Jonathan Franzen’s idea of realism in the one of the national award-winning novels “The Corrections” in terms of seminal concerns including the discourse of ethics, cognition, and social minds. As a post-postmodern writer,Jonathan Franzen’s a new version of realism called neorealism or tragic realism. Franzen’s tragic realism,despite showing the tragic and inevitable aspects of life, makes his followers and characters rethink what has been taken for granted about familial, communal, and generational relationships. Realism always has the tendency to transmit into cliché, in its eagerness to depict the average; it is when we move beyond realism that we typically get monumental characters able to get their arms around the defining problems of the day. And the novel Freedom ends up being a series of clichés held together by a superficially seductive narrative--quite readable, as we are told a definitive tale about the culture at large by an authority we must accept for his superior moral worth.

Realism, Neorealism, familial, monumental characters, general relationship