Freedom 2

Something that this book tends to bring up frequently is depression. At some point throughout the book, almost all of the characters have gone through a depressed state, have mentioned their depression, or have been prescribed for antidepressants. My question is, what is the authors point in focusing so intently on this subject? Maybe it is to convey that rates of depression in current day America are steadily rising. Although this book is mainly fiction, the precise details and current events of the time it was written in are purely factual. By showing that many of the characters in the novel are depressed, maybe it signifies that the author feels America is swirling into a depression.

By the way the author writes, I can tell he has a strong dislike for many of the things going on in our nation. One passage in particular that I can sense this in is on page 325 when Walter and Lalitha are out to eat and are looking over a menu at a typical American restaurant. "Between the horrors of bovine methane, the lakes of watershed-devastating excrement generated by pig and chicken farms, the catastrophic overfishing of the oceans, the ecological nightmare of farmed shrimp and salmon,the antibiotic orgy of dairy-cow factories, and the fuel squandered by the globilization of produce, there was little he could ever order in good conscience...". This quote shows the authors feelings on what American industrialization is doing to our planet. This quote brings up matters such as overfishing, ecological imbalance, nonrenewable resources, and many others; all issues greatly contributed to by America. The story in this book serves as a message: America needs change.