For a laugh, Franzen doesn't hesitate to conjure the most puerile images, such as the walking, taunting turds that haunt Alfred in the twilight of his lucidity. These funny and disturbing scenes are reminiscent of several episodes of South Park which has its own animated and irreverent turd, meaning the book's allusions will find a winking audience in both the lecture hall and the summer camp. Christmas is also a vehicle for much lampooning in this book, as in many films and novels. What is surprising is that while Franzen contributes, in his own way, to this tradition, the Lamberts are so alive and complicated that their story never feels satirical.
And more than just an excuse for comedy, Christmas is how the reader comes to understand one of the book's most important observations: that ritual and routine provide shaky foundations for lives in search of happiness and sincere emotional connection. Christmas hangs over the Lambert family like doorway mistletoe, but causes them more grief than joy. The climactic Christmas celebration contrasts sharply with the happy family reunion that Enid hoped it would be. The Lambert's other rituals, although more ordinary, are also meant to improve their lives but cannot, for instance, the way Enid medicates her emotions, or the mixed-grill that Gary cooks for his children which begins as a weekly family event, but turns into yet another cause of his growing depression. Like Gary's mixed grill, our rituals are meant, in part, to orient us; they provide stability and meaning to our lives. What Franzen confronts about our modern world is how our rituals have become disorienting, even vertiginous.
We take our medication to be happy, but are unsure of whether our happiness is really a sham. We encourage sociality in our families with special dinners around the table, but those dinners might end up feeling like mere pageantry disguising unhappy lives. The Lamberts are each ambivalently committed to their miserable routines (Christmas most of all), and the eponymous corrections in the novel are their attempts to reorient themselves by giving up the old habits that they've built their lives around. The book suggests that this is our modern dilemma, creating stability in a deeply unstable and contradictory world. As the title informs us there is no final correction, but ongoing corrections. As Enid eventually learns from her vacation with Alfred on a cruise boat, to avoid tumbling overboard we are compelled to constantly adjust our balance.
