Return To Tradition-family Ethics In Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections

Jonathan Franzen(1959-),one of the excellent contemporary novelists in America,is the one that mounts the cover of Time magazine.The publication of The Corrections(2001)marked the turning point of Franzen's career,which brought him an eminent status in contemporary American literary arena and is now in the rank of literary superstar like Salinger,Nabokov,Morrison,Joyce and Updike.This very novel was praised as a long-lost masterpiece of American literature,and was recognized as the most successful work of Franzen and also earned him American National Book Award in 2001 and James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2002.Franzen noted the revival of American realistic literature.He then followed the trend of the time,creating the realistic works The Corrections.Different from the postmodernist writers who are used to shaping abstract and symbolic figure,Franzen tends to depict the most common people based on the American reality.Set against the backdrop from the 1950s to the late 1990s,the novel tells a story of an ordinary middle-class family.Franzen starts out from the divergence of values and morals between two generations in Lambert family,reflecting one thread of conflicts in values and morality in contemporary American society.Recent years witnessed the increasing explore of The Corrections since its publication in abroad.The researches mainly include thematic exploration,writing styles,genre and Jonathan Franzen's literary ideas and attitudes and so on.Domestic researches on Franzen started late,but recent years witnessed a rapid development.The research papers and dissertations of The Corrections are constantly emerging,mainly focusing on the angles of consumerism,business ethics,narrative techniques and genre.However,little attention has been paid to discusses the novel from the perspective of religious ethics.This paper is divided into three parts.The introduction part mainly introduces Jonathan Franzen and The Corrections,Peschke's Christian ethics on family and marriage,literature review and thesis arrangement.There are three chapters in the main body.The first chapter analyzes the unequal status of Alfred couple,Gary's family war,and chaotic marriage and love of Denise from the perspective of Protestant asceticism,including real situation of sensuality and the marriage infidelity,homosexuality and other ethical issues.The second chapter focuses on the complicated intergenerational ethical relations in the Lambert family from the perspective of Peschke's family ethics,focusing on the conflicts and rectification of money,work and marriage ethics between father and son,mother and daughter.This chapter also analyzes Franzen's own family morality based on his own experience of family life.The third chapter explores the influence of family education on the growth and character formation of the second generation and alienation among siblings.The last part is a conclusion.The field that Franzen observes life is family.As the basic unit of social life,family can be regarded as the cornerstone of human ethics and moral life.American society is deeply influenced by Christian thought.The religious order obeyed by the older generation is opposite to the hedonism and consumerism prevalent among the young people in contemporary American society.Two generations disagree on views of family,marriage and work,trying to correct each other.Starting with the Christian ethics,this paper discusses the problem of the break and reconstruction of the family relationship from the aspects of conjugal ethics,intergenerational ethical relationship and sibling rivalry,providing a reference for readers to re-examine some important issues of modern family life,marriage and responsibility.