Acknowledgements:

To Dr. Hawkins, Dr. Scott and Dr. Constance— thank you so very much from the bottom of my heart for being patient and kind mentors to me. iv

Table of Contents

Section Page

Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………….... 1

Literature Review ………………………………………………………………………………... 2

Why the zombie? Why not another monster? ………………………………………….... 3

The History of the Zombie ………………………………………………………………. 4

Fantastical Zombiism ……………………………………………………………………. 6

Finding Zombie Roots in Haitian Voodoo …………………………………….… 6

The Emergence of the Apocalyptic Model …………………………………….... 7

Today’s Entertainment …………………………………………………………... 9

The Walking Dead: What season are we on now? …………………...… 10 ​ Biological Zombiism ……………………………………………………………...….... 11

Social Zombiism ……………………………………………………………………….. 15

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) ……………………………………………………... 16

The Definition of Death ………………………………………………... 18

The Idea of the “Soul” …………………………………………………. 18

Other Social Concerns …………………………………………………………. 19

Racial Zombiism ……………………………………………………….. 20

Post 9/11 Ideologies ……………………………………………………. 22

Desiring Zombie-hood …………………………………………………. 23

Gaps Presented Within My Scope of Research ………………………………………………... 24 v

Methodology ………………………………………………………………………………….... 26

3-Part Reading …………………………………………………………………………. 26

The Corrections Characters ……………………………………………………………. 28 ​ Chip …………………………………………………………………………….. 28

Alfred …………………………………………………………………………... 34

Enid …………………………………………………………………………….. 42

Denise ………………………………………………………………………….. 47

Gary …………………………………………………………………………….. 53

Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………………... 56

References …………………………………………………………………………………….... 57

Grassbaugh 1

Introduction

While it appears merely to be an other-worldly, flesh-eating, disheveled, slo-mo, green creature in search of blood and guts, the zombie is exponentially more than that, having the unique ability to render humanity helpless as it unearths our deepest fears of stripped bodily authority. The aim of this research is to confront the meanings behind “zombie” by surveying its various representations in society, thereby coming to assess the conceptual “zombie” that cohabitates life with us. The zombie’s means of manifesting itself in a variety of forms allows it to be opportunistic, easily inserting itself into our everyday lives.

Author Jonathan Franzen has greatly made his mark on American fiction and other novels— primarily in social realism, through his work, The Corrections (2001). This novel is to ​ ​ be the main source examined in this research project. Franzen’s talent lies in his capability to dredge up every ounce of our vices and indecencies, exposing human nature with the uttermost bluntness. His writings are as captivating as they are both authentic and debilitating. Like the zombie, Franzen easily inserts himself into our everyday lives, utilizing a variety of forms in The ​ Corrections to do so.1 Because he normalizes American mental and physical blights, Franzen’s ​ audience can recognize itself in his work while expressing feelings of fright and terror in response to the sheer truth of his novels. His writings disrupt agency and autonomy, as he details characters losing themselves to the zombie. Without explicitly referencing zombiism, Franzen ​ ​

1 i.e. mental and physical, to be discussed within the Literature Review. ​

Grassbaugh 2 utilizes the conceptual zombie as a medium to convey the deepest horrors of American life.

Tapping into our fears about ourselves and others, Franzen is more than a social-realist author, he is profoundly a zombie author.

In bridging the wide gap between the concept “zombie” and contemporary social-realist fiction, I was brought to the following: what is a zombie? On all fronts and facets of human existence, what does “zombie” mean? Is theorizing about “the zombie” legitimate and worthy thinking? Through a culmination of my research I have concluded that essence of zombiism takes the following three forms: Fantastical, Social, and Biological. Each will be discussed in depth within the literature review, in support of and to contextualize my above claim about

Franzen and his writings. The history of the zombie then, as well as the driving force behind its unique ability to retain popularity overtime, will be discussed in order to express how and why the conceptual zombie holds such significant weight in our culture in its three distinct forms. As zombiism has been and continues to be a buzzworthy topic— fantastically, socially and biologically— Franzen’s novel The Corrections will aid in demonstrating why. Thus, will ​ ​ conclude the literature review. Following the literature review will be a methods section, applying a three-part methodology that is aimed at revealing how superimposing a zombie-lens atop Franzen’s The Corrections will give rise to the idea that “context breeds a new text”. ​ ​ Supported by secondary Franzen pieces, sources of both zombie fiction and social realism alike, and a number of critics to digest, this thesis will conclude with Franzen successfully identified as an incredibly apt zombie novelist with a knack for horrifying his audiences.

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Literature Review

This literature review is broken into two distinct parts: 1. Exploring the history and means of continuing the zombie and 2. Assessing the three modes by which I’ve identified zombiism to operate: a) Fantastical b) Biological c) Social.

Why the zombie? Why not another monster?

The horror genre distinguishes between the zombie and the monster, as both are ​ ​ ​ ​ successful avenues of horror, evoking differing effects. Niall Scott in Monsters and the ​ Monstrous writes, “the monster is perhaps one of the most significant creations serving to reflect ​ and critique human existence.”2 Monsters oftentimes detail some subconscious peril we may be suffering, taking many different forms with differing meanings. For example, the monster under a child’s bed may appear in his dreams due to the unsettling coming to terms with his parents’ divorce— or another, the monster chasing me as I leave a trail of money behind signifies my guilt over dumping all my savings on useless things. Nonetheless, the monster dynamic is one that brings our biggest insecurities to light via some hidden or subconscious symbol— i.e. the money or the bed in the child’s [now broken] home. Scott explains that the intent of the zombie,

2 N. Scott, Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors about Enduring Evil (Amsterdam: Rodopi, ​ ​ ​ 2007), 1.

Grassbaugh 4 though, or the undead, is to act as a bridge, having zombie transgressing being and non-being.

What is particularly significant of the zombie is that unlike a monster, it “emerges from the human rather than an other-worldly place,” allowing it to be more relatable for the audience.3 No outside symbol is needed in order to draw in meaning, as the meaning lies in the zombie itself.

Hence we can designate two separate realms of horror, having zombiism reflect human existence in such a way that allows us to identify far deeper themes than any monster would permit. Scott draws the conclusion that the zombie, then, is a more effective means of horror entertainment than anything else, for its ability to resonate with its human audience in ways that no average monster could.

I chose to examine the zombie, as I wanted to target my research toward ways in which the world can explore and exploit human behavior, examining the “human experience” and exactly what that experience entails. In The Corrections, Franzen does a phenomenal job of ​ ​ describing the human experience in its rawest form, disclosing an array of everyday behaviors that, to me, felt to be out of character control. I found his work to be both horrifying and pure, like he’d slapped his audience across the face with just how sad and true it all is; society operates under zombie-like mechanisms each and every day, as people’s individual “zombies” overtake their behavior in ways that mimic the zombie. Due to this, I find Franzen’s fiction to be unavoidably synonymous with zombie fiction.

3 Ibid. ​

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The History of the Zombie

The linguistic root of the term “zombie” finds its origination in both Kongo and Haitian culture, dating back all the way to the eighth century. Zombie comes from “nzambi, which in ​ ​ Kongo means ‘spirit of a dead person’ or zonbi, used in the Louisiana Creole or the Haitian ​ ​ Creole that represents a person who died and was then brought to life without speech or free will.”4 Later, in the early to mid-16th century, enters voodoo folklore. Voodoo introduced the term Bokors, who were “Voodoo priests that were concerned with the study and application of ​ ​ black magic, possessing the ability to resurrect the deceased through the administration of coup ​ padre,” coup padre being a powder composed of tetrodotoxin, or more commonly, fou-fou, the ​ ​ ​ poisonous porcupine fish.5 This extremely potent toxin works as it “interferes with the transmission of signals from nerves to muscles and causes an increasing paralysis of the muscles of the body,” thus administering an outward display of zombie-like behavior.6 Ultimately then, a third definition of “zombie” came to exist, specifically “someone who has annoyed his or her family and community to the degree that they can no longer stand to live with this person;”

Bokors would be hired to poison those types in the community, casting them out, eradicating the newly generated zombie.7

4 The Anthropology Department at Michigan State University, History of Zombies (2013), 1. ​ ​ ​ 5 Ibid. ​ 6 The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Emergency Response Card (CDC: ​ ​ ​ 2017), 1. 7 The Anthropology Department at MSU, History, 1. ​ ​ ​

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The zombie has been able to retain popularity throughout centuries due to its ability to resonate with the human person. The zombie acts as a barometer for cultural anxiety. As the zombie is “antithetical to human identity”, yet possesses human-like qualities and appearances, it challenges “our most sacrosanct ideas of the self by transgressing the boundary between self and other. This journey, no matter how it is framed-- in literature, film, or cultural folklore-- reminds us of our ephemeral mortality and throws our cherished notions of human privilege into question”.8 That’s what makes zombie entertainment so unique, as it delivers something other entertainment genres aren’t quite capable of: the ability to resonate with us individually and socially. Typical entertainments “hit their target, the target feels pain, and next week there’s a new episode,”9 but this is not the case with zombie entertainment; zombies evoke something special inside of us that really sparks our uttermost fears and underlying emotions.

Fantastical Zombiism

“Fantastical” zombiism is the type typically executed within the realm of visual entertainment. One of Hollywood’s best sources of revenue, the contemporary horror film, found its genesis partly in zombiism, as the fantasy zombie established itself in early 1900s cinema and remains popular today. In fantastical zombiism the zombie takes its shape as a mythical being for an audience to relish. For the purpose of this literature review, four different pieces of zombie

8 Scott, Monsters and the monstrous. ​ ​ 9 Jonathan Franzen, How to Be Alone: essays 1st edition (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: Picador) 262-63. ​ ​ ​

Grassbaugh 7 entertainment will be studied. I’ve selected these pieces on the basis that not only do they provide a significant historical range, spanning 1932-present day, but they also have established themselves to be quite influential within the zombie genre of entertainment. The pieces will flow as follows: Halperin’s White Zombie (1932), Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), Boyle’s ​ ​ ​ ​ 28 Days Later (2002) and Darabondt’s The Walking Dead (2010-present). Short synopses of the ​ ​ ​ four are given below.

Finding Zombie Roots in Haitian Voodoo

White Zombie made its 1932 debut as the first true zombie film, providing a foundation ​ for all prospective zombie films to come and launching a new subset of the horror genre: zombie horror. Under the direction of Victor Hugo Halperin, the film found its inspiration in ancient voodoo roots, portraying the events unfolding as a young girl (Madge Bellamy) transforms into a zombie via a voodoo master (Bela Lugosi). Fear and loss of control are the main themes present in the film, as the voodoo master “rendered her powerless… made her perform his every desire!”

10 Low-budget and criticized for poor acting as well as being poorly scripted, White Zombie still ​ ​ holds merit because it bridges ancient voodoo folklore and cinema. Film scholars have successfully traced the roots of zombiism using Halperin’s creation as a guide.

10 Victor Halperin, White Zombie (New York City, NY: Halperin Productions, 1932). ​ ​ ​

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The Emergence of the Apocalyptic Model

Following White Zombie, zombie horror took an abrupt turn with director George A. ​ ​ Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968). Universally acclaimed to be the first ever “modern ​ ​ zombie film,” Romero made quite a mark for not only the zombie industry, but for himself, as

“few artists of any kind can be said to have created a genre.”11 Straying from the traditional ​ ​ voodoo folklore, Romero introduces to audiences the first ever “zombie apocalypse,” propelling all following zombie films as ideas and concepts seemed to escape voodoo to better situate themselves under the umbrella of Romero’s apocalyptic model.

The concept here involved radioactive space aliens contaminating Earth with radiation poisoning, creating a new “human” race hungry for human flesh. Starring Judith O’Dea

(Barbara) and Duane Jones (Ben), the setting is a rural farm on which a group of seven find themselves pitted against a much larger group of persistent brain-eaters taking over everything in their path. As critics began questioning how and why zombie horror took such an abrupt and new direction, it can be understood that Romero never intended for his work to be perceived as a zombie film— critics only received it as such. In fact, Romero’s film never even utters the word

“zombie,” not once is it mentioned. Oddly enough, “Night of the Living Dead is universally ​ ​ ​ ​

11 James Cooray Smith, “George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead created the zombie apocalypse as we ​ know it,” New Statesman, July 17, 2017, ​ ​ https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2017/07/george-romeros-night-living-dead-created-zombie-apocalypse-we- know-it

Grassbaugh 9 regarded as the king of zombie flicks.”12 It never started out that way, as “fifty years ago, a small group of Pittsburgh filmmakers decided to make a scary movie,”13 originally aimed to be an alien comedy. Despite this, zombie horror seems to have claimed its genesis here, as Hollywood continues to produce the flesh-eating-desolate-wasteland-apocalypse movies that audiences know and love today.

Still following the apocalyptic-model present in Night of the Living Dead, Danny Boyle’s ​ ​ 28 Days Later (2002) was released more than thirty years after Romero’s classic. Harboring ​ similar themes and ideas present in Romero’s work, Boyle takes the apocalyptic-model one step further, creating a very intimate zombie-apocalypse film with a strong focus on individual characters. The film traverses the lives of four survivors of an incredibly deadly infectious disease— the aftermath of an infiltration of an animal experimentation facility, where an animal-activist group finds highly contagious chimpanzees infected with the “RAGE” virus.

Unlike Romero, Boyle focuses additionally on the initial release, infection, and spiral into contagion that the virus takes. Here, the group releases a previously captive chimp, which then infects a medical researcher, who then one by one begins infecting everyone else (who then infect others and so on and so forth), portraying a sort of “domino-effect” inherent to epidemiological scenarios. Following the infectious spree, the audience is then transported 28 days later in the (abandoned) hospital bed of Jim (Cillian Murphy), one of the survivors, setting

12 Matthew Jackson, “10 Facts About Night of the Living Dead,” Mental Floss, October 13, 2017, ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ http://mentalfloss.com/article/91635/10-facts-about-night-living-dead 13 Ibid. ​

Grassbaugh 10 the stage then for the post-apocalyptic feel found in Romero’s piece. 28 Days Later does a ​ ​ phenomenal job of placing the audience in a state of panic, as the storyline pulls the audience in with its intimate thrills. Due to the amount of close-up jump scares, 28 Days Later is “the kind of ​ ​ ​ film that “makes you want to go out directly afterward and down some expensive single-malt scotch.”14

Something worth mentioning with the occurrence of these post-apocalyptic model films is the idea of “science failing us.” L. Cessarelli of Scientific Ethos and the Cinematic Zombie ​ Outbreak: Science in Fictional Narratives describes this to be the break-down of the “archetypal ​ zombie movie,” as “public anxiety about emerging biothreats is evident in the recent glut of popular entertainment where the demise, or near demise, of humankind is imagined to be the result of a new infectious pathogen against which science has no existing vaccine or cure.”

Interestingly enough, this seems to be a huge drive in modern zombie cinema today even. I’ve broken this idea of “ignorant scientists” into the following two schemas: Science is seen to be at fault in the case of these outbreaks for two main reasons: (1) their curiosities outweighed their concern for humanity (deeming them immoral), resulting in a life-threatening outbreak that rapidly spreads, and (2) as there is no cure, scientists then must have experimented prematurely without taking any countermeasures into consideration. It is with much wonder as to why the entertainment industry continues to use science as the scapegoat. It begs bioethical questions like

“Has science gone too far?” or “Are we being careless with technology?” I’ve always found this

14 Peter Rainer, “Cheap Thrills,” New Yorker, June 30, 2003. ​ ​ ​

Grassbaugh 11 intriguing within zombie fiction as the audience experienced feelings of disgust toward science authorities and sympathy to those commonfolk stuck within the epidemic— even if those were the ones who had trespassed in the first place starting the whole domino-effect itself (i.e. 28 Days ​ Later). ​

Today’s Entertainment

Lastly, and most prominent among present-day horror entertainment, The Walking Dead ​ has been packing horrific, zombie punches since its initial release in 2010. As a television series, and a successful one at that, The Walking Dead has had the ability to display the most intimate ​ ​ zombie apocalypse adventures of all time, spanning eight seasons and counting. Original director

Frank Darabont took the idea for the series from a comic, The Walking Dead (Robert Kirkman ​ ​ and Michael “Tony” Moore). Featuring a worldwide zombie takeover— zombie “walkers” infect via bites and scratches— and ever-changing character keep-up, AMC’s The Walking Dead ​ (TWD) has been “the most-watched series among younger viewers for five consecutive years.”15 ​ ​ Perhaps this is due to its ability to elicit a shared viewer response of community, as characters in the series are forced to band together or die, doing a fabulous job of exposing human vulnerability and dependency on one another, as well as exploring the depths of human depravity and the fragility of civilization. This theme of vulnerability has been present in past zombie

15 Jeremy Egner, “ The Walking Dead at 100: Still a Hit, but for How Much Longer?,” The New York ​ ​ Times, October 18, 2017. ​

Grassbaugh 12 films, but due to the nature of being a television series, TWD does an exceptional job of truly ​ ​ tapping into human fear as viewers wait with anticipation for the following week’s episodes.

The Walking Dead— “How many seasons are we on now?” ​

Fantastical zombiism is paradoxical; somehow the best examples of the zombie genre manage to be both classical and fresh all at once. Kyle Bishop, author of How Zombies ​ Conquered Popular Culture: The Multifarious Walking Dead in the 21st Century, writes, “the ​ zombie is significant and viable.”16 The zombie has developed “over the past 100 years through adaptation, mutation, and fusion with other monstrous traditions”— yet, keeps consistency in its applications of horror. Considering zombie history, the zombie itself may be a repetitive classic, but its implications on the ever-changing society around it always manages to have an intentional and successful effect. The walking dead will undoubtedly “find new ways to continue to horrify and entertain the masses,”17 while still administering that same flesh-eating, brain-dead charm we all know and love. In regards to current popular obsession, The Walking Dead, AMC President, ​ ​ Charlie Collier, noted that the zombie genre “has continued to reinvent itself and remain relevant, and I think that can happen for a long, long time.”18

16 Kyle William Bishop, How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture:The Multifarious Walking Dead in the ​ ​ 21st Century (Contributions to Zombie Studies), (New York: McFarland, 2015), Preface. ​ 17 Ibid. ​ 18 Egner, “The Walking Dead at 100”. ​

Grassbaugh 13

Biological Zombiism

The Biological Zombie has recently surfaced, in light of climate change and its direct ramifications on the northern permafrost. Defined as “ground (soil or rock and included ice or organic material) that remains at or below 0°C for at least two consecutive years,” the permafrost has undergone quite the change in the past decade— melting at a steady rate in concurrence with globally rising temperatures.19 Due to this thaw, disease epidemiology has spiked in curious ways. Following the thaw, there have been reports of “zombie pathogens” meaning, the emergence of pathogens that had since been frozen within the permafrost. As the permafrost covers an area twice the size of the U.S., there are tens of thousands of bodies preserved in the frozen soil,” and one can only imagine the diseases harbored within them.20 In light of this, ​ scientists, news sources and media alike have taken to, outlining the immediate threat to public health and the general well-being of our planet. Using the term “zombie” as an adjective to mimic the behavioral mechanisms that these diseases undertake, both science and the media produce and overall anxious audience, with earnest attention and fear for what may happen next.

Furthermore, in accordance with climate change and the fragility of our Earth in 2018, L.

Marsa discusses in her journal piece entitled Fevered: why a hotter planet will hurt our health— ​ and how we can save ourselves, how even the minimalist of fluxes off-set our Earth ​

19 International Permafrost Association (IPA), What is permafrost?, 2008, ​ ​ ​ https://ipa.arcticportal.org/publications/occasional-publications/what-is-permafrost . ​ 20 Michaeleen Doucleff, “Are There Zombie Viruses in the Thawing Permafrost?,” NPR: All Things ​ ​ Considered, January 24, 2018. ​

Grassbaugh 14 astronomically. Written in 2013, she portrays the Earth to essentially be “too far gone” unless radical change is exhibited. Marsa hypothesizes that over the next century, the Earth, assuming we continue at the pollution rate we’re hanging at, will have increased anywhere from 7-11 degrees (Fahrenheit). It begs the question: How much more will our permafrost have melted?

Will it even matter, or will we have all been killed by the zombie 1800s flu by then?

The “zombie pathogens” conversation most notably begins with Michaeleen Doucleff’s

NPR article entitled, “Are There Zombie Viruses In The Thawing Permafrost?” Beginning her article by painting a picture of an 800-year-old excavation on the northern coast of Alaska,

Doucleff discusses a member of the trip (Zac Peterson) who comes down with an odd skin infection. Doucleff writes that perhaps the infection was more than a simple infection, that perhaps it had been contracted by a creature that had thawed from the ice. She writes, “In the ​ past few years, there has been a growing fear about a possible consequence of climate change: ​ zombie pathogens. Specifically, bacteria and viruses — preserved for centuries in frozen ground

— coming back to life as the Arctic's permafrost starts to thaw.”21 In an effort to describe such an event, Doucleff points to a recent Anthrax outbreak in Siberia— home to some of the most substantial miles of permafrost the world has ever seen:

A heat wave in the Arctic thawed a thick layer of the permafrost, and a bunch of reindeer carcasses started to warm up. The animals had died of anthrax, and as their bodies thawed, so did the bacteria. Anthrax spores spread across the tundra. Dozens of people were hospitalized, and a 12-year-old boy died. On the surface, it looked as if zombie anthrax had somehow come back to life after being frozen for 70 years. What pathogen would be next? Smallpox? The 1918 flu?22

21 Ibid. ​ 22 Ibid. ​

Grassbaugh 15

Even more troubling are the mechanisms by which these zombie pathogens would operate, as climate change could not only reawaken these pathogens to reinfect humanity, but these pathogens may strike back twice as fiercely. During an examination of isolated bacteria extracted from Siberian permafrost, Sonia Mindlin of the Russian Journal of Genetics stated that ​ ​ “multidrug resistant strains were found for the first time in ancient bacteria” and that it greatly has altered “the spectrum for resistance differing between gram negative and gram positive samples that had previously existed.”23

Offering up a sort of relief, Doucleff checks off a list of many who had attempted, but failed, at reviving old bacteria and viruses retrieved from ice-preserved tissues among the permafrost’s extensive burial grounds. She includes examples of pneumonia, smallpox, even the

1918 flu epidemic. Yet as her article wraps up, Doucleff recaps the case of Zac Peterson, who excavated preserved seal remains only to be treated soon after for, of course, “seal-finger infection.” Doucleff closes her piece noting that perhaps this is it, “Peterson just might be the first victim of zombie bacteria rising from Alaska's thawing permafrost.”24

23 S. Z. Mindlin, V. S. Soina , M. A. Petrova and Z. M. Gorlenko, “Isolation of antibiotic resistance ​ bacterial strains from Eastern Siberia permafrost sediments,” Russian Journal of Genetics 44 no. 1 (July 2017) ​ ​ 27-36. 24 Doucleff, “Are There Zombies”. In accordance with this, L. Liang and P. Gong of Environmental ​ International has quite a bit to say on the matter. The two stated in their recent study on climate change and its ​ relation with human infectious diseases, that “the life cycles and transmission of most infectious agents are ​ inextricably linked with climate. In spite of a growing level of interest and progress in determining climate change effects on infectious disease, the debate on the potential health outcomes remains polarizing”. Whether global warming truly can cause a domino effect of zombie pathogen rebirths, global warming negatively affects infectious ​ ​ disease regardless. Efforts must be made to truly combat the devastating impacts that climate change can trigger in the future.

Grassbaugh 16

Despite any new theories surrounding global warming and zombie pathogen preservation, zombiism is not necessarily a new facet of biology. Scientist Ed Yong’s recent TED Talk entitled: “Suicidal wasps, zombie roaches and other parasite tales” describes a large grouping of organisms that undergo “zombie-like” behaviors due to infection. Unlike Doucleff’s mode of

“coming back to infect,” these organisms take on a sort of “brainwashed” mentality, completely overtaken by another something. Yong notes that we often make huge assumptions about animal behaviors, that “the animals are in control of their own actions, that they are in charge of their bodies, and that is often not the case.”25 Yong details a variety of organisms that fit these descriptions, including Artemia, commonly known as sea monkeys or brine shrimp, which ​ ​ typically live alone, yet are sometimes found forming large red clusters of themselves. Yong points out that one may argue the benefit of swimming in packs but for this animal it is useless, as the sea monkeys are doing so only because they are infected with a parasitic tapeworm. This tapeworm not only feeds off of the shrimp, but it “castrates them, changes their color to bright red, makes them live longer, and makes them swim in groups.”26 The tapeworm does this as its life cycle only permits it to reproduce in Greater Flamingos— thus, the shrimp swim in bright clusters, the flamingo can better see the shrimp, and so the shrimp are then eaten and the parasite is successful. A trick of brainwashing, the tapeworm “hijacks their brains and their bodies”.27

25 Ed Yong, “Suicidal wasps, zombie roaches and other parasite tales”, (Ted Talk, 2014). ​ 26 Ibid. ​ 27 Ibid. ​

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Another example Yong points to is that of alveolate parasite Toxoplasma gondii (Toxo), ​ ​ infecting a wide range of mammals, having only the ability to reproduce in cats. When Toxo finds its way into a rodent, the rodent becomes a “cat-seeking missile,” propelling the rodent toward the scent of cat urine. The cat then devours the mouse and Toxo succeeds in its mission.28

These zombie oddities, amongst Yong’s other examples such as suicidal crickets, brain-stabbing emerald cockroach wasps, and extremely violent caterpillars, he explains, are not odd at all, as ​ ​ “manipulation is no oddity, it’s a common part of the world around us.”29

Applying the term “zombie” to discussions about science and the natural world sparks both interest and fear of those living in the natural world, divulging an intersection of fantasy play and realities of natural sciences.30 A recent and hot topic, zombie pathogens remain in the media in an attempt to reach all parties across the globe to convey these new and eerie findings.

Perhaps the reason the concept has gained so much buzz lies in its ability to resonate well with people, such as the zombie does. Identifying the characteristic takeaways of “the zombie (i.e. ability to come back to life, ability to overtake one’s body) allows the collective society to better understand, relate, and get involved with what’s happening in the world around them. Using

28 Ibid. ​ 29 Ibid. ​ 30 Renowned Anthropologist M. K. Zuckerman is a huge advocate for the interplay of biology and social ​ sciences. He states that “biology and culture are dialectically and inextricably intertwined, explicitly emphasizing ​ the dynamic interaction between humans and their larger social, cultural, and physical environments”. I think a great deal of importance can come from both Zuckerman and Liang and Gong’s perspectives on human and environmental cohabitation. Hopefully with this topic of “zombie pathogens” being rather new and little explored will generate a larger push toward eco-preservation for a sustainable, healthy future.

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“zombie” terminology serves an even greater purpose, as doing so sparks a general excitement of people in ways that gives science more attention than perhaps usually received.

Social Zombiism

Social Zombiism is the particular medium of zombiism that I’d like to concern my thesis with. Social zombiism is the application of zombie-like connotations to social spheres, being something that the collective of society can relate with. The walking dead among us involve those somehow afflicted in social settings. The person feels somehow dislocated or “outside of their own skin,” persona non grata, in a way that they lack control over their environment as the ​ ​ “zombie” begins to control them. These zombies distort social constructs in ways that terrorize and frighten other members of society, just as a zombie would. The zombie can manifest itself in things such as addiction, obsessive-thoughts, power-relations, racism, etc. The premise here is that the zombie “overtakes the body” somehow. These zombies are quite numerous in nature, to no surprise, “as the walking dead are, in a certain sense, real.”31 ​ ​

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)

31 Bishop, How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture. ​ ​

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One of the larger focuses within The Corrections is Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, ​ ​ and so including this within the social section of the literature review I found to be helpful. I’ve specifically placed AD within the social section of my literature as although it is an illness, a deterioration of the physical brain, its afflictions are social; those diagnosed with AD feel their ​ ​ illness socially, never physically, as “self” becomes a stranger to “body.” Oftentimes in both ordinary and medical settings, those afflicted with AD have been referred to as “zombies” or within “zombie-like” states. Susan Behuniak of The Living Dead argues, ​ ​

The AD stigma is of a specific sort – it is dehumanization based on disgust and terror. Although the blame for negative perceptions of people with AD has been placed on the biomedical understanding of dementia, I argue that strong negative emotional responses to AD are also buttressed by the social construction of people with AD as zombies”.32

Ethical and moral issues alike, AD has been expressed in such a way to allot those suffering from

AD into a separate species, a sort of subset of mankind, in which typical interactions are halted and replaced with careful dialogues and prejudiced judgement. AD presents the public with an example of real-life zombiism— prompting those who come across the infected to heed caution and tread lightly. In an excerpt entitled “My Father’s Brain,” from his assortment of essays in,

How to Be Alone, author Jonathan Franzen discusses his father’s battle with the disease: ​ I feel uneasy when I gather facts about Alzheimer’s. Reading, for example, David Shenk’s book The Forgetting: Alzheimer’s: Portrait of an Epidemic, I’m reminded that ​ ​

32 Susan M. Behuniak, The Living Dead? The Construction of People with Alzheimer's Disease as Zombies, ​ ​ ​ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 70-71.

Grassbaugh 20

when my father got lost in his own neighborhood, or forgot to flush the toilet, he was exhibiting symptoms identical to those of millions of other afflicted people.33

Franzen discusses AD as an epidemic, a sort of zombie-apocalypse, a “long illness” that takes a person hostage with its infectious disease stripping away his or her personhood and humanity along with it. The human person with AD is seen as already shot, a dead duck— the zombie now roosts where the body once lived. He continues, “Alzheimer’s had achieved the same social status and medical standing as heart disease or cancer,” an already predetermined, countdown of ​ days, slippery slope.34 After his father’s death he noted that “my father wasn’t much deader now than he’d been two hours or two weeks or two months ago. We’d simply lost the last parts out of which we could fashion a living whole,” ending the excerpt with: “The only stories we could tell now were the ones we already had.”35

In Franzen’s novel The Corrections, main character Alfred suffers from AD, held at a ​ ​ steady decline— the character notably modeled after Franzen’s father. The whole focus of the novel centers itself around Alfred’s struggle with AD and its implications and burdens on his wife Enid and their three children, Chip, Denise and Gary. Zombiism and AD, as well as the various other forms zombiism takes within the novel, will be discussed shortly in concluding the literature review.

33 Franzen, How to Be Alone, 20. ​ ​ ​ 34 Ibid. ​ 35 Ibid. ​

Grassbaugh 21

The Definition of Death

Similarly to the outlook many have regarding AD, those suffering from the hold of other mental perils are seen to walk a blurry line between dead and alive. Within death we have two current functioning definitions: 1. Traditional Circulatory Death (the cessation of of all respiratory and circulatory functions) and 2. Neurological Death (irreversible functions of the brain, including the brain stem), aka, the classic “brain-dead.” Total Brain Failure (TBF) is synonymous with neurological death.

Many bioethicists inquire whether the terms of death should be more inclusive, looking upon circumstances such as PVS, for example, in which patients face the consequences of severe brain damage to be forced to live a life in unconscious sleep/wake patterns. Many argue consciousness and memory to be what gives humans their humanity— that the uniquenesses and ability to express a unique and distinguishable identity is our human self. What if the definition of death then was “irreversible loss of consciousness,” or even “total loss of hippocampal functioning?” Is this further dehumanizing or a potential solution to avoid dehumanizing altogether? At what point is it legitimate to delineate the boundaries of personhood?

The Idea of the “Soul”

Grassbaugh 22

What about theorizing about the soul? From discussions of mental disability and disease, ​ we’re forced to beg the question of what makes us human, and at what point is our humanity lost for good. Could this source of humanity be the soul? Where does the soul lie? If we are truly justified in treating those with AD, PVS, TBF and other mental blights differently, we could conclude that the soul is the brain, either within the pieces and parts or just one in the same. If he loses his mind he then loses his identity. 15th century English philosopher and physician John

Locke approached this line of thinking with his contribution of “Personal Identity”.

Locke’s theory on personal identity argued that it is our mind’s capacity, upholding memories and emotions specific to ourselves, that constitutes our identities. Locke objected to the notion of bodily continuity and opted for memory to be the source of each and every one of our humanities.36 For example, if a man committed a murder and then fell ill to his mind, forcing him to forget all things that have happened to him, the man deserved to be ruled not-guilty on the basis that his memory had been disrupted and he “literally was a different person.”37 Without the ability to recall one’s own experiences one’s identity and personhood is void. Without a functioning mind the person is nothing.

Other Social Concerns

36 BBC Radio, John Locke on Personal Identity, January 19, 2015. ​ ​ ​ 37 Ibid. ​

Grassbaugh 23

There are a number of social zombiisms found in Franzen’s The Corrections, outside of ​ ​ mental disease, such as AD. Below I will discuss some of the most pressing social zombies of today’s generation:

Racial Zombiism

Racial bigotry has also its place in zombiism in looking to social acceptedness and the general concept of human dignity. This zombie is mainly studied in regards to film, as the cinematic realm has time and time again chosen to depict blacks differently than whites. Taken from The Best American Essays (2016) Justin Phillip Reed has a piece entitled: “Killing Like ​ ​ They Do in the Movies,”38 taken from Catapult, in which he discusses his own personal ​ ​ encounters with racial animosity on the grounds of death and dying. He makes a compelling argument, examining the relationship between horror (gore) films and racial representation, primarily displayed within the slasher sub-genre. He describes the horror industry to appeal to a white audience, coining the industry an “amateur porn sub-genre of race-play,” as the exploitation and general disregard for all political correctness is lost— but forgiven, as it is ​ horror.39 Reed writes, “I somehow surface recalling the gruesome kills of Michael Myers throughout the Halloween franchise. All the white teenage girls, strangled or bleeding out, and ​ ​

38Justin Phillip Reed: Franzen and Atwan, The Best American Essays 2016, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ​ ​ 2016) 231-242. 39 Ibid. ​

Grassbaugh 24 then Tyra Banks: gutted and hanging by the neck from a wire.”40 Reed aims to expose the horror genre for both its lack of black representation and deliberate dehumanization of black characters once inserted into the mix. He explains that these films haunt him, as these films carry out the murders of blacks in a way that “a black woman or man traditionally vests,” to that of a white character.41

Similarly, a display of stripped identity and total control loss, contemporary horror flick

Get Out (2017) by director Jordan Peele explores a deep disconnect between white and black ​ culture, capturing the essence of true racism and hate-crime embedded within the stereotypical rural, white, upper-class family. This kind of deep-seated hatred for the black community manifests itself profoundly within the family that, upon inviting the whole of their extended relatives over for a “party,” intends to auction off the black “guest-of-honor.” The premise of the film takes place at the house of Rose (Allison Williams), white girlfriend to black boyfriend,

Chris (Daniel Kaluuya). Rose initiates the family’s schemes, frequently seducing new black males in hopes to invite them over for her family’s weekend party. Upon arrival the mother,

Missy Armitage (Catherine Keener), hypnotizes Chris until he finds himself in the sunken place. ​ ​ This is routine per every guest-of-honor. Harboring full control of the guest, the family then takes the concept of “auctioning” one step further; as the Armitages view black youth to be useful when given white minds. In order to extend and improve the lifespan of blind relative Jim

Hudson, “lulled by the sound of a teaspoon— Chris Washington is strapped to an operating table ​ ​

40 Ibid. ​ 41 Ibid. ​

Grassbaugh 25 alongside another operating table, on which rests Jim Hudson’s aged body. Washington’s brain will be removed and in its place will go Hudson’s brain, who earlier in the film won at auction

Washington’s body.”42 Get Out demonstrates strong dehumanization in a way that establishes a ​ ​ clear hierarchy of beings. Once more, the concept of losing oneself or being ripped of one’s identity is pointed at, as Chris becomes reduced to nothing more than skin color and booly worth.

Race in horror can be discussed similarly to AD as it were argued that racism designates non-white people like a “separate species.” Here, the idea is that the slasher industry places black characters into the body of a zombie, representing black lives in a way that lack significance and meaning compared to that of their white counterparts within a film. Furthermore, the killings of black discussed by Reed were far more malicious and aggressive than those of whites.

Additionally discussed was the thought that “black people are supposed to feel pain to a lesser degree than whites.”43 Whatever the result, racism on the context of zombiism is worthy of further insight and exploration, similarly with AD. Relating this back to internalized horrors within ourselves, Scott reminds us that “the walking dead will continue to teach us about our own repressed (and revealed) anxieties and tensions.”44 Perhaps then our fears of death and dying, losing one’s mind, or comparing our skin color, is all a product of fear of ourselves becoming what we are not. Taking a look at Franzen, zombie forms like these and others (i.e. addiction and sexuality) will be examined.

42 Nick Lucchesi, “Here’s the Weird Science at the End of ‘Get Out’, Explained,” Inverse, February 26, ​ ​ ​ 2017. 43 Franzen and Atwan, Best American, 231-242. ​ ​ ​ 44 Scott, Monsters and the Monstrous. ​ ​ ​

Grassbaugh 26

Post 9/11 Ideologies

Bishop coins the 21st century, primarily post-9/11, to be the “Zombie Renaissance.” This zombie-age we live in refers to the “continual cultural currency,” or the everpresent representation of the zombie that we face in our everyday lives.45 He explains that:

the contradictory nature of these various and changing zombies— dead but alive, conscious but lacking consciousness, animated but decaying, alive but infected— makes them the perfect figures to explain an apparently inexhaustible host of natural occurrences, social interactions, technological advances, psychological and physiological anomalies, economic structures and relationships, political dynamics, and more.46

In essence, [metaphorical] zombies exist all around us, taking on various morphologies and characteristics. Modern zombies then become “meaning machines” delivering a coping mechanism for those enduring tough times (i.e. the tragedies and long-lasting traumas of 9/11), as we then have the ability to detach from self and find a home in the other. However, while ​ ​ some people are finding homes in zombies others are fearful of them. For this reason, zombies are well-deserving of deeper investigative study for their ability to elicit the fears and empathy of their audiences.

45 Bishop, How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture. ​ ​ ​ 46 Ibid. ​

Grassbaugh 27

Funnily enough, The Corrections has an eerie feel to it, as it was published only days ​ ​ before the attacks on 9/11, viewed by some as a kind of “conspiracy” or “fortune-telling” novel.

Housing a number of “continual cultural currencies,” Franzen captures a vast number of characters which convey their own zombies. Franzen truly evokes the zombie in ways that rip apart the audience, leaving the reader feeling far more vulnerable after finishing the novel than before starting. Franzen emphasizes the downfall of the human person, detailing how the zombie

(disease, addiction, sexual dysfunction, secrecy, envy, etc) manifests itself until it completely overtakes the body. These zombies are debilitating and ever-present in our society, and Franzen fervidly stresses this throughout his novel.

Desiring Zombie-hood

Ron Scott, author of “Now I’m Feeling Zombified”: Playing the Zombie Online, ​ ​ discusses an interesting phenomena in light of those individuals seeking comfort in alienation, building zombie “communities” for inclusion. Scott centers in on the Scott Heim novel In Awe in ​ ​ which “the power of becoming “zombified” helps to lessen suffering”, something typically unseen in either zombie film or literature, this idea of companionship or community ties.47 He

47 Ron Scott “Now I’m Feeling Zombified: Playing the Online Zombie (Zombie Cultures: Autopsies of the ​ ​ ​ Living Dead), Scarecrow Press, 2008, 169-184.

Grassbaugh 28 notes that a community of zombies “feels something similar, as they share the ‘common concern’ of being outsiders”.48

This idea is perplexing on one hand, imagining the functioning zombie, civically engaged, working toward the “common-good”— however, there is something fascinating about human behavior in which friend groups become eclectic, or rather the not-so-nice term, the

“rejects”. In the social sphere, many seek comfort in alienation. It is atypical to desire eternal solitude, and so this idea of those zombified seeking refuge in common zombies is sensible. This is something to consider in light of zombie epidemiology, as the zombie would more than likely choose to infect those within its circle than outside of it, proposing a lot of thought in regards to

“cult-behavior” or even religion.

Gaps Presented Within the Scope of My Research

Contemporary author Jonathan Franzen typically is read as a social-realist. He focuses his content toward real-life social disturbances, usually done so with satire and underlying criticism.

His attentiveness to his wide array of audiences allows him to be most effective, as Franzen states that he intends “to serve the reader a fruitcake that you wouldn't eat yourself, to build the reader an uncomfortable house you wouldn't want to live in”, evoking the “sinful pleasures of

48 Ibid. ​

Grassbaugh 29 realism” which can effectively be felt across a diverse and complex audience.49 Critics of his call this “character-driven realism”, producing didactic and troubling realizations about the society that’s made up of each of us. His writings are thus painful to read, but hard not to-- like a car crash you can’t look away from.

The unanimous gap within all of these critiques lies in an overlooked reductionism of the social realism fiction genre. To stop there— labeling Frazen as an author with an ability to produce uncomfortable storylines that audiences just can’t seem to put down— is premature.

Character-driven realism is a technique Franzen implements, but that’s hardly the full scope of his practice. I find Franzen’s writings to embody so much more than that, as his work, specifically in that of The Corrections, leaves readers with grim uneasiness and empty stomachs. ​ ​ In addressing this gap, I’ve inserted the zombie into the mix. Franzen terrifies readers by exploiting human behavior undergoing zombiism; the illnesses identified in The Corrections, ​ ​ mental or physical, overtake the body, render the characters helpless and tragically alone to face their afflictions. Not only this, but the helpless characters then in turn, go on to infect the next and so on and so forth. Franzen’s novel easily coincides with the apocalyptic model previously discussed in fiction zombie literature and film, post Romero. These afflictions take over like some sort of zombie apocalypse, infecting society like a dangerous and uncontainable plague.

Readers find a home in his work as he deliberately opens up a discussion about the things we so

49 Seth Studer and Ichiro Takayoshi, “Franzen and the “Open-Minded but Essentially Untrained Fiction ​ ​ Reader,” (Post45: Yale, 2013).

Grassbaugh 30 desperately don’t want to discuss (i.e. sexuality, addiction, terminal illness). The zombie challenges “our most sacrosanct ideas of the self by transgressing the boundary between self and other. This journey, no matter how it is framed— in literature, film, or cultural folklore— reminds us of our ephemeral mortality and throws our cherished notions of human privilege into question.”50

Associating zombiism with contemporary realities of culture allows for a deeper introspective approach in order to better understand the human being at its most vulnerable state, as the zombie takes over. Modern zombies then become those “meaning machines,” delivering a sort of metaphorical mechanism for those enduring tough times and inner turmoil.51 Arguing

Jonathan Franzen to be a zombie novelist gives rise to a fresh and new approach of not only

Franzen as an author, but social-realist texts overall.

Methodology

My methodology will conduct a three-part-reading of various passages within The ​ Corrections, sampling each of the main characters’ social struggles. The characters analyzed ​ include those mentioned in the previous section, compromising the main characters and deep focus of the novel throughout.

50 Scott, Monsters and the monstrous. ​ ​ ​ 51 Bishop, How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture. ​ ​ ​

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Three-Part Reading

1. First, I will highlight a number of passages that exploit the various social tendencies,

disorders and diseases that befall each main character throughout The Corrections. In ​ ​ doing so, I will be selecting passages that a number of critics have also drawn attention

to, in order to perform a parallel reading.

2. Second, I will detail how these passages are typically read as examples of social realism

3. I will then explain how the reader can take this idea of social-realism further,

approaching Franzen as a zombie novelist52. I will explain how missing the

“zombie-factor” of each character is inherently reductive of Franzen’s work. I will then

explain what’s gained by reading Franzen’s work as a zombie work, essentially showing

“what’s important” in doing this type of literary analysis.

The uniqueness of this approach is done to emphasize otherwise reductive assessments of not only Franzen, but perhaps the social-realism genre entirely. Such an approach is not intended to add onto the already existing definition of social-realism— the idea here is simply to change the scope in which we view social-realist works.

So much of my assessment can be understood by “holding up a mirror to ourselves”, as social-realism writings detail the muddy downfall of the everyday human. A good example of ​ ​

52 Social-realism works and zombie works are not to be understood as mutually exclusive here-- my ​ efforts are only to stretch the boundaries of social-realism in an expansion into zombiism. I believe that social-realist critics could benefit from viewing Franzen, as well as other social-realists, through this zombie lens, as it offers up much more detail about human behaviors and their effect on others and their environment.

Grassbaugh 32 this can be found in Alfred’s chair scene (see again Franzen, The Corrections, 62-64). The ​ ​ passage reads over two pages of gathering the courage to perform the simple task, portraying

Alfred “summoning the courage to sit down on Chip’s chaise lounge” (63). The ordeal in its entirety is sad and languorous in its unfolding. Sad especially for both Enid and Denise, who witness the aftermath as he “landed heavily on his bottom and continued on over backwards, coming to rest with his knees in the air above him” (64). Franzen does an excellent job of using mimetic language to reproduce realities familiar to us (i.e. Alzheimer’s)— the mirror, as mentioned.

The Corrections Characters ​

Chip:

It’s not a subtlety; Chip’s inability to quelm his sexual appetites sends him spiralling into trouble throughout the course of the novel. We are employed to do little digging as readers to really grasp the full depth of his sexual addictions, as Franzen is rather open about Chip’s behaviors within just a few short pages of introducing his character to us. For this, I consider

Chip to be the character most easily controlled by his or her social affliction, as it’s clear the depths he’ll go to seek out sexual satisfaction and how little restraint he has on himself in turn.

Additionally, we are presented with Chip’s debilitating paranoias about sex and the world around him; amid the novel, Chip contorts his surroundings using his one-track mind in any way to conjure up his personal fantasies. He is delusional and weak-minded. His predatory nature

Grassbaugh 33 shatters any chance of real romance and companionship, as Chip can barely pass a woman on his way to his apartment without envisioning her clothes ripped to shreds on the sidewalk beneath her. Highlighting some of Chip’s most noteworthy encounters with himself and his ongoing sexual paranoia, I’ve selected the following passage:

(1a) In New York you never had to go far to find filth and rage. A nearby street sign seemed to read Filth Avenue… Through the window of a cab he read GAP ATHLETIC as GAL ​ ​ PATHETIC. He read Empire Realty as Vampire Reality . . . He read Cross Pens as Cross ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Penises, he read ALTERATIONS as ALTERCATIONS. An optometrist’s window ​ offered: HEADS EXAMINED.53

Martin Hipsky of Post-Cold War Paranoia in The Corrections and The Sopranos describes ​ ​ Chip’s behavior in this passage to be a “near nervous breakdown,” Chip surrendering himself to his paranoid projections that happen to be “tightly linked to the break-up conversation that he has just had with his ex-lover, Julia, who has pointed out the sexually exploitative features of his failed screenplay.”54 Furthermore, Hipsky makes the direct connection to the turning of the

53 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 105. ​ ​ ​ 54 Martin Hipsky, "Post-Cold War Paranoia in The Corrections and The Sopranos." Postmodern Culture 16, ​ ​ ​ no. 2 (2006). In conjunction with the mention of Chip’s “failed screenplay”, The Academy Purple, comes the ​ ​ discussion of Chip’s poultry dept. script. T.M. McNally of Fiction in Review discusses a poetical elderly colleague ​ ​ of his known amongst campus as the “Kentucky Fried Poet” with a fancy for lines such as “her breasts dropped / to ​ fullness”. McNally connected this with a scene in The Corrections in which a “tweaked girlfriend [Julia] makes the ​ ​ ​ observation to her struggling screenplayist wreck-of-a-boyfriend, Chipper, that all the body parts in his work –‘‘Breast, breast, breast, thigh, leg’’ – remind her of being in the poultry department of a grocery store.” This piece is established early on in Chip’s section of the novel, illustrating how incredibly dense and insensitive Chip can be in any attempt at a relationship-- his over-pronounced sexual interests dissipating his relationships. The line amid the novel reads: [Julia]‘I’m saying it’s a tiny bit insulting to a person somehow.’’ [Chip] ‘‘But that’s not you. It’s not even based on you.’’ [Julia] ‘‘Oh, great. It’s somebody’s else’s breasts’’.

Grassbaugh 34 century, as he argues a sense of postmodernism irony of a capitalist society reflected in Chip’s

“investment” in Julia.55

Hipsky extends this idea, evaluating the relationship between Chip and Eastern European ex-diplomat Gitanas, linking “the decaying infrastructure of the American Midwest with the efflux of capital into a social-Darwinist Lithuania.”56 For this, I chose the following passage:

(1b) The main difference between America and Lithuania, as far as Chip could see, was that in America the wealthy few subdued the unwealthy many by means of mind-numbing and soul-killing entertainments and gadgetry and pharmaceuticals, whereas in Lithuania the powerful few subdued the unpowerful mainly by threatening violence. It warmed his Foucauldian heart, in a way, to live in a land where property ownership and the control of public discourse were so obviously a matter of who had the guns. 57

Hipsky writes, “Chip’s rumination effectively functions as a synecdoche for broader anxieties ​ about globalization, and the ascendance of social Darwinism across the face of the earth,” establishing the underlying paranoias of the collective whole of society, from the perspective of a multi-faceted paranoid Chip.58 With great focus on global consumerism and the disrupt it brings to civil society, Hipsky brights to light The Corrections as it endorses a social realist induced ​ ​ panic about the transition59 into the 21st century.60

55 Ibid. ​ 56 Ibid. ​ 57 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 443-44. ​ ​ ​ 58 Hipsky, “Post-Cold War Paranoia”. ​ 59 Something noteworthy from Carroll: “If the postmodern regime of flexible capital accumulation can be ​ ​ ​ said to scatter Alfred’s three children to their various vocations—Denise to a venture-capital restaurant in Philadelphia, Chip to a public relations role for the Free Market Party Company of Lithuania, Gary to a position in a high-power East Coast investment bank—that same regime has engendered the private Retirement Communities and

Grassbaugh 35

With Chip suffering the intensities of his own addictions and social strains, it’s imperative to consider the relationship that unfolds between both Chip and Alfred, as Chip is arguably the greatest force in his life, his favorite child. Joseph Carroll in Correcting for The ​ Corrections: A Darwinian Critique of a Foucauldian Novel, describes the father-son interplay of ​ Alfred and Chip as a “Prodigal Son” story.61 For this I’ve selected the following:

(1c)

His affliction offended his sense of ownership. These shaking hands belonged to nobody but him, and yet they refused to obey him. They were like bad children. . . . Irresponsibility and undiscipline were the bane of his existence. . . . Alfred took pleasure in the imagination of chopping his hand off with a hatchet: of letting the transgressing limb know how deeply he was angry with it, how little he loved it if it insisted on disobeying him. . . . [But he also felt] an inclination to weep for this hand that was his, that he loved and wished the best for, that he’d known all his life. He was thinking about Chip again without noticing it.62

So much of what keeps Alfred going is Chip, whereas so much of Chip is his own self-indulgences: his women, his money, his filth. Carroll points to another selection in the novel,

“Chip couldn’t see what everyone around him could: that if there was one person in the world whom Alfred did love purely for his own sake, it was Chip.”63 Carroll explains that Franzen had

Assisted Living Centers that the younger generation, having left behind the institutions of the extended family and civil society that formerly provided the social support for the elderly, now deem appropriate for their aging parents”. 60 Recall: “the madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through… gust after gust of disorder” (3). ​ 61 Joseph Carroll, Correcting for The Corrections: A Darwinian Critique of a Foucauldian Novel, Style: ​ ​ ​ Behavioral Economics in Fiction, Poetic Rhymes, and Narrativity on Stage, (Vol. 47, No. 1, Spring 2013), pp. ​ ​ 87-118. 62 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 67. ​ ​ ​ 63 Ibid, 523. ​

Grassbaugh 36 no issue constructing the Alfred-Chip relationship, as he mimics himself in Chip and the relationship with his own father in Alfred. The exchanges between the two are contradictory;

“Franzen wants both to repudiate Alfred and to draw on his authority to validate the perspective that Franzen shares with Chip” yet, Franzen wants to establish a need for “Alfred to affirm his love for Chip and validate Chip’s identity.”64 Thus, Carroll concludes, “part of the solution is to depict a man who has a compulsive need for control, so that love and punishment go hand in hand.” 65

Addressing Reductionism: Cue the zombie! ​ ​

Beginning with Chip and his sexual paranoia in (1a), Hipsky transforms Chip into an ​ ​ analogy rooted in capitalism. Chip’s nervous breakdown and jumbled letters are a result of a failed investment: Julia, the investment. Hipsky explains that Chip’s discourse dips “ into high-modernist and high-postmodern effects,” utilizing a “predominantly realist drive to capture the inner state of encroaching mental illness”.66 In establishing Chip’s persona, Hipsky argues that Franzen did so in order to evoke effects of paranoia across all fronts, slipping into an

American fear of globalization. Franzen is totally viewed within the constraints of social realism, and thus, must be translated in ways that are allegorical to the happenings of the times.

64 Carroll, Correcting for the Corrections. ​ ​ ​ 65 Ibid. ​ 66 Hipsky, “Post-Cold War Paranoia” ​

Grassbaugh 37

Hipsky notes the concept of encroaching mental illness, but glosses over this effect to discuss crumbling investments and a collective terror in regards to what the 21st century may bring. Equating Julia to be simply a flopped investment is reductionistic as we’re then missing the whole picture with Chip; Chip suffers tremendously from his poor choices, yes, but it’s worth something to discuss the great travesty that is his inability to decipher right from wrong. Chip operates under the control of sex to the point in which he’s reading street signs to be some vulgar invitation to keep the demons at bay. Chip can’t seem to get through his day-to-day without persistent thoughts and acts of the flesh. Franzen designates Chip to be incredibly ill beyond control of himself— a total walking zombie. What’s more so is the matter that Chip is not only a danger to himself, but he infects those around him that he forms relationships with.

Similarly, in assessing Julia’s character it’s important to note what exactly attracts her to

Chip— him being seemingly identical to Gitanas, something that makes Chip and Gitanas relationship work and what exactly gives this failed love-triangle meaning. Julia’s noted to “have a type,” relinquishing her autonomy in choosing a mate to the zombie as well, as her relationship failures can be traced back to a source at which she submits herself, knowingly, yet without much control. Likewise, Chip also “has a type,” and his prowl for younger, vulnerable women is profoundly representative of sexual zombiism, capturing his inability to detach himself from his insecurities insomuch that he chooses to cripple the security of those he chooses to sleep with.

Grassbaugh 38

Hipsky then in (1b) brings us to a larger scale discussion of paranoia, detailed the fear ​ ​ induced culture of the 21st century in light of blundered economies and globalization. Hipsky notes from Edwards, “the world of the Lamberts is under vaguely felt but continuing pressure ​ ​ from big business and its dubious intentions.”67 Hipsky explains Chip to be an ideal character for this, as his personal paranoias then spread to the collective whole. Hipsky harps on postmodernism, as Chip is the ideal character to psychoanalyze in the face of the turn of the century, as “the congruencies with twentieth-century critiques of metaphysics are plain, and the narrative uses to which they are here put cannot be called parodic; they are integral to the tragic realism of the character’s Innerlichkeit”. 68 Chip is no more than a tragic hero, a victim to abrupt ​ ​ change and failure.

This is intrinsically reductive, as Chip’s character once more is glossed over; here Chip is used solely as a model of paranoia to speak for the masses— once more in light of the business world. Chip himself is given no thought as to the direction in which his life is headed, why he’d drop everything and join Gitanas, why he’d appreciate a culture of money-hungry power in regards to “who held the guns”, etc. As the zombie rips bodily authority so it rips identity, dignity, joy in existing; Chip had nothing else to lose and decided to blindly follow Gitanas, infected with a hunger for money, power, and the hopes for control back over his old life. Chip’s story is sorrowful as he is out of control, yet yearns only for control, he’s out of his mind but desperately is looking to find it. If we could take the idea of Chip’s willingness to join Gitanas

67 Ibid. ​ 68 Ibid. Innerlichkeit, meaning: our inward selves ​ ​ ​

Grassbaugh 39 further past social realism we could then understand Chip’s character to sink even further into trouble and lack of control.

As far as the title goes, The Corrections stands to correct the behaviors and more or less, ​ ​ learn from the generation before as the times are drastically changing. Alfred’s passing from dementia and AD at the end of the novel represents a sort of “changing of seasons” or “turning over a new leaf”— fledging a full circle apocalypse.69 In (1c), we’re faced with one of the most ​ ​ famous “Alfred” excerpts, illustrating his ongoing symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease. Here we draw another analogy: his hands (Chip) are failing him, but he couldn’t bring himself to cut them off— for he loved them too dearly. Carroll explains that the Prodigal Son relationship that

Franzen frames between Alfred and Chip is a mirror to his life and relationship with his own father. However, I think it’s especially important here to break down both characters: First we have Alfred, losing both control of his life and sense of self due to his progressing disease;

Second we have Chip, blind to his father’s love as he loses touch with reality due to his own social afflictions. This ties into the idea of to infect and be infected. The interplay between ​ ​ Alfred and Chip is more than the story of the Prodigal Son, it is the story of a father who’s lost control and needs a son, and a son who’s lost control and needs a father. Reducing the two simply to a relationship gone awry is stops short of what could be, as the zombie is ever-present in the relationship between Chip and Alfred, dictating their individual behaviors as well as behaviors in response to the other, mimicking infection.

69 See no. 79. ​

Grassbaugh 40

Alfred:

Chip segways perfectly into Alfred. We are subjected to interpret the two’s behaviors to be directly proportional, each imposing consequences onto the other; Chip’s rebellion combined with Alfred’s growing instability generates an unspoken cycle of dependency in which the two cannot escape. From start to finish, Alfred is arguably the centerpiece of the novel, backbone of the children, misery of Enid, stranger to himself, and foundation at which all corrections must be made. His Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s progress alongside narration, inclining readers to weave the narratives of all other characters around him. By this, it only makes sense that the climax of the story takes place at Alfred and Enid’s home in St. Louis, celebrating a bitter for some, sweet for others, “One Last Christmas” together.

Alfred’s condition deprives him of both physical and mental control, being the thing he’s known best throughout his life. Carroll’s evaluation of Alfred’s character requires an investigation of Foucauldian discourse, as Carroll speculates The Corrections to operate on the ​ ​ grounds of power relationships. Carroll’s claim asserts a purposeful mental/physical deterioration of Alfred in the novel: “the central organizing principle of the novel consists in

Franzen’s effort to invalidate a patriarchal conception of authority by depicting a patriarch,

Alfred, from a Foucauldian perspective.”70 Franzen’s intent to carry-out Alfred’s condition throughout the novel with influence towards the relationships of all other characters is done so to

70 Carroll, Correcting for the Corrections. ​ ​ ​

Grassbaugh 41

“expose the true character of the socioeconomic and cultural order.”71 Carroll argues that without

Alfred’s declination all other characters could not grow, and thus, a change in power could not exist.

Examining Foucauldian Theory in light of Alfred,72 Carroll notes that “power is always exercised at the expense of the people” and the reaction of the people, being all other characters in the novel outside of Alfred, are either to “collaborate or resist.”73 The most interesting character in her response to Alfred’s position of authority is Enid, as her life with him transits from a position of collaboration to some sort of quiet-resistance, evident to his decline. In representing this, I’ve selected the following, favored by Susanne Rohr of “The Tyranny of the ​ Probable"—Crackpot Realism and Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections”: ​

(2a)

Ringing throughout the house was an alarm bell that no one but Alfred and Enid could hear directly. It was the alarm bell of anxiety. It was like one of those big cast-iron dishes with an electric clapper that send schoolchildren into the street in fire drills. By now it had been ringing for so many hours that the Lamberts no longer heard the message of “bell ringing” but, as with any sound that continues for so long that you have the leisure to learn its component sounds (as with any word you stare at until it resolves itself into a string of dead letters), instead heard a clapper rapidly striking a metallic resonator, not a pure tone but a granular sequence of percussions with keening overlay of overtones; ringing for so many days that it simply blended into the background except at certain

71 Carroll, Correcting for the Corrections. ​ ​ ​ 72 Recall: In understanding the direct relationship that exists between Chip and Alfred, we begin to then ​ recognize the obvious transitioning of Chip in the novel into various positions that assert himself however possible into “authority”, exhibiting his own power relationships. We see this in Chip’s blatant hatred of feminism, degradation of women, God-complex early on as a professor, God-complex as a screenwriter, and relationship with Gitanas-- primarily the passage previously introduced (Franzen 443-44). It is clear that these aims at power come from a general disdain of self due to various insecurities such as immasculinity or job-related failures. 73 Carroll, Correcting for the Corrections. ​ ​ ​

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early-morning hours when one or the other of them awoke in a sweat and realized that a bell had been ringing in their heads for as long as they could remember; ringing for so many months that the sound had given way to a kind of metasound whose rise and fall was not the beating of compression waves but the much, much slower waxing and waning of their consciousness of the sound.74 ​ ​

This passage signals the mute but anticipated transition of collaboration to resistance of Enid in reference to Alfred’s patriarchal authority. The two becoming conscious of the ringing. Rohr ​ ​ explains that “through prolonged intimacy with warning signs, the main characters have come to integrate the bell’s message harmoniously as an unconscious undercurrent into their life’s text.”75

Rohr positions herself alongside Carroll in noting an apparent response of resistance.

Designating their troubles to come turn-of-the-century, Rohr states, “this text, and by extension, their house, have become seriously corrupted and all order undermined,”76 recognizing a shift to resistance of the patriarch. Most notably in response to Enid’s resistance would be the clutter77-- ​ the Ping Pong table “on which the civil war raged openly.”78 Here, the passage reads:

(2b)

At the eastern end [of the ping pong table] Alfred’s calculator was ambushed by floral print pot-holders and souvenir coasters from the Epcot Center and a device for pitting cherries which Enid had owned for thirty years and never used, while he, in turn, at the

74 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 3-4. ​ ​ ​ 75 Susanne Rohr, "The Tyranny of the Probable"—Crackpot Realism and Jonathan Franzen's "The ​ ​ Corrections”. ​ 76 Rohr, “The Tyranny of the Probable” ​ ​ 77 Carroll, Correcting for the Corrections. Carroll points toward Rohr of "The Tyranny of the ​ ​ ​ ​ Probable"—Crackpot Realism and Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections”, as she explains the clutter to be “a ​ moment of mise in abîme”—an encapsulated self-reflexive image—for “the deep structure” of The Corrections as a whole”. 78 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 7. ​ ​ ​

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western end, for absolutely no reason that Enid could ever fathom, ripped to pieces a wreath made of pinecones and spray-painted filberts and brazil nuts.79

Enid’s attitudes towards Alfred’s condition are indicative of protest towards Alfred’s request for obedience and regard for her subordination; words such as ambush catch the eye, drawing ​ ​ attention to the passive aggressive, the years of assentive jabs and hands-off combat. As Alfred ​ ​ detaches from his own mental/physical status, he loses his ability to self-identify. Alfred then tears to pieces a possession of Enid’s, being the only reasonable response to his newfound inferiority.

Expanding now to the concept of self-identity, we find Alfred consistently struggling to string together thought and action, as he openly struggles to perform simple tasks. Hipsky describes this to be a “bricolage of interior discourse” put into play by Franzen with the intent to portray the attitudes of those traditional folk moving into a new period of postmodernism.

Alfred’s condition is to be regarded as metaphorical disorder, representative of the whole of society, encompassing what we’re thought to be the Baby Boomer Generation. For this, I’ve chosen the following passage:

(2c)

He began a sentence: “I am—” but when he was taken by surprise, every sentence became an adventure in the woods; as soon as he could no longer see the light of the clearing from which he’d entered, he would realize that the crumbs he’d dropped for bearings had been eaten by birds, silent deft darting things which he couldn’t quite see in the darkness but which were so numerous and swarming in their hunger that it seemed as

79 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 7. ​ ​ ​

Grassbaugh 44

if they were the darkness, as if the darkness weren’t uniform, weren’t an absence of light but a teeming and corpuscular thing, and indeed when as a studious teenager he’d encountered the word “crepuscular” in McKay’s Treasury of English Verse, the ​ ​ corpuscles of biology had bled into his understanding of the word, so that for his entire adult life he’d seen in twilight a corpuscularity, as of the graininess of the high-speed film necessary for photography under conditions of low ambient light, as of a kind of sinister decay . . . but in the instant of realizing he was lost, time became marvelously slow and he discovered hitherto unguessed eternities in the space between one word and the next, or rather he became trapped in that space between words and could only stand and watch as time sped on without him, the thoughtless boyish part of him crashing on out of sight blindly through the woods while he, trapped, the grownup Al, watched in oddly impersonal suspense to see if the panic-stricken little boy might, despite no longer knowing where he was or at what point he’d entered the woods of this sentence, still manage to blunder into the clearing where Enid was waiting for him, unaware of any woods—“packing my suitcase,” he heard himself say. This sounded right. Verb, possessive, noun. Here was a suitcase in front of him, an important confirmation. He’d betrayed nothing.80

Hipsky explains that Franzen did not construct such a passage to alienate Alfred’s mind from body, “exploring the dialectic between subject and object,” but to give the readers a sample of

“postmodernist pastiche” which Hipsky describes to be “impelled not by textual self-reflexivity, ​ ​ but by a predominantly realist drive to capture the inner state of encroaching mental illness.”81

The idea here is to demonstrate Franzen’s aptitude as a social realist by detailing the rawness of

Alfred’s confused mental state, in which readers can then designate “encroaching mental illness” to creep in such a way that corresponds with the creeping in of the 2000s. The inability for

Alfred to self-identify is a feeling for the masses, as we are to tie Alfred’s identity crisis to all of those facing uncomfortability and stagnation in the face of the 21st century.

80 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 11-12. ​ ​ ​ 81 Hipsky, “Post-Cold War Paranoia” ​

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Addressing Reductionism:

Alfred’s character echoes Chip’s, reflecting once more the notion of infect and be ​ infected. However, alike the “chicken/egg” argument, we are implied to establish origin of ​ infection. There’s a reason why corrections are required on Alfred’s behalf, why the zombie metamorphosis of each character have delineations to Alfred. Viewing this novel in terms of ​ zombiism calls for inquiry about the genesis of the zombie82 (as you’d find with any Romero,

Boyle, etc); Alfred’s character is entirely unique as he is the primary infectious agent, the homebase, allowing subsequent disease and secondary infection to occur. The novel’s introduction happens at Alfred’s home in St. Louis, capturing his decline, his loss of self, carries ​ ​ on to those immediately infected (wife, children) and then spans throughout those secondarily and tertiarily and so on and so forth infected (your Melissas, per say), as an epidemic would, ​ ​ ending cyclically with Alfred at his death.

Discussing Carroll and Rohr on the basis of power relations in (2a), we examine Alfred’s ​ ​ adult baseline, at which “power is exercised at the expense of the people”. This is contrasted inversely with his changing state, as power loss increases once mental/physical stability decreases. Carroll marks this to be a deliberate address from Franzen to socioeconomic order, an

“out with the old in with the new” in both figurative and literal senses. Carroll argues Franzen to

82 Sometimes, this makes for the most interesting part of the film! Call to mind movies such as ​ Soderbergh’s “Contagion” or Forster’s “World War Z”-- audiences love zombie epidemiology. Establishing cause/effect is a simple yet incredibly effective climax in zombie cinema.

Grassbaugh 46 be representing a sort of “hand-off” from an older generation to the next, like a baton lying half-in 1999 half-out 2000. Alfred’s decline is seen by Carroll to be thematic as it serves a purpose in prompting the new ideals and perspectives of the following generation of workers, and his death, inevitable alike the passing years. However, this passive take at author intent implies little to the plotline of The Corrections, insinuating Alfred’s character to be linear and ​ ​ Franzen’s placement of him throughout the novel to serve little purpose outside of the bittersweet that accompanies aging. Carroll fully captures the social-realist essence of Alfred’s person. He agrees that Alfred is undoubtedly the centerpiece, but however, does not note that the novel flows in no way linear, as The Corrections is moreso a reverberation in which the younger ​ ​ generation continues to echo and link their troubles to the older, to Alfred. Carroll’s evaluation discusses loss of control in ways typical, as the patriarch shifts from a seat of authority into a position of retiring the throne, and yet, Alfred’s transition into a loss of self, authority and identity only cause his hold on the following generation, his children, his now caretakers, to become more authoritative than ever.

In (2b), we’re given a snapshot into the Lambert basement, depicting the not-so-silent ​ ​ still-life of the ping-pong table. Carroll and Rohr describe this to be a resistance that had been building up for some time now, characterized by and dependent upon Alfred’s status. The development of Enid’s character is then influenced by Alfred’s, prompting readers to observe the rise and fall contrasts between the two. However, despite the rise that Enid assumes in escaping authority from Alfred, she is in no way less “zombified,” au contraire!— her obligatory nature ​ ​

Grassbaugh 47 matched with his growing necessity for care is instrumental in the makings of a zombie (more to come on this in the following section).

Most substantial of Alfred’s zombification is his stripped identity, as seen in section (2c) ​ as you begin to engage with the perplexed and growingly incompetent fashion in which he attempts to string together thought and action. Identified as “encroaching mental illness” as a symbol of the 21st century encroaching upon the 20th, Hipsky positions Alfred’s character to be an emblem of the whole of society. Used to demonstrate a bigger picture idea, Hipsky assimilates Alfred in ways similarly to Carroll: linear. Hipsky discusses passages such as these to be “psychotic breaks” for Alfred, subordinated to the narration of Franzen.83 Franzen can then, with the utilization of Alfred, successfully create a narrative that is constructed by the downfall of a man at exactly the turn of the century, assimilating Alfred to be a representative of postmodernism. Hipsky stops there with his critique.

I think it is imperative to consider the whole of Alfred, and am in no way inclined to view him to solely as a symbol of the times. When observing his health in light of all that’s happening around him— whether that be his illness of the illness that he perceives to be a turn to postmodernism— he truly becomes distorted. Ontological discord, Alfred is losing control, and from control goes authorship, as the zombie assumes a position of authority in a body which has none. The zombie creeps, encroaches, such as the mental illness Hipsky discusses, until all ​ ​ control has been relinquished. However, significant of my analysis is the way in which his

83 Hipsky, “Post-Cold War Paranoia”. ​

Grassbaugh 48 mental illness overtakes him. I find Alfred’s diagnosis of AD to be incredibly fascinating from the perspective Franzen gives us, as we experience the infective spree Alfred goes on, from Enid to Chip, Denise and Gary, alike an apocalypse. Upon Alfred’s death at the end of the novel,

Franzen writes: "He was like a person of two dimensions seeking freedom in a third,"84 to which ​ James Wood of Arborrhing a Vacuum describes to be “Alfred’s epitaph.”85 ​ ​

Enid:

Enid parallels excellently with Alfred as they are fighting the same war, that civil war ​ with pinecones and spray paint and all kinds of oddities that passively accumulate. As aforementioned, Enid’s response to Alfred’s loss of control is not an escape as she desires, no, she only succumbs to the disorder that surrounds her. Susanne Rohr writes, “how Enid Lambert is introduced in The Corrections is promising— for it is her Nordstrom Shopping bag that we get ​ ​ to know her,”86 and so alike Rohr, I’ve chosen the following passage to dissect:

(3a)

[...] any lingering semblance of order was lost, and so the random Nordstrom shopping bag that was camped behind a dust ruffle with one of its plastic handles semi-detached would contain the whole shuffled pathos of a refugee existence-- non-consecutive issues of Good Housekeeping, black and white snapshots of Enid in the 1940s, brown ​ ​ recipes on high-acid paper that called for wilted lettuce, the current month’s telephone and gas bills, the detailed First Notice from the medical lab instructing co-payers to ignore subsequent billings for less than fifty cents, a complimentary cruise ship photo of

84 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 559. ​ ​ ​ 85 James Wood, “Arborrhing a Vacuum”, The New Republic. ​ ​ ​ 86 Rohr, “The Tyranny of the Probable” ​ ​

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Enid and Alfred wearing leis and sipping beverages from hollow coconuts, and the only extant copies of two of their children’s birth certificates, for example.87

Rohr does an excellent job of looking past similes to postmodernism, discussing that “here we encounter a situation of order and lost order that is epistemologically related to the post-modernist version sketched above, yet operates in a different order” she explains that the issues with Enid lie deeper, that the clutter of the house and the jumble of her Nordstrom bag support this notion, as “the original order— which is one of a strict chronology— is lost. A life that wants to understand itself as evolving towards a telos loses its final destination.”88 A passage like this functions quite well also to speculate about the items in the bag and their relation to the bag entirely, as one could consider the bag to represent familial stability and the items inside, members of that family: scattered, incongruent, dated, misplaced. Clutter governs a large extent of the Lambert parents’ lives, so when we observe the manner at which the two deal with the clutter (they don’t), we then better understand the tone of their relationship. Thus, as Alfred declines and more clutter compiles, and those able to deal with the clutter drops from two persons to one, we better understand Enid’s position.

Hipsky notes that in the Lambert house, there is an imminent feeling of domestic angst-- particularly marked by the infamous concept of “empty-nesting.”89 Enid, overly-nosy and at

87 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 6. ​ ​ ​ 88 Rohr, “The Tyranny of the Probable” ​ ​ 89 As Gary, Denise and Chip assume adulthood, Enid’s self-worth substantially plummets. Rohr observes this through the idea of “non-consecutive issues of Good Housekeeping”, symbolizing a homemaker’s lifestyle ​ ​ disrupted now by the inability to, well, home-make. As motherhood is all that she’s known, she struggles with an

Grassbaugh 50 times lacking boundaries, obsesses over her children. Unfortunately, she develops this needless mental construct that her “kids don’t match,” and becomes rather preoccupied with this concept throughout the novel. Wood states: “Enid is the kind of noisy, bursting mother who drowns her ​ children in striving;” Enid is determined to keep a hold on her children’s lives when really, both her and Alfred’s authority is quickly dissolving, particularly with Enid’s attentioning needing to shift to the aid of Alfred.90

Enid’s character is interesting for her obvious utilization of projection. In light of

“correcting,” she cannot face her own self-correction, as she fears that “her children have corrected her too sharply and too publicly.”91 This is something she simply couldn’t understand, and for this, I’ve chosen the following:

(3b)

Like a toothbrush in the toilet bowl, like a dead cricket in a salad, like a diaper on the dinner table, this sickening conundrum confronted Enid: that it might have actually been preferable for Denise to go ahead and commit adultery, better to sully herself with a momentary selfish pleasure, better to waste a purity that every decent young man had the right to expect from a prospective bride, than to marry Emile. Except that Denise should never have been attracted to Emile in the first place! It was the same problem Enid had with Chip and even Gary: her children didn't match. They didn't want the things that she and her friends' children wanted. Her children wanted radically, shamefully other things. 92

identity crisis throughout her late-adulthood. This makes Enid arguably one of the most impressionable characters in the novel, an easy target for a zombie. 90 Wood, “Arborrhing a Vacuum” ​ ​ 91 Ibid. ​ 92 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 121. ​ ​ ​

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Wood details how “[parents] imagine their children as new corrections of themselves, and yearn ​ to live through them vicariously, as Enid so earnestly does,” recognizing her own failures and impediments through them. Where could she have failed? The thought didn’t quite make sense to her. God forbid they assume their own constructed personas, “why don't her children, she thinks sorrowfully, want what the children of her neighbors want? Why do her children live so far away, and why do they launch themselves into outlandish occupations such as screenwriting and cooking.?”93

Addressing Reductionism:

In (3a), we come to meet Enid, the real Enid, void of all fronts and put-ons. Rohr truly ​ ​ ​ ​ does a remarkable job at dismembering the clutter and inquiring about its meaning. She recognizes Enid’s character to be complex, and with that, commends Franzen for his “intense narration” surrounding the descriptive scramble of items within and strewn about the Nordstrom bag. Her focus is saturated here, as she writes “a composition of reality evolves which the bag image captures in snap-shot like manner… the precise depiction of the bag’s broken handle-- for example, and frame a picture of haphazard fragments…” she continues to call attention to each item in the bag, along with its meaning, for the next page and a half.94

93 Wood, “Arborrhing a Vacuum” ​ ​ 94 Rohr, “The Tyranny of the Probable” ​ ​

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Rohr closes her discussion with a reference towards order: “All household order has inevitably given way to chaos, just as entropy emerged victorious in Alfred’s battle against

Mother Nature and her tenacious atoms”.95 This reading is reductive as although incredibly thorough, Rohr’s argument is surface as it fails to delineate from the impediment of the family unit. Analogies are drawn, the clutter to be an obvious representation of a cluttered family, the bag, frail and slipping alike Alfred and Enid’s hold on things; if taken further, however, the bag will at some point rip completely, and that is what concerns me. The overtake concerns me for its implications on the 2nd generation, those who will have to tend to their now zombified parents, the Lambert children. Rohr notes that reading about the dynamic between Alfred and Enid cause the reader to be “kept in a paranoid-like state,” angling herself towards my idea of an induced apocalypse, without touching much more on the subject.96 Rohr is thus reductive, because although she is not linear, she is however stationary in her assessments and abstains from addressing exactly what she means by her descriptions of “chaos” and “paranoia”.

Passage (3b) is imperative when reading Enid, as it gives the reader room to ​ ​ psychoanalyze her character. Enid projects when faced with guilt— Enid consumes herself with thoughts of failure as a mother, shudders at the thought of her status being dirtied, compensates with passive-aggressive jabs towards her children (particularly Denise) and then regroups (she is unarguably a very shallow character). Wood explains that Franzen’s work is done to exploit generational inheritance, portraying Enid’s preoccupation with her kids to be a reflection of her

95 Ibid. ​ 96 Rohr, “The Tyranny of the Probable” ​ ​

Grassbaugh 53 preoccupation with herself, and this the same with all of the characters, “This dream of correction is chimerical, of course, because family determinism tends to turn correction into repetition. Denise repetitively inherits her mother's restlessness and her father's unhappiness;

Gary repetitively inherits his father's unhappiness,” touching again on that idea of determinism.97 ​ ​ In essence, parental determination to raise children void of their own shortcomings is entirely futile— but for Enid, it couldn’t possibly be her fault. ​ ​

Wood’s take on passage (3b) is perfect in discussing social realism. His lens is finely ​ ​ adjusted in such a way to acknowledge what’s normative in social-realist work, stating how

Franzen “ strives to link correction to the prosperity of the 1990s and the market "correction" that followed the 1990s” and how Franzen evokes “social engagement” whether comfortable or not.

However, Wood never divvies from that social-realist lens and so any inference about the characters and their behaviors beyond what’s “typical” is hereby exempt. I felt as though the critique discouraged close-reading and one’s own interpretation of meaning — exactly where my position stems from.

It’s rather important to be concerned with the metamorphosis of Enid throughout the novel, as she is far more than a marker for 2nd Wave Feminist thought. Similarly to Alfred, Enid suffers issues in piecing identity to self, feeling a lack of purpose, experiencing control loss, etc.

She changes and feels throughout the novel just as much as the other characters, and she herself is wildly complex, as aforementioned, she appears to be the most impressionable character in the

97 Wood, “Arborrhing a Vacuum” ​ ​

Grassbaugh 54 bunch. Enid is an excellent example of context breeding a new text, as her behaviors were the first to strike me as “zombie-like,” due to her characterized inability to never quite form a concrete sense of self.

Denise:

An ironic, tough-nosed contrast to Enid is her only daughter, Denise, her antithesis. A product of her parents’ upbringing, and a hopeful correction on Enid’s behalf, Denise has been hardened since birth, as Franzen notes, “She'd gone to school in a bright modernity and come home every day to an older, darker world.”98 Denise is a direct opposition to the large theme of patriarchy found in the novel, equating Denise with turn-of-the-century attitudes. Her character is largely progressive and also largely troubled— she struggles profoundly to understand herself ​ ​ alongside the changing world and faces difficulties in light of gender/sexuality.

The best way to view Denise is coupled with Enid, as the mother-daughter duo grow-up radically different and experience radically different things, yet are connected. The biggest question of all is whether or not Denise is a repeat of her mother, touching back on Wood’s notions of inheritance, a parent’s determinism, and correction turned into repetition. For this,

I’ve chosen the following, dissected by Carroll:

(4a)

98 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 386. ​ ​ ​

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Her father at the lunch table had looked insane. And if he was losing his mind, it was possible that Enid had not been exaggerating her difficulties with him, possible that Alfred really was a mess who pulled himself together for his children, possible that Enid wasn’t entirely the embarrassing nag and pestilence that Denise for twenty years had made her out to be, possible that Alfred’s problems went deeper than having the wrong wife, possible that Enid’s problems did not go much deeper than having the wrong husband, possible that Denise was more like Enid than she had ever dreamed.99

Carroll positions himself to disagree with Franzen, as Denise and Enid are far too different--

“Denise is open-minded, tough, realistic, efficient, and highly organized. She has creative energy and a fine sense of style. Enid has none of those qualities. Enid is unequivocally heterosexual.

Denise gives heterosexuality a thorough try, but it is only after she begins having sex with women that she understands “what all the fuss” over sex is about.”100 However, he notes that there is one thing unmistakably shared between the two: “an extraverted orientation toward seeking pleasure,” characterized by dissatisfaction of their current lives and a longing for something else that they can’t quite put a finger on.101

Denise’s character is seemingly put together on the external, “a long-legged woman in tight jeans and excellent black boots… dark hair and pale complexion and her father’s intimidating air of moral authority”102 but however internally, Denise lacks the ability to pilot her own life. She busies herself with the annoyances of her family to distract her from the pressing matters of her own incompetence. She is thoroughly misguided in her perception of self, and her

99 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 425-6 ​ ​ ​ 100 Carroll, Correcting for the Corrections. ​ ​ ​ 101 Carroll, Correcting for the Corrections. ​ ​ ​ 102 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 30. ​ ​ ​

Grassbaugh 56 journey of self-identification becomes deeply convoluted by her tendency to repress and stay rigid. Her biggest realization sexually, is further perverted by the means at which it occurs:

(4b) ​ Denise left the Generator in the hands of her sous and took the train to New York to bail out her feckless brother and entertain her parents. In the stress of lunch, as Enid repeated verbatim her narrative of Norma Greene, Denise didn’t notice any change in herself. She had a still-working old self, Version 3.2 or a Version 4.0, that deplored the deplorable in Enid and loved the lovable in Alfred. Not until she was at the pier and her mother kissed her and a quite different Denise, a Version 5.0, nearly put her tongue in the pretty old woman’s mouth, nearly ran her hands down Enid’s hips and thighs, nearly caved in and promised to come at Christmas for as long as Enid wanted, did the extent of the correction she was undergoing reveal itself.103

Here, the “ Lambert patriarch is profoundly implicated, too, in Denise’s sexual adventurism,” as ​ Denise’s newfound sexuality further separates her from her mother and from her intended upbringing.

To further sever the 20th century from the 21st, Rohr points to a passage that inserts “a clear distinction between parental suburbia and filial urbanity.

(4c)

Denise surfaced from the Federal Street station among sycamore leaves and burger wrappers racing in waves down the Broad Street sidewalk, swirling up against the pissy facades and barred windows and scattering among the Bondo-fended cars that were parked at the curb. The urban vacancy of Philadelphia, the hegemony of wind and sky, here, struck her as enchanted.104

103 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 425. ​ ​ ​ 104 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 505. ​ ​ ​

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Rohr continues to discuss how strange it is that the city is rarely ever detailed (for a detail-oriented novelist like Franzen), that concern for setting falls privy to that of a bigger picture concern, as “the city as a distinct object of narration has been abandoned and replaced by a process of narrativization through which the city is exclusively constituted. The city and the experience of the city have now become entirely verbal constructs, the city has dematerialized.”

105 The concept of “dematerialization” supposes a turning away from older ideas and values-- ​ a construction site, tear down and rebuild— as Philadelphia stood well throughout the 20th century, but has now assumed this vacancy that Denise for the first time finally notices.

Addressing Reductionism:

Denise’s character throughout this section is constantly parallel with her mother, on the basis of mother-daughter, difference in sexual preference, difference in suburban to urban housing, and so on and so forth, designating the two to be complete and total opposites. The underlying question of passage (4a), however, is whether or not Denise is more than her mother ​ ​ than she thinks (and quite frankly, than she wants). The two’s hostile relationship is ​ ​ characterized by Denise’s insensitivity towards her mother, as Denise habitually is “more hurtful to Enid than a violent explosion”106, and Enid, conventional and off-put by Denise’s desires that weren’t exactly hers, “nobody but Enid had ever mistaken Denise for a failure.”107 However, we

105 Rohr, “The Tyranny of the Probable” ​ ​ 106 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 98. ​ ​ ​ 107 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 79. ​ ​ ​

Grassbaugh 58 come to experience a shift in favoritism from Denise later in the novel, demonstrating a liking to her mother and a distance towards her father:

Denise, also, undergoes a transformation or “correction” during the autumn and early winter of the main time sequence. She has already been awakening to her sexual identity as a lesbian. While visiting her parents, she has an epiphany in which she radically shifts psychological allegiance, moving away from her father and toward her mother. This putative psychological shift does not alter her life trajectory, though. It manifests itself in no significant alteration of her behavior.108

This turning point for Denise is a result of passage (4b), at which Carroll claims its purpose ​ ​ “chiefly to shore up the Foucauldian thematic structure of the climax and denouement”, a reflection of Enid’s resistance of Alfred.109

Carroll extensively picks through Denise’s sexual journey and both Enid and Denise’s affinity for seeking pleasure. His approach serves the purpose of alienating Denise, illustrating her as the black sheep of the bunch, unable to fit the mold of her mother, her family, and oftentimes even her own life. We can infer that much of this is due to a long-term hold on her adult development and ideologies via Alfred’s paternal authority, as “until her [Denise] ostensible transformation at the end, she accepts his dominance within the family”, and until that dominance had been been oucast, could she ever really “rehabilitate.”110 Carroll hashes out a lot in contrast with Enid, claiming mainy of the psychological issues Denise suffers to have

108 Carroll, Correcting for the Corrections. ​ ​ ​ 109 Ibid. ​ 110 Ibid. ​

Grassbaugh 59 foundation in that dinner scene, the “Dinner of Revenge,” at which “ Enid and Alfred have sex that night, but Denise, in the womb, is also permanently traumatized by the emotional discord of the parents.”111

When looking to Denise, Carroll really ends up looking on Denise’s upbringing, more or less, Enid. The shift in power from the patriarch to the matriarch conditional by Alfred’s decline is noted, but much of that interpreted to be second-hand experiences through Enid onto Denise.

Contradictory in his critique, claiming Enid and Denise to have practically nothing in common,

Carroll fails to decipher Denise’s character without the help of Enid, and so I find his claim to be wishy-washy and forced. Denise and Enid’s characters are incredibly similar, and zombified completely by both of their inability to navigate away from each other and away from Alfred.

Furthermore, Carroll prompts readers to commend Denise for finally coming to terms with her sexuality and mending her broken relationship with Enid, in essence, “correcting” her behaviors, but that too can be interpreted to be zombified, as Denise fought for so hard at repressing her desires, only to relinquish control. There was no correcting for Enid here either, only a young woman giving into her urges in hopes of maintaining sanity.

In sealing my critique, the final passage selected, (4c) stands to depict Denise following ​ ​ the other two passages. Her character, “struck as enchanted” Carroll describes to be due to

Alfred, “with Alfred out of the house, Enid becomes less conventional [and] accepts Denise’s sexual orientation”, going on to describe the new lives of both Enid and Denise are to be

111 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 249. ​ ​ ​

Grassbaugh 60 somewhat “fairy-tale.”112 Contextually I interpreted this passage far different, similarly to Rohr, as I recognize it to be strange— eerie and lonesome, centering in on the word “vacant”, as if

Denise had been recognizing her own apocalypse at hand, as if the enchantment were to infer the zombie’s success in overtake, her compliant. I felt as though this passage paralleled nicely with the book’s foreshadowing first lines, as previously mentioned, “the madness of an autumn prairie cold-front coming through.”113

Gary:

Gary Lambert is arguably the most minor of the Lambert characters, attributed to him being rather confined within his own familial structure (the only child character to be married with kids and a suburban home, alike his parents) as well as confined within his own head. Gary suffers tremendously from alcoholism and depressive/suicidal thoughts, and faces deep psychological paranoia within his own home. We come to understand this best, through his wife and antagonist, Caroline. Gas-lighting and psychologically abusive, I’ve chosen the following selection of dialogue:

(5a)

Emerging from Caleb’s room into the shadowed hallway, he nearly collided with Caroline, who was hurrying on tip-toed, in her stockinged feet, back in the direction of their bedroom. “Again? Again? I say don’t eavesdrop and what do you do?”

112 Carroll, Correcting for the Corrections. ​ ​ ​ 113 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 1. ​ ​ ​

Grassbaugh 61

“I wasn’t eavesdropping. I’ve got to go lie down.” and she hurried, limping into the bedroom. “You can run, but you can’t hide,” Gary said, following her. “I want to know why you’re eavesdropping on me.” “It is your paranoia, not my eavesdropping.” “My paranoia?”114

And then, a later occurrence:

(5b)

“My back is killing me.” “An hour ago you were laughing and feeling great. Now you’re sore again?” “The Motrin’s wearing off.” “The mysterious resurgence of pain.” “You haven’t said a sympathetic word since I hurt my back.” … “Caroline, I saw you limping before you ran inside. I saw the look on your face. Don’t tell me you weren’t in pain already.” She shook her head. “You know what this is?” “And then the eavesdropping!” “Do you know what this is?” “You’re listening on the only other free phone in the house, and you have the gall to tell me-- ” “Gary, you’re depressed. Don’t you realize that?” ​ ​ He laughed. “I don’t think so”115

Hipsky states that these scenes portray how “Gary Lambert is coerced into a confession of ​ psychic depression, which he may or may not suffer, due to the constant threat (or is it reality?) of surveillance by “adversaries” under his own roof”, identifying the immediate threat to mental

114 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 159. ​ ​ ​ 115 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 182. ​ ​ ​

Grassbaugh 62 health it is for Gary to inhabit his own home. Hipsky explains this to be manifested paranoia, a large theme found within each of the central characters, at which Hipsky attributes to the paranoias that accompany the early 21st century, echoing the “vocations of older and younger generations thus inducing the sense of cultural paranoia that accompanies the society of control, and encoding the withering of civil society, the breakdown of the public/private polarity, and the dissolution of older hierarchies and social striations.”116

In light of the echoing of the older generation, Franzen states how Gary sets out to be a

“correction of his father’s life,”117 at which Hipsky claims Gary has attempted to “over-correct” only to find his efforts to have resulted in “but rather the same, enduring, structural effects of the ​ ​ nuclear family”, a copy of Alfred.118

Addressing Reductionism:

Hipsky identifies Gary’s home environment to raise some issues, as it becomes more than apparent that Caroline is an abusive spouse, insomuch that Gary spirals into depression simply due to paranoia of an unsteady home-life. Caroline is undoubtedly a threatening character to

Gary, causing him to resent and isolate himself from his wife and by extension, children.

Hipsky determines these paranoias to truly come from the happenings of the times, as many of Hipsky’s positions attribute the downfall of a singular character to be networked with

116 Hipsky, “Post-Cold War Paranoia”. ​ 117 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 181. ​ ​ ​ 118 Hipsky, “Post-Cold War Paranoia”. ​

Grassbaugh 63 the whole of all other characters, rooting their issues to delineate back to one common thread.

Hipsky states that, “the postmodern regime of flexible capital accumulation can be said to scatter

Alfred’s three children”— particularly Gary.119 I find this reductive and almost insensitive in light of Caroline’s character, as if Hipsky’s position via close-read did anything but, alluding to

Caroline’s character but ultimately passing her off to be assimilated with all the things surrounding Gary in a 21st century world.

As for the zombie, Caroline and Gary both suffer some issues in ways similar to Enid and

Denise— like commensalism but also parasitism— like a cycle of dependency such as Chip and

Alfred. Gary’s zombification can be better understood alongside the progression of his alcoholism, his marital issues and his borderline schizophrenic paranoias. His development mimics apocalyptic takeover better than any of the characters, especially following the bathtub hallucinations of Alfred: “But Gary himself was infected, there in the middle of the night, by his father’s disease… Gary, too, had a sensation of things dissolving around him, of a night that consisted of creepings and shiftings and metamorphoses.”120

Conclusion

I think there is a tremendous amount of merit in reading Franzen within a different context, just as I find it to be reductively problematic to only read Franzen with the predisposed notion that his work is exclusively social-realist. The idea of “corrections” is the driving force ​

119 Hipsky, “Post-Cold War Paranoia”. ​ 120 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 501. ​ ​ ​

Grassbaugh 64 behind the zombie, brought forth by that idea of “determinism” in Wood, influencing the characters to engage with their zombie-selves. As the zombie begins to creep, “desire to become otherwise takes, as its first step, the body itself as simultaneously self and Other, acknowledging its irrefutable potential to be more than itself and certainly more than “that” body”.121 Such as the overtake is slow, "The correction, when it finally came, was not an overnight bursting of a bubble but a much more gentle letdown”.122

My analysis is reflective of the idea that “we see what we want to see”, highlighting normative thought and what we’re conditioned to be looking for once prompted beforehand. The idea then is that when picking up Franzen we acknowledge his aptitude as a social-realist, expect a social realism novel, loaded with social-realist texts and social-realist takeaways– yet, if you were handed The Corrections, or even by this knowledge any dubbed “social-realist work”, and ​ ​ were told it was zombie fiction, you would be successful in interpreting it as such and it can ​ ​ effectively be read in such a way. Franzen can be read via the lens of both social realism and zombie fiction– both avenues navigational, just different dependent on the context. Social realism has legs in zombiism and in that, postmodernism America can be viewed through new eyes to establish what one may call “Zombie America”. Jonathan Franzen is not only one of the

st most influential social-realist authors of the 21 ​ century, but he is profoundly a zombie novelist. ​

121 Patricia MacCormac, “Bodies Without Organs: Gender, Flesh, and Fissure”, (Chapter 6) Zombie ​ ​ ​ Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead. 122 Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, 563. ​ ​ ​

Grassbaugh 65

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