Freedom (Franzen novel)

The novel opens with a brief look at the Berglund family during their time living in St. Paul, Minnesota, from the perspective of their nosy neighbors. One of the first families to move back into urban St. Paul after years of white flight, the Berglunds are portrayed as an ideal liberal middle-class family. Walter Berglund is a mild-mannered environmentalist lawyer, his wife Patty is a charming and youthful homemaker who cares for their two children, Jessica and Joey. The precocious Joey’s move to his girlfriend’s Republican family next door increasingly destabilizes Patty and Walter’s marriage. Years later, while the children are at college, the unhappy couple relocates to Washington, D.C.

The second section of the novel is a story-within-a-story, presented as an autobiography written by Patty at her therapist's suggestion. She recalls her youth as a star basketball player, her alienation from her busy parents and artistic siblings, and being raped. After receiving a varsity scholarship to the University of Minnesota, her disturbed friend, Eliza, draws her into contact with the attractive Macalester rocker Richard Katz and his kind-hearted, nerdy roommate, Walter Berglund.

After detaching herself from Eliza and suffering a career-ending injury, Patty unsuccessfully attempts to woo Richard. Upon failing, she settles down with Walter, who has been patiently courting her for a year. They marry and raise their family, however, Patty cannot forget her physical attraction to Richard. Twenty years after leaving college, Patty has a brief affair with Richard at the Berglunds' vacation house at an unnamed lake in Minnesota.

The third section of the novel jumps to the early 2000s, and alternates in viewpoint among Richard, Joey, and Walter.

By 2004, a middle-aged Richard has finally found success as a minor indie rock star, with his breakthrough album Nameless Lake having been secretly inspired by his affair. Walter has started working for a coal-industry supported environmental organization, the Cerulean Mountain Trust, which aims to strip mine parts of West Virginia, eventually turning the denuded land into a cerulean warbler preserve. Walter attempts to enlist Richard in his anti-human overpopulation pet project, which he is funding with Cerulean Trust money. Richard notices that Walter’s assistant, Lalitha, is madly in love with Walter, and learns from Walter that his marriage with the depressed Patty is deteriorating.

After navigating many difficulties in establishing the warbler preserve, at the cost of his anti-Iraq War principles, the teetotaling Walter shares his first drink with Lalitha. He confesses his love for her and they kiss, but stop short of having sex. Now devoting himself to his newly named anti-overpopulation campaign, Free Space, Walter invites Richard to his home in Washington. Feigning interest in the campaign, Richard reaches out to Patty, imploring her to leave her husband and let Walter be happy. Patty refuses, and shows him the autobiography she wrote as therapy, attempting to convince him that she still loves Walter. After reading it, Richard leaves the manuscript on Walter’s desk. Walter finds the autobiography; enraged, he throws Patty out despite her pleas that she still loves him. She moves in with Richard, in Jersey City.

Meanwhile, the Berglunds’ estranged son, Joey, is at the University of Virginia. He blames his dissatisfaction there on the recent September 11 attacks. His attempts to break away from his childhood sweetheart, Connie, fail. However, at a Thanksgiving celebration with his wealthy roommate, Jonathan’s family in Northern Virginia, he is dazzled by his roommate’s beautiful sister, Jenna. Joey also becomes increasingly connected with Jonathan’s Zionist, neoconservative father, eventually getting a well-paid job with Kenny Bartles, an Iraq War-profiteering entrepreneur. Only after investing into Bartles’ lucrative DOD contract does Joey realize that Bartles intends to sell the Army obsolete trucks.

Connie struggles with depression in Joey’s absence. Upon reuniting with her, Joey impulsively elopes with Connie after she gives him her savings to invest in the subcontract. While on a trip to South America with Jenna, he has the opportunity to sleep with her, but he unexpectedly suffers impotence, realizing that Connie is his true love. His ensuing efforts to find truck parts in South America prove disastrous, and Bartles pressures Joey to ship defective truck parts to the Army. Feeling guilty, Joey speaks with his father about blowing the whistle; while he ultimately decides against it, his relationship with both parents improves.

With Patty gone, Walter and Lalitha become lovers. However, increasingly depressive after his separation from Patty, Walter loses his temper and rants against capitalism and overpopulation on live TV at the inauguration of the West Virginian body armor plant orchestrated by the Trust, making him an icon of the radical youth. Walter and Lalitha continue to organize Free Space without the Trust, which quickly devolves into a chaotic, radical echo-chamber. While on a road trip with Walter before the concert, Lalitha leaves early to manage the increasing destructiveness of the concert attendees, and is killed in a car crash.

The penultimate section of the novel is a follow-up chapter to Patty's autobiography, written specifically for Walter. Patty reveals that she has not talked to Walter for six years. She lasted only several months living with Richard, aware of their long-term incompatibility.

Patty stays with college friends until her father is diagnosed with cancer. She travels home to reconnect with her family, and after her father’s death, settles fights about the inheritance. She settles down in Brooklyn, living alone and working as a teacher and coach at a private school. She relates that her children have both found professional success. Six years after she left Walter, Patty runs into Richard, who encourages her to get in touch with Walter, motivating her to write a concluding chapter to her autobiography.

After Lalitha’s death, the severely depressed Walter retreats to his family’s lakeside house, where he turns into a misanthropic recluse, directing his anger especially at the inhabitants and bird-killing cats of Canterbridge Estates, a development that has sprouted on the other side of the lake. One day, Walter, who did not read the manuscript Patty sent him, finds her on the steps of the lakeside house. Despite his rage and confusion, he takes her back, and they slowly rekindle their relationship. Patty gains the admiration of Walter’s neighbors, but after one year of living together at the Lake, they move to Patty’s job, friends, and family in New York. According to Walter's wishes, the old lakeside house is turned into a fenced, cat-proof bird sanctuary, named in memory of Lalitha.

• Bresnan, Mark. "Consistently Original, Perennially Unheard Of: Punk, Margin and Mainstream in Jonathan Franzen's Freedom". Write in Tune: Contemporary Music in Fiction. London: Bloomsbury (2014), 31–42.
• Keith Gessen, Mark Greif, Benjamin Kunkel, Marco Roth. "Four Responses to Freedom". n + 1 10 (2010).
• Gram, Margaret Hunt. "Freedom's Limits: Jonathan Franzen, the Realist Novel, and the Problem of Growth". American Literary History. 26:2 (2014), 295–316.
• Irr, Caren. "Postmodernism in Reverse: American National Allegories and the 21st-Century Political Novel". Twentieth Century Literature. 57:3-4 (2011), 516–538.