There is a preoccupation with freedom in the novel and a sense that freedom, both personal and political, may be taken away at any moment. Although American society is outwardly protective of personal freedom, many aspects of American life, such as the necessity to work under capitalism or the need to conform to social convention, mean that life is restrictive, especially for people who deviate from social norms. For example, Ignatius Reilly is singled out for his strange appearance and characters like Dorian Greene and Burma Jones are targeted for their sexual orientation and race, respectively. Ultimately, many of the characters in A Confederacy of Dunces face restrictions on their freedoms because they do not fit in with mainstream society, rather than because their unconventional behaviors are harmful in any way.
Ignatius senses that he is under threat throughout the novel, and the reader’s first encounter with him involves Patrolman Mancuso, who tries to arrest Ignatius because he looks suspicious. Although Ignatius does come across as paranoid, his fears that society wishes to incarcerate him for no reason are not totally unfounded, as his encounter with Patrolman Mancuso shows. Regardless of his paranoia, Ignatius’s freedom is under threat. Furthermore, Patrolman Mancuso’s interest in Ignatius does not stem from the fact that Ignatius poses any threat to society—Mancuso only chooses to approach Ignatius because Ignatius looks strange. This suggests that one does not have to cause harm or threaten the freedom of others to be persecuted in American society, and one’s freedom can be arbitrarily taken away purely because one does not fit in. The sense that freedom is under threat is not limited to characters like Ignatius, who feel specifically persecuted, but seem to be part of a more pervasive feeling in society. Claude, Santa, and Irene are obsessed with the idea that society is overrun with communists. This fear is rooted in the 1950s paranoia about communism, because of America’s Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union. Communism in the Soviet Union was totalitarian, and therefore the idea of a communist became synonymous with someone who tries to take away other people’s freedoms. Although Ignatius feels his freedom is uniquely threatened, this is, in fact, a common and pervasive fear in 1960s America.
People who do not conform to social norms are restricted in how they behave. Dorian Greene, an openly homosexual man, faces threats to his safety, even in relatively liberal parts of 1960s America, such as New Orleans’s French Quarter (which is home to many of Dorian’s gay friends). Dorian does not feel safe in his apartment without the protection of Betty, Frieda, and Liz, three aggressive women who live above Dorian and who are arrested at the end of the novel. This suggests that because Dorian does not conform to social norms—homosexuality was illegal in this period—his personal freedom is restricted; he cannot live wherever or however he wants without facing potentially violent threats to his personal safety. It is ironic that Claude and Santa—the characters who are the most concerned with protecting American freedom from political deviants, such as communists—are prepared to take violent measures against, and therefore infringe upon the freedoms, of people who deviate from social convention. Santa and Claude take a strong dislike to Ignatius merely because of his unconventional behavior and his choice of career as a hot dog vendor. They say that he should be locked away or beaten up because of this failure to fit in. Santa and Claude are also the characters who are the most concerned with keeping up appearances and fitting in with their neighbors, and this suggests that although conventional American culture is outwardly preoccupied with freedom, ideas of what constitute freedom are still limited to a narrow spectrum of behavior within mainstream American society.
In reality, freedom means different things to different people. Some of the characters in the novel view freedom as liberation from the necessity to work. Miss Trixie, an employee of Mr. Levy’s, longs for the freedom that retirement promises. This sentiment is most clearly echoed by Ignatius in his written diatribe against modern society, in which he vents his frustrations about his mother forcing him to get a job by diagnosing society’s greatest attack on freedom as the necessity to “GO TO WORK.” This suggests that there is a restrictive element to modern society, which is largely defined by capitalism, that require people to be gainfully employed in order to achieve material comfort. However, for others in the novel, the ability to work represents freedom. For example, although Mr. Levy’s wealth has allowed his wife, Mrs. Levy, the freedom to avoid work, Mrs. Levy is deeply resentful of this and seems bored with her life of leisure. Mrs. Levy throws herself into strange causes, like her campaign to prevent Miss Trixie from retirement, because she is bored. Her obsession with Miss Trixie’s employment status seems to stem from the fact that Mrs. Levy has no need to seek employment herself and, as a result of this, feels irrelevant and unfulfilled. Free time and material comfort, therefore, cannot necessarily be conflated with freedom, as for some, like Mrs. Levy, these things themselves can become a trap. For other characters in the novel, employment is literally a source of freedom—Jones’s job at the Night of Joy strip club is what prevents him from being imprisoned under vagrancy laws. However, Jones is severely underpaid and mistreated in this role, and so obviously does not view this compulsion to work as genuine freedom. His idea of real liberation is as subjective as that of the other characters—he views freedom as basic material comfort and the ability to be left alone. It is ironic that this is exactly the lifestyle achieved by Ignatius, yet Ignatius feels imprisoned. This implies that freedom is not only an exterior, but also an interior state, which can be achieved in different ways by different individuals. It also suggests that, since Jones, who is black, and Ignatius, who is unconventional, do not fit in with conventional American society, it is harder for them to achieve their own ideas of freedom because society does not always allow them the ability to be themselves.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Freedom ThemeTracker
Freedom Quotes in A Confederacy of Dunces
“Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capital of the civilized world?” Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. “This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists. Antichrists, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft. If you have a moment, I shall endeavor to discuss the crime problem with you, but don’t make the mistake of bothering me.”
“In addition, I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”
“How come you here, man?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don know? Whoa! That crazy. You gotta be here for somethin. Plenty time they pickin up color peoples for nothin, but, mister, you gotta be here for somethin.”
His vision of history temporarily fading, Ignatius sketched a noose at the bottom of the page. Then he drew a revolver and a little box on which he neatly printed gas chamber. He scratched the side of the pencil back and forth across the paper and labeled this APOCALYPSE.
As a medievalist Ignatius believed in the rota Fortunae, or wheel of fortune, a central concept in De Consolatione Philosophiae, the philosophical work which had laid the foundation for medieval thought. Boethius, the late Roman who had written the Consolatione while unjustly imprisoned by the emperor, had said that a blind goddess spins us on a wheel, that our luck comes in cycles. Was the ludicrous attempt to arrest him the beginning of a bad cycle? Was his wheel rapidly spinning downward? The accident was also a bad sign. Ignatius was worried. For all his philosophy, Boethius had still been tortured and killed.
“The ironic thing about that program,” Ignatius was saying over the stove, keeping one eye peeled so that he could seize the pot as soon as the milk began to boil, “is that it is supposed to be an exemplum to the youth of our nation. I would like very much to know what the Founding Fathers would say if they could see these children being debauched to further the cause of Clearasil. However, I always suspected that democracy would come to this.” He painstakingly poured the milk into his Shirley Temple mug. “A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself.”
“Ignatius, what’s all this trash on the floor?”
“That is my worldview that you see. It still must be incorporated into a whole, so be careful where you step.”
For the first time in my life I have met the system face-to-face, fully determined to function within its context as an observer and critic in disguise, so to speak.
If Levy Pants was to succeed, the first step would be imposing a heavy hand upon its detractors. Levy Pants must become more militant and authoritarian in order to survive in the jungle of modem commercialism.
“Now look here, Darlene, don’t tell that Jones we suddenly got the whole force in here at night. You know how colored people feel about cops. He might get scared and quit. I mean, I’m trying to help the boy out and keep him off the streets.”
The original sweatshop has been preserved for posterity at Levy Pants. If only the Smithsonian Institution, that grab bag of our nation’s refuse, could somehow vacuum-seal the Levy Pants factory and transport it to the capital of the United States of America, each worker frozen in an attitude of labor, the visitors to that questionable museum would defecate into their garish tourist outfits. It is a scene which combines the worst of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; it is mechanized Negro slavery; it represents the progress which the Negro has made from picking cotton to tailoring it.
I must admit that I always suspected Myrna of being interested in me sensually; my stringent attitude toward sex intrigued her; in a sense, I became another project of sorts, I did, however, succeed in thwarting her every attempt to assail the castle of my body and mind.
The subsidiary theme in the correspondence is one urging me to come to Manhattan so that she and I may raise our banner of twin confusion in that center of mechanized horrors […] Someday the authorities of our society will no doubt apprehend her for simply being herself. Incarceration will finally make her life meaningful and end her frustration.
“I’m workin in modern slavery. If I quit, I get report for bein vagran. If I stay. I’m gainfully employ on a salary ain even startin to be a minimal wage.”
She described to Ignatius the courage of Patrolman Mancuso, who, against heavy odds, was fighting to retain his job, who wanted to work, who was making the best of his torture and exile in the bathroom at the bus station. Patrolman Mancuso’s situation reminded Ignatius of the situation of Boethius when he was imprisoned by the emperor before being killed.
Like a note in a bottle, the address might bring some reply, perhaps from a legitimate and professional saboteur. An address on a package wrapped in plain brown paper was as damaging as a fingerprint on a gun, Jones thought. It was something that shouldn’t be there.
Some musk which my system generates must be especially appealing to the authorities of the government. Who else would be accosted by a policeman while innocently awaiting his mother before a department store? Who else would be spied upon and reported for picking a helpless stray of a kitten from a gutter? Like a bitch in heat, I seem to attract a coterie of policemen and sanitation officials. The world will someday get me on some ludicrous pretext; I simply await the day that they drag me to some air-conditioned dungeon and leave me there beneath the fluorescent lights and soundproofed ceiling to pay the price for scorning all that they hold dear within their little latex hearts.
“Color peoples cain fin no job, but they sure can fin a openin in jail. Coin in jail the bes way you get you somethin to eat regular. But I rather starve outside. I rather mop a whore floor than go to jail and be makin plenny license plate and rug and leather belt and shit. I jus was stupor enough to get my ass snatch up in a trap at that Night of Joy. I gotta figure this thing out myself.”
“That’s what’s so wonderful about New Orleans. You can masquerade and Mardi Gras all year round if you want to. Really, sometimes the Quarter is like one big costume ball. Sometimes I can’t tell friend from foe.”
When we have at last overthrown all existing governments, the world will enjoy not war, but global orgies conducted with the utmost protocol and the most truly international spirit, for these people do transcend simple national differences. Their minds are on one goal; they are truly united; they think as one.
