing each of the Berglunds as microcosms of the problems facing the country. First is the notion of being good, as in “Good Neighbors.”

The perception that the neighbors have of the outwardly liberal Berglunds is positive but superficial. Patty receives most of the focus. Franzen’s choice to introduce the Berglund family through the perceptions of others is intriguing; it raises doubt about what might lie beneath their perfect image, because any reader will know that the perception could never be completely accurate. This notion of framing and perception tracks all of the major issues in the novel, including environmentalism, the American invasion of Iraq, war profiteering, and overpopulation.

Franzen also sketches out the seeds of the major conflicts that each character will reckon with over the course of the story. People think Walter is “conniving with the coal industry and mistreating country people” (3). There will be some truth to this, but it is not as clearcut as the neighbor make it out to be. Joey is already flirting with right wing politics and testing the limits of his independence. Connie is portrayed as an imaginary friend with little autonomy or inner life. And Patty is always reckoning with the knowledge that she is not as wholesome or peaceful as people might believe.

Patty’s feud with Blake shows that she is capable of rash and intentional vengeance. This foreshadows the narrative structure in which Walter will eventually replace her as the angry person with a proclivity for rash action. Part 1 also introduces a key insight into Patty’s character: She has a need for—or perhaps an addiction to—competition. In this opening segment, she competes with Blake, which is a different sort of competition than basketball. Later, she will compete with Richard and Lalitha for Walter.