Flee And Surrender-The Middle-Class In Freedom Of Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen is a contemporary American writer.He was selected for the cover of TIME magazine in 2010,ten years after Stephen King graced the cover—just two writers in a span of 10 years.The novel,Freedom is about an American middle-class family,it explores two questions about freedom:"what is freedom",and "how to get freedom." The story is told from the perspective of characters living at the beginning of the 21st century.Franzen detailed description of the characters and the plot of the story is ingeniously conceived.This work is a microcosm of many contradictions from the US.It focuses on the confusion that the American middle-class faced.From the beginning,the middle-class in American Society has had the most important status.Although America-middle class experienced change from the old middle-class to the new middle-class and the economic and political status about them had declined,it remained the largest and strongest economic class.The study of this contemporary American writers' analysis of the middle-class can help us to understand how spiritually confused and helpless the Americans may have been during this period of time,at least from a literary perspective.This paper is based on Freedom by Franzen.The first chapter mainly analyzes the characters' features in different eras and the difficult position they faced.It is explained that the middle-class met the problems in a contemporary society.Franzen explains the problems by using both characters and time together.Chapter two analyzes the origin,development and characteristics,and also provides theoretical support to help explain the middle-class behavior.The third chapter is the conclusion combined with the dilemmas that the characters faced.The conclusion is that in the alienated society,the American middle-class chose to flee from freedom,which brought pressures that they could not bear.As a result,they chose to surrender in the end,a road combining freedom and reason.