What are the motifs in The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen?

Coping is a recurring idea in the book and how to cope with aging parents and illness is also a major theme of the book. Enid and Alfred live in the Midwestern town of St. Jude while their grown children all live on the East Coast. Gary, Denise and Chip all have their own lives and see their parents once or twice a year. They know their father is ill but don't realize how ill. Chip, the youngest son, couldn't deal with their afternoon in New York and ran off chasing a script he has to make corrections to, leaving Enid and Alfred with Denise, although at the end, it is Chip who gets Alfred into a hospital and stays with him until he is settled in a nursing home. Gary's way of coping is to refuse to have much of anything to do with Alfred. If Alfred fell, he says, he would let him lay there.