Revolutionary Road

“The important thing, always, was to remember who you were.”

Frank and April are driving home from the play. Frank is carrying on an inner monologue through the narrator, a literary technique known as free indirect speech/discourse. In essence, the line implores Frank and April to remember that though they must live in the suburbs and among the bourgeois, they do not have to conform and become a part thereof. The line is also an instance of irony because, in the end, Frank is the one who forgets. April never does.

“It seemed to him now that no single moment of his life had ever contained a better proof of manhood than that, if any proof were needed: holding that tamed, submissive girl and saying, ‘Oh my lovely; oh my lovely,’ while she promised she would bear his child.”

The above lines are another example of free indirect discourse in which Frank ruminates over moments in his past. Here, he remembers when April wanted to abort her first pregnancy, but Frank convinced her otherwise. What is most important is how Frank remembers the episode. For him, it provides him an example of his inherent masculinity, which he feels is constantly under threat, especially since moving to the suburbs. For a larger discussion of masculinity in Revolutionary Road, see the Themes section of this guide: Masculinity Against the Backdrop of 1950s Conformist Society.

“It’s a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity.”

Frank is speaking in a discussion he and April had with the Campbells. Frank is criticizing contemporary 1950s conformist culture, namely the acceptance of mediocrity for financial security. Hermeneutically, the quote is ironic because, after April’s death, Frank’s identity mostly conforms to the society he criticizes so vehemently at the beginning of the novel.

“Is that any reason why the job I get has to louse me up? Look. All I want is to get enough dough coming in to keep us solvent for the next year or so, till I can figure things out; meanwhile I want to retain my own identity.”

After he has convinced April not to abort her pregnancy, Frank needs work to support his wife and soon-to-be-born child. Frank’s statement to his philosophy friend is a piece of sound advice and encapsulates much of Frank’s earliest struggles when he and April move out to the suburbs. Of course, he is unable to maintain this separate identity, and at the end of the novel, his identity has become part of the bourgeois mindset.

“He felt like a man.”

An important theme throughout the novel is masculinity and how it is defined against the backdrop of 1950s conformist culture. Arguably, conformity, working in a dull office job, and in the emasculating environment of the suburbs, males lose an important aspect of their masculinity. An aspect of masculinity explored in the novel is the notion of male sexual dominance and prowess. Hence, one of the moments when Frank feels the manliest is directly after sleeping with Maureen Grube.

“That’s how we both got committed to this enormous delusion — because that what it is, an enormous, obscene delusion — this idea that people have to resign from real life and ‘settle down’ when they have families.”

April is speaking to Frank after she develops her idea of moving to Europe. She bucks hard against the conformist culture in which she and Frank have found themselves and offers up an alternative. This represents an important aspect of her character because, though Frank complains and criticizes that culture far more so than she does, April is the only one willing to break the mold. Marxist theory offered one alternative to oppressive capitalism, but few Americans would ever consider that, especially during the Cold War. April’s plan is much more conducive to the American way of life. Arguably, Paris at this time was more befitting of the American sense of freedom and independence than the one offered in 1950s American suburbia. Furthermore, April’s definition of real life incorporates not only one’s hopes, dreams, and desires but not remaining ignorant of the dangers and risks of the larger world.

“Can you really think artists and writers are the only people entitled to lives of their own?”

April is speaking to Frank and addresses an important misconception that not only Frank holds, but also Shep, as revealed later in the novel. The two options in Frank’s mind are to either live a bourgeois life of conformity in the suburbs or live an independent, bohemian one in the city. The misconception does not wholly exist within the text, and April’s words thus address a societal misconception of the difference between the lives of artists and those of middle-class workers. Furthermore, April is implying that it is possible to find a happy median, perhaps something between idealized, bohemian freedom and bourgeois conformity.

“And certainly it’s not going to be easy. Do you know anything worth doing that is?”

Frank is having second thoughts about the European plan, specifically the fear of problems arising from change. April reiterates an old adage about how anything worth doing requires effort and sacrifice. The question is whether the characters are truly willing to forego the safety and security of their suburban lives for the insecurity of a possibility. If Paris works out, they could find themselves far happier than they are now.

“Another thing: what kind of half-assed idea is this about her supporting him? I mean what kind of a man is going to be able to take a thing like that?”

Shep is speaking to Milly after they have learned about the Wheelers’ plan to move to Europe. Shep addresses an important aspect of traditional masculinity, one that was increasingly becoming strained in the 1950s. Traditionally, a man is supposed to work and support his wife and family. However, WWII required many women to enter the workforce to replace men who had gone off to war. After the war, many of those women were reluctant to go back to their former roles. The wife as the breadwinner from the perspective of the modern reader seems perfectly sound. However, in the 1950s, the idea was revolutionary. The majority of the male audience in the 1960s, when the novel came out, would have agreed with Shep’s opinion.

“Deep down, what she’d loved and needed was work itself.”

The narrator is providing another instance of free indirect discourse. Helen is speaking to herself in a memory. Helen’s curriculum vitae stands in direct opposition to the societal belief that a woman didn’t need to work and that she should leave that to her husband. However, Helen discovered a sense of self-determination, escapism, and self-esteem through her jobs, first as an office assistant and then as a real estate agent. Helen’s freedom in work offers a hypothetical question about whether April could have found happiness through work, abroad or otherwise.

“And I’ve got this funny feeling that people are better off doing some kind of work they like.”

Frank is having lunch with Jack Ordway and defending his reasons for moving to Paris. Frank raises an important aspect of the dialectic between Marxist and capitalist rhetoric: the need for a worker to find satisfaction in what they do, which they cannot do if they are being exploited. Furthermore, Frank is personalizing the aphorism which states that a happy worker is a productive worker.

“You want to play house, you got to have a job. You want to play very nice house, very sweet house, then you got to have a job you don’t like. Great. This is the way ninety-eight-point-nine per cent of the people work things out, so believe me buddy you’ve got thinking to apologize for.”

Here, John Givings criticizes the 1950s notion of the American Dream. He does so by denigrating the idea of family and homeownership, relegating it to theatrical and childish behavior. He evokes the idea that everyone living in the suburbs is wearing a mask and putting on a happy façade, likening it to children playing the role of adults.

“Because maybe it does take a certain amount of guts to see the emptiness, but it takes a whole hell of a lot more to see the hopelessness.”

John is again speaking to Frank, though Frank is the one who termed the situation of 1950s conformist culture as hopeless. John agrees with Frank, but what he does that Frank doesn’t do is elucidate why the situation is hopeless. John goes on to explain how he and others used to talk about the emptiness of their situations and how their lives left them feeling unfulfilled. However, they would never describe it as hopeless, which was the problem. An honest recognition of the situation is the first step to changing it.

“The pressure was off; life had come mercifully back to normal.”

This is another instance of free indirect discourse. Frank, through the narrator, expresses his feelings when he learns that April is pregnant. With this sentence, Frank expresses his latent fear of change. Though he complains over and over about his situation, it requires an outside threat of removal from that situation for Frank to realize how much he actually likes safety and security. Not only did the European plan mean a lifestyle change but also a lot of financial risk.

“Our ability to measure and apportion time affords an almost endless source of comfort.”

These are the narrator’s words introducing a subtheme for Part 3: control, specifically a character’s attempt to control their environment. The quote is attached to an allegory about an old man using time to recollect when his wife died. The story criticizes mankind’s compulsion to ascribe events to a specific timeline. It also foreshadows April’s pregnancy and her and Frank’s need to pinpoint a specific day of conception should they choose to abort. It also foreshadows April’s death.

“The psychological thing behind this abortion business. Is that what women are supposed to be expressing when they don’t want to have children? That they’re not really women, or don’t want to be women, or something?”

April is speaking to Frank during one of their biggest fights, the one that signals the end of their relationship. April uses an almost Freudian explanation as a rhetorical question meant to throw Frank off guard. It is meant to force Frank to consider his own feelings on children, specifically the idea of a new baby. She wants Frank to admit he doesn’t want the child any more than she does.

“He had won but he didn’t feel like a winner.”

Another example of free indirect discourse, Frank has convinced April to give up on the idea of moving to Paris, at least for the foreseeable future. However, he doesn’t feel like a winner because he has been forced to admit, at least to himself, that he was too afraid of April’s plan, and he had to force April to question her own emotional/psychological stability for her to give in.

“‘And even if I did,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid it wouldn’t help, because you see I don’t know who I am, either.’”

April has just made love to Shep Campbell in the back of his car, and this is her answer to his confession of love. The episode, and these words, represent a major cognitive turning point for April’s character. Throughout the novel, she and Frank have struggled to maintain their identities against the backdrop of 1950s conformist culture. Frank’s identity has already succumbed to the pressure, but with the pregnancy and Frank’s betrayal, April’s sense of identity breaks completely. It’s not a dissociative event. She is in possession of her mental faculties, but she has come to question everything she ever thought she knew about herself.

“The house looked very neat and white as it emerged through the green and yellow leaves, it wasn’t such a bad house after all. It looked, as John Givings had once said, like a place where people live—a place where the difficult, intricate process of living could sometimes give rise to incredible harmonies of happiness and sometimes to near-tragic disorder, as well as to ludicrous minor interludes (‘That’s All, Folks!’); a place where it was possible for while summers to be kind of crazy, where it was possible to feel lonely and confused in many ways and for things to look pretty bleak from time to time, but where everything, in the final analysis, was going to be all right.”

Frank had been driving around, thinking. He approaches his home and, in another instance of free indirect discourse, pronounces upon the house an aspect of its symbolism from an outsider’s perspective. Up to that point, Frank had viewed his home without any emotion other than its representing yet another undesired aspect of his life. Now, however, he sees in his house everything that 1950s conformist culture would want him to see in such a house: He has achieved the American Dream, and everything is going to be all right.

“You decide you like it here after all? You figure it’s more comfy here in the old Hopeless Emptiness after all, or —Wow, that did it! Look at his face! What’s the matter, Wheeler? Am I getting warm?”

This is John’s indictment against Frank when he learns about the cancelation of their plans to move to Europe. John says the words that Frank does not want to speak or hear and that he has been trying to hide from April. He attempted to convince April to give up on Europe from a rational stance; he would never have admitted openly that he didn’t want to go because he would rather stay in the relative safety and comfort of their suburban lives.

“What a subtle, treacherous thing it was to let yourself go that way! Because once you’d started it was terribly difficult to stop.”

April is having a conversation with herself via free indirect discourse. She is criticizing marrying for comfort and because of societal pressure. It takes a long time for her to realize that she was never truly in love with Frank, not in the way she would define love. Rather, he offered her protection and safety during her pregnancy. A pregnant woman in 1955 would have faced incredible difficulty trying to make it on her own. Furthermore, Frank offered April a scapegoat. At the time, she was too afraid to abort on her own and too afraid to accept her failure to be the person she wanted to be. Marrying Frank gave her a person to blame for her situation. By her third pregnancy, she has grown as an individual and no longer has the same fears as when she was younger.

“But she needed no more advice and no more instruction. She was calm and quiet now with knowing what she had always known, what neither her parents nor Aunt Claire nor Frank nor anyone else had ever had to teach her: that if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.”

This quote incorporates several things. First, it is another instance of free indirect speech. It highlights the sense of emptiness and solitariness a pregnant woman who did not want to remain pregnant faced in the 1950s. It also highlights April’s break from Frank, her past, and the society and culture in which she feels entrapped and ignored.

“The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy.”

No building is ever designed to accommodate a tragedy. What is meant here is that tragedy is antithetical to the culture represented by the homes in Revolutionary Hill Estates. The achievement of a home is supposed to represent the epitome of the American Dream. A house in the suburbs is supposed to remove the individual from the dangerous world of the Cold War, the degenerative culture of the beatniks, and the fear of communism and terrorism. Bad things aren’t supposed to happen in the suburbs.