Vineland

Frenesi Gates is Zoyd’s ex-wife and Prairie’s mother. She is the central character around which every other element of the story pivots. She connects the three generations—Sasha and Hubb’s Hollywood struggles, the 1960s counterculture movement, and Prairie’s Reagan-era drift—and influences each of them, even if she spends most of the novel withdrawn and hidden.

Frenesi’s relationship with her parents is an important foundation for her character. She is close with her mother and, in particular, with her parents’ politics. They were radicals before the 1960s, people who genuinely fought for social change in an era when such advocacy was much less popular. For this, they were ostracized from their industries. Frenesi witnessed the cost of campaigning for social justice from a young age and, despite her parents’ struggles, found herself committed to the same causes. She grew up to be just as radical, as hopeful, and as revolutionary, though her means and methods were shaped by the era in which her radicalism emerged.

As a filmmaker, Frenesi wants to shoot footage of the brutal abuses of power committed by the state against her fellow radicals. She targets police, college authorities, and other powerful figures in her campaign. In doing so, however, she falls for Brock Vond. Through the old 24fps reels, DL watches the inklings of the relationship which radically reshapes Frenesi’s life. Frenesi falls under Vond’s influence and power, convincing herself that she loves him. She convinces herself so much that she betrays everything—from DL to the film collective to the students of the People’s Republic of Rock and Roll—for Vond’s approval. She is instrumental in bringing the brief campus revolution to a close and, amid the chaotic downfall of the People’s Republic, she realizes that she has betrayed everything about herself for a man she barely knows. She has been manipulated and coerced by Brock Vond.

For years afterward, Frenesi wrestles with her guilt. She knows that she cannot atone for her crimes against her beliefs, so she subjects herself to more of Vond’s corrosive influence. As she explains, she comes to savor the pain of his reconditioning. Subconsciously, she cannot help but feel that this pain is deserved. When she develops postpartum depression, she blames herself, eventually leaving her marriage and daughter for more of Vond’s terror and, later, a much worse marriage. Frenesi drifts through her painful middle age as a way to punish herself for the crimes of her past.

When she reunites with Prairie, Prairie is struck by just how mundane Frenesi seems. Frenesi, who has radically reshaped so many lives and brought about so much misery, is just a regular woman. This muted reunion, taking place largely away from the narrative gaze, is the resolution to Frenesi’s arc, a quiet and comforting end which can only be imagined.

Darryl Louise Chastain, known as DL, is a counterpoint to Frenesi. Whereas Frenesi grew up in the shadow of her radical parents, DL grew up in an abusive household. Her violent father abused her mother, prompting the young DL to take her father’s obsession with physical violence far further than he could ever have conceived. She is so well-trained in martial arts that, even as a young teenager, her father becomes afraid of her. By the time DL meets up with Frenesi, she has hardened herself into a trained killing machine due to the suffering she witnessed firsthand as a child.

She and Frenesi fall in love and, for a brief period, have a romantic relationship. In spite of DL’s renowned strength and resolve, she can never truly disavow Frenesi, even after Frenesi betrays the counterculture movement and their relationship ends. DL’s enduring love for Frenesi provides a contrast to her remarkable physical strength, showing that even someone as intimidating as DL can be swept along in the romantic obsession for Frenesi and left, like everyone else, as dispirited and broken.

DL’s strength and training eventually become a burden for her. While she would like to advocate for political change, she cannot escape how other people view her. Men like Ralph Wayvone Sr. cannot stop thinking about DL for her martial arts skills; they view her as a blunt instrument, someone who can be manipulated into following their orders. When DL exercises her agency and refuses Wayvone’s offer by fleeing California to start a new life elsewhere, she is kidnapped and sold into sexual enslavement, only to be purchased by Wayvone himself as another part of his manipulative scheme. DL’s martial arts skills, which began as a defense mechanism against an abusive father, make her the target of international crime syndicates.

She only agrees to follow through on the plan because her lingering love for Frenesi fills her with a loathing for Brock Vond. She accidentally uses her ninja techniques against Takeshi, rather than Vond, risking an innocent man’s life in her quest for revenge. As a way to atone for her crime against Takeshi, DL agrees to be bound to him for a year and a day. Through the time they spend together and the relationship they develop, she finds a new meaning in her life.

DL’s willingness to help Prairie is an extension of her relationship with Takeshi. She feels dutybound to Prairie, whom she sees as another of Frenesi’s victims. Prairie has no understanding of herself, and she has grown up without a mother. DL sympathizes with this domestic plight, so wants to build Prairie into a strong, independent woman. DL helps Prairie as another form of karmic adjustment. Through Prairie, she has a chance to atone for the mistakes she made in her relationship with Frenesi and the mistakes she made in pursuing revenge against Brock Vond. As such, the trained warrior’s mission becomes one of deconstruction, skillfully taking apart the idealized and incorrect understanding of Frenesi in Prairie’s mind so that it can be replaced with something more accurate and more humane.

Brock Vond is a government agent at the Justice Department and Frenesi’s former lover, serving as the novel’s antagonist. He is an embodiment of the crushing imposition of state power on individuals. Frenesi, through Vond’s manipulation, becomes fragile and vulnerable. This fascinates him, allowing him to feel even more powerful in turn.

Hidden behind Vond’s relentless pursuit of power, however, is a tragic past that is never explicitly stated. In his recurring dreams, he imagines a traumatic incident in which he must run around his childhood home and lock every door and window. At the top of the house, waiting for him in the attic, is a terrifying and violent woman. Vond does not detail what happens when he meets this figure in his dreams; he does not talk about this potential vulnerability with anyone. Instead, he suppresses this trauma and his secret festers within him. Vond’s possibly traumatic past does not excuse his behavior, especially when he is contrasted with other victims of abuse (such as DL) who did not follow his pattern of behavior. Instead, this explanation helps to contextualize the abusive practices of the adult Vond and illustrates the breadth of pain within him which he now wishes to unleash on others.

Vond is desperate to be taken seriously. Throughout his professional life, he has modeled his actions on being the perfect expression of the abuse of power. In the model of authoritarian control which transcends individuals, he has policed any form of radical politics with ruthless efficiency, not just breaking the movements apart, but destroying the psyches of those involved. Nevertheless, his efforts to be brought into the circles of power are shown to be a failure when, during his climatic mission, he is forced to return to his base due to unforeseen budget cuts.

In a pique of rage, he commandeers a helicopter but crashes and dies. He is, at first, unaware of his death. In a moral sense, however, he died many years before and his life has been a desperate and failed attempt to enter the halls of power. He dies alone, powerless, and unaware of his own irrelevance.