The needy, the self-centered - and will they redeem themselves?: Franzen's Freedom

Walter reads Patty's confession of infidelity and (worse) lifelong attraction to Richard and sexual indifference to Walter and he flips out and kicks Patty out of his life, and I'm on the verge of feeling a great deal of sympathy for Walter, who rightly feels humiliated and as if he's wasted his life loving Patty, and also feeling sorry for Patty (both of them from horrible families, though in the Tolstoyan manner horrible in completely different ways) as she tries to explain to Walter that she really does love him and want him - a little too late for that, I'd say, but still - and then you feel, hey, what the hell: Walter's all too eager to take up with his young assistant, Lalitha, and Patty (we saw this in an earlier scene) debarks straight for Richard's doorstep (you'd think she'd have some friends, somewhere, who would take her in?), so ultimately you feel, or I feel: to hell with them, more despicable characters who had tough childhoods, sure, but never grew up, remained perpetually needy and self-centered. Are these typical Jonathan Franzen characters? Is this what "Freedom," with all the meanings of that title, is all about? It's a book, much like The Corrections, that you can love reading but that you can't really love because it's so cold at its heart and so dark in its deterministic view of human nature. Can Walter redeem himself in the last 100 pages? Could anyone? We see him at the big news conference opening the body-armor plant tell off the corrupt mining company and defense contractor (easy targets for sure), in a scene much like the rampage at the end of Bonfire of the Vanities, but I don't know if he will become a better person or just continue with his indulgences, somewhat less guilt-wracked.