1 Introduction

1。1 Research Background

As a National Book Award winner, Jonathan Franzen published his new work Freedom and has drawn wide attention, which led to his appearance on Time’s front cover with a topical headline “One of the Greatest American Novelists”。源-于,优Z尔%论^文.网wwW.yOueRw.com 原文+QQ752018~766

The novel Freedom, providing readers with a portrait of American social life, focuses on the middle class to reach for a grand theme as the book title implies。 Covering with the stories about family, marriage and friendship, Franzen showed his realistic strokes and great concern of ordinary people in minute details under his pen。 Its characters are so real and complicated that they make readers get involved in the plot and then self-reflected。 It could be said that this book produced such a strong social impact that a lot of celebrities, such as Barack Obama and the famous talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey, highly recommended it to the readers。 It hit the best-seller list and was called as “the novel of the century”。

1。2 Significance of the Study

Freedom is, around all aspects, a sort of contemporary realistic novel。 It captures the temptations and burdens of liberty when most of modern literary works still focus on criticizing restriction。 In charting the mistakes and joys of the characters, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time。 People turn to appeal for absolute liberty while the excessive indulgence in freedom will not bring happiness but create the hothouse of decadence。论文网

Under a life of quick rhythm, it becomes a more urgent need for people to hold a proper attitude towards freedom。 This paper, taking the heroine Patty as the research object, endeavors to ponder the realistic meaning of this novel and tries to figure out the connotation of true “freedom” and find out the relation between freedom and limits。 

2 Literature Review

2。1 Freedom by Jonathan Franzen 

2。1。1 Jonathan Franzen and His New Work Freedom

    Jonathan is a well-known American novelist and essayist, whose bitter realism upon modern world garnered considerable critical acclaim。 Scholars began to pay more attention to Jonathan Franzen after his fiction The Corrections won the National Book Awards in 2001 and the Pulitzer Prize nomination in 2002。 Researches are primarily related to his writing skills and commercial values。 Stephen J。B is the first person who took a comprehensive study of this award-winning American novelist in a book titled Jonathan Franzen at the End of Postmodernism。 Stephen (2008) pointed out that, from earlier works to The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen could be regarded as a market bellwether at the end of postmodernism in American literature。 And in China, most of the researchers approve Jonanthan’s works but there is only a very limited academic research。 Nine years after the publication of The Corrections, Jonanthan Franzen returned to the public with another picturesque epic of contemporary society called Freedom, which depicts the story of an American family vividly and records the allure and burden caused by liberty ironically。 

2。1。2 Previous Research Aboard

    Since Freedom is a relatively newly-published book, there are only many book reports, reviews or news reports on it while the academic researches of it are insufficient。 Freedom shows panoramic views of current world including the complications of social, political, economic, cultural and other issues, thus related studies are lack of systematization。 For foreign researchers, they put much more emphasis on the capitalistic social status implied in the book。 For example, Margaret Hunt Gram (2014) analyzed two major problems of capitalist countries: the problems of population and free market under capitalism。 In addition, Christopher Craig Brittain (2014) tried to interpret the characters from Christian Ethics perspective。 Jerrefy Jenson Arnett (2011) focused on Joey, the hero of the story, with his transformation in identity and considers this kind of change  ironic but pitiful。