The Crisis Of The Individualized Society

Jonathan Franzen(1959-)is one of the most popular novelists in contemporary American literature,known as “the great American novelist”.His works conform to the turn of American literary realism.Freedom is a masterpiece of realistic novels,which reflects the living state of contemporary people in the individualized society.Freedom revolves around a middle-class nuclear family in the United States.Franzen delicately depicts the characters in the novel,describing their confusion and loss in pursuit of freedom in an individualized society.The contradictions and crises experienced by the characters in the novel are also the epitome of the contradictions in the capitalist society.Using realistic writing techniques,Franzen describes and records the decline and collapse of the nuclear family of the Berglunds in detail.Franzen,while documenting the decline and crisis,also explores the root causes behind the crisis and offers solutions.This thesis will use the concept of individualized society in sociology to analyze the cultural crisis,psychological crisis and moral crisis embodied in Freedom and explore the meaning of freedom.It is divided into three parts.The first part is the introduction,focusing on the introduction of Franzen and his work Freedom,Bauman and other sociologists who also have related theory on the individualized society,literature review and essay arrangement.The main body is composed of three chapters.The first chapter starts from the cultural crisis of individualized society and analyzes the specific manifestations of the cultural crisis in Freedom.Firstly,the traditional community defined by T(?)nnies,including community by blood,community of place and community of spirit as well as Bauman’s concept of collapse of traditional culture in an individualized society are used to analyze the collapse of family’s harmony,the decline of neighborhood culture and the dissolution of traditional culture after the collapse of traditional community culture.The specific manifestations are the disorder of the traditional family relationship,Patty’s performance in the neighborhood and the collapse of the harmonious relationship in the neighborhood,replacement of traditional culture by sensory culture and self-culture as well as the appearance of the cloakroom community.The second chapter starts from the psychological crisis of individualized society and analyzes the psychological crisis experienced by individuals after the collapse of the traditional community.This chapter includes the analysis of the “pure relationship” between Patty and Elizabeth,Patty’s self-identification crisis and Walter and Richard’s lack of belonging crisis.The third chapter begins with the moral crisis of the individualized society.It analyzes the deficiency of Joey’s moral code,the Berglund’s lack of family responsibility and the loss of ethics in elderly care.The last part is the conclusion.In an individualized society,the collapse of the traditional community defined by T(?)nnies causes severe cultural crises.Losing the same shelter,the characters in Freedom are lost in this changeable world.Therefore,a series of psychological and moral crises come into being.While exposing the crises that characters go through,this thesis also uses Giddens’ s theory of self-identification and Bauman’s theory about individualized society to analyze the characters rebuilding of psychology and morality,which shows Franzen’s hope for the recovery of the traditional social order.Franzen’s Freedom contains the profound thoughts about the crises of individualized society.Through the depiction of the cultural crisis,psychological crisis and moral crisis suffered by the characters,it reflects the individual’s pursuit of freedom and loss in the pursuit in the contemporary society.It reflects his thinking on the conflict between the protestant ethic and the free market and expresses his hope for solving social conflicts.