Yates Revolutionary Road What Can it Say About Our Lives Today

Yates

Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road was not revolutionary in the sense that it was not the first piece of writing to expose the cracks in the American suburban facade. However, what makes Revolutionary Road enduring enough to resurrect it for the silver screen is that the story is about more than just disenchantment with one facet of American life. The story of Frank and April Wheeler can be applied equally as much to life in urban and rural social enclaves, although the principle themes of Revolutionary Road continue to ring far more true for suburbia than anywhere else. Suburbia continues to put a stranglehold on quality of life in America, and elsewhere in the world that has succumbed to the pattern of life characterized by strip malls and homogenized dining experiences.

Revolutionary Road offers a blueprint for everything not to do to achieve happiness. It is like the Dalai Lama's anti-novel. Seek elsewhere, everywhere outside the self. Blame others for your problems, and if possible, blame society as a whole so that you can cultivate a generic hatred that makes up for your own impotence to foster meaningful change. Blame yourself, so that you can use your self-pity as a tool for your own wanton self-destruction. Ignore everything that everyone from mom to Confucius told you about morals and ethics, because you are beyond that. This is America, where we can do what we want, when we want, now.

The dream of moving abroad is a curious thread in Revolutionary Road. On the one hand, the dream reeks of escapism. On the other hand, the proposition of moving to another country is one that Americans should probably entertain more readily. Too many Americans, and most certainly suburbanites, become stuck in a xenophobic rut. Americans tend to believe more than any other country on earth in their own superiority. Even the French and the Chinese do not have as insular attitudes as Americans who continue to claim theirs is the "greatest country on earth." Americans are also woefully ignorant about what is going on in the world, because nothing matters to Americans beyond the border. So many feed into media frenzies, because their lives lack color and intelligence. The escapism that Yates explores -- through behaviors like extra-marital affairs -- remains a poignant theme of American life. Americans are adept at escaping reality to the point where a substantial number of us believe outright falsehoods that make moving to France an attractive option for many.

As the Wheelers fantasize about their proposed new life, they posit France as being the anti-America. In some ways France is the anti-America: a place where quality of life tends to trump a "quantity" based value system. French people, like many other people in the world, do not mind making some sacrifices in order to enjoy higher quality of life. Moving to another country does present options for American families to learn and grow, and explore alternative ways of life. With the prospect of telecommuting or working for a large multinational organization, the options for living abroad are richer now than they were when Yates wrote Revolutionary Road in 1961.