On The Trajectory Of Chip’s Patricide Complex In The Corrections

Breathtaking verbal virtuosity, genuine satirical look at life and society,well-chiseled caricatural but in-depth characterization, narrative ingenuity andimpressive mellifluence are all tributes Jonathan Franzen’s novels live up to. Such ararity and sensation is he when Franzen surprises the modern American literary arenawhere post-modernism prevails, with his bounteous and spectacular literary fruitswafting continuously the fragrance of realism. Such radiant luster does he add to theAmerican Commonwealth of Letters where other writers are still keen on doingliterary experiments to excess while he adheres to the legacy of social novelists,authoring serious socially-and culturally-engaged novels. The Corrections, a tour deforce bedazzling in profundity and complexity, has brought Franzen in2010the graceto mount the cover of New York Time which has not greeted literary personage on itscover for a decade and catapulted this new literary superstar into the company ofSalinger, Nabokov, Morrison, Joyce and Updike.The Corrections makes a vivid portrayal of a dysfunctioning Lambert familyand embeds them closely into the malaises of modern society. With humor, satire,criticism and compassion, Franzen depicts minutely how the Lambert children try tomake corrections against their parents, how their efforts end in vain, and how theLamberts finally slip into delamination. This novel comprises a prologue, an epilogue,and a body which falls into five independent but interwoven chapters pivotingconsecutively on how the younger son Chip, the elder son Gary, their parents Alfredand Enid, and the youngest daughter Denise deal with their own crises, and how theydysfunction in their own way. An ambience of failure and depression permeates themall through. In addition to the tangible panorama revealed therein, this novel alsoaffords scholars with a resourceful reservoir of interrelationships. The strength ofFranzen’s ingenuity in composition and his keen antennae for life leaves so much tobe desired from scholars. However, domestic critics have barely touched upon him; foreign critics whohave studied his works with ever growing fascination usually approach this novelmacroscopically from the thematic perspective, and have yet to probe into the subtletyof interrelationship and the intricacy of characters. Given that, this thesis intends tozoom in on the intricacy between Chip and Alfred, and strives to enunciate thecomplexity of this father-son relationship by the vehicle of patricide complex,affording a new dimension as well as a new analytical perspective to the interpretationof the panorama marshaled in this novel.Sigmund Freud has penetrated his stethophone under the stratum of our psycheand pulled to light our inborn “Oedipus Complex”. As one of its twofold connotations,patricide complex embeds itself deeply into our psyche and has been endowed withnew cultural significance at the encouragement of various literary projections ofpatricide: son’s hostility to father stems from the repression, discipline and controlimposed on the son by father rather than the son’s infantile sexual impulse towardsmother; what the son intends to abolish is the fact that his father enjoys discourse,authority, status and power over him rather than the physical father; patricide inessence is the son’s revolt against paternal rule, repression and control, a fight fordiscourse, rather than a flat denial of patriarchal power. The son’s patricide complexwould fade away as soon as he makes successful inroads into authority and discoursehe has been eyeing warily.This aforementioned trajectory of patricide complex gets rendered beautifullyand distinctly in Chip, one of the heroes in The Corrections, in his corrections againsthis father Alfred. The main body of the thesis unrolls itself in an attempt to detail thistrajectory in three progressive parts: It firstly inquires into three factors that generatethe waxing of Chip’s patricide complex in terms of Alfred’s rigid patriarchy, obstinateconservativeness and pedantic pessimism; it secondly treats of three demeanors thatcrystallize Chip’s patricide complex in terms of his purported chase of rebellion, historrid obsession with sensual pleasure, and his calculated apathy on moral imperative;it thirdly dwells on three gestures that highlight the waning of Chip’s patricidecomplex in terms of his awakening to paternal love, his devotion to filial piety, and his rediscovery of the charm of home and familial piety. In the end, on the strength of theessence of patricide complex, this thesis comes to a natural conclusion: Thedysfunction and decline of Alfred, indicating Alfred’s voluntary abdication fromauthority, shifts naturally the power of discourse and authority onto Chip. Thisauthoritarian status obtained in peace rather than through violence, thanks to Alfred’sdysfunction instead of his own arduous and vehement corrections against Alfred,reduces the subsidence of his patricide complex to necessity and his torrid correctionsto vanity.