Where It All Goes Down
Eastward Bound: From the Midwestern Heartland to War-Torn Lithuania
The Corrections reads like Manifest Destiny in reverse. The younger Lambert generation—Gary, Chip, and Denise—have fled to the East Coast in search of high-minded things, while their parents cling to their Midwestern suburbs with a vice-like grip. But it's not until Chip takes the notion of "going east" a bit too literally that we see how important home really is.
St. Jude
St. Jude is your average Midwestern suburb: The people are polite, everyone is at least middle-class, and they all share a common culture. This down-home Midwestern mentality is increasingly out-of-place in the modern world, however, and Enid is horrified when her children leave home to pursue "radically, shamefully other things" (2.964). The horror.
While it seems like your average American household during flashbacks, the present-day Lambert home is a testament to Enid and Alfred's broken marriage. Alfred stays in his dark basement, fiddling with idle tasks, while Enid spends her days redecorating and putting up a cheery front. The home perfectly illustrates the people that they've become: Enid is too repressed to admit how bad things are, while Alfred is too old to care.
The East Coast
The three Lambert children end up on the East Coast for a variety of reasons. Gary is the first to go, moving to Philadelphia with his swanky East Coast wife. Denise follows for college, but quickly gets caught up with the local culinary scene—something that didn't exist back in St. Jude. Finally, Chip ends up in New York after being fired from his university job, where he plays the part of the "East Coast intellectual" with eagerness.
Each of them takes to life on the East Coast in their own ways. Gary wholeheartedly embraces his new upper-crust lifestyle and resents his former Midwestern "cluelessness" (3.659). Denise, on the other hand, eventually moves to Brooklyn, the hipster capital of the world, where she finally feels comfortable in her own skin.
And Chip? After he fails to adapt to the East Coast, he ends up going so far east that he crosses an ocean.
Lithuania
Chip's quest for identity takes him all the way to war-ravaged Lithuania. There, Chip has to deal with life and death on a daily basis. There are daily murders. There are warlords. There are riots in the streets. It's a far cry from a sleepy American suburb like St. Jude.
Chip's first thought on returning to his childhood home is that "nowhere in the nation of Lithuania was there a room like the Lambert living room" (6.1011). On one level, this is just an observation about the different socio-economic states of the countries. But it's also an acknowledgement that this is his home. Although he's been running from St. Jude for his entire life, Chip finally realizes that this is where he belongs.