Corrections Jonathan Franzen's the Corrections What Made Term Paper

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Corrections

Jonathan Franzen's the Corrections

What made correction possible also doomed it." (Franzen, 2002, 278)

In Jonathan Frazen's novel The Corrections, the reader is taken into the heart of a dysfunctional American family. Although the novel transpires in real time as well as in flashback, it is fundamentally a novel of memory. The memory of the past reaffirms the inability of the use of an idealized past to correct the future, or to give children and parents a new memory of an idealized family past. One cannot remember something truly and perfectly and recreate a memory, without either erasing some painful truths, or accepting that the past was not as perfect as one might hope.

The idea of 'correction' is usually applied in the singular rather than in the plural. Correction inspires the idea of erasing what was wrong and easily replacing what was right -- even though this might leave a smudge, or tear a page through. Correction also implies engaging in acts of moral rectitude, of obeying a singular moral code. However, the notion of correction exists in this novel on multiple levels, as many individuals from the same family attempt to readdress the mistakes of their pasts, while continually replicating those mistakes, despite their best intentions.

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Thus to correct is to edit, to amend, one might say. But how does one edit a living past and a living memory, particularly when that memory is carried by multiple individuals in the same family, all different individuals, all with different memories. The notion of correction also implies the notion of return with some sense of making what was left better than it was, like editing a manuscript before publication. To return to the bosom of one's family during a reunion is to readdress and reassess the past. But to ruminate over that past might often produce an obsessive, one might say fixated manner or focus on that past. Thus, by attempting to return anew to the past with the aim of correcting what was wrong, or recreating what was right (but may not have been) is to do anything put the notion of family return to that past in a positive and regenerative light.

This is why Enid Lambert's quest to see her family return to the small, American Midwestern town St. Jude once again, is like the nature of the saint itself -- a patron saint of lost causes. Enid believes that family togetherness will correct all….....

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