“From Unknown Past to Unknowable Future”: Memory and Trauma in Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, Purity, and Crossroads
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2024
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en
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Jonathan Franzen's novels are defined by their detailed depictions of families and their interpersonal relationships and struggles. The Corrections (2001) was released less than two weeks before the 9/11 terrorist attack and became an important work in the American canon because of its accuracy in describing pre-9/11 American society and its eerily accurate sense of dread. This thesis examines the three novels that followed: Freedom (2010), Purity (2015), and Crossroads (2021), and asks how the memory of a traumatic experience continues to shape the present and future in these works. All three novels seem to prove Gabriele Schwab's theory that unresolved trauma is transferred to one's children in some way. While the setting of all three works is wildly different, their characters continue to deal with their trauma similarly, suggesting that no matter the historical context, people and governments will continue to make the same mistakes.
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