Revolutionary Road

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Revolutionary Road

by Richard Yates

I don’t understand why I haven’t read this before. This book is excellent...and haunting. I recommend that everyone should at least read it, especially those who are getting married. After a series of fun and not so-fun books, this comes out profound and breathtaking. I literally couldn’t put it down and even if I finish one chapter and start another, it leaves scenes in my head. How can the plot not be haunting when the supposed to be perfect relationship reveals to be rotting and destructive amidst the hopes and dreams set in a suburban life. It's haunting because the characters are as real as it gets. It could be your officemate, the person beside you in the bus. It could be anyone's relationship and it just could easily be yours. 

It’s a story about two people who shouldn’t be together in the first place. What’s more haunting than that? They enter marriage with hopes and ideals that don’t necessarily translate into reality. Here’s a wife who seeks for adventure, to not be confined in the usual suburban perfect household and who is not defined by her being a mother and a dutiful wife. Here’s a guy who has embedded the notion of success around acquiring a stable job, a good dutiful wife and a family he can provide for. Both aspire to be the better versions of each other even with the good intention to support one another only to fall short in actions as their true selves emerge. 

The story starts off sweet with a promise. They openly speak about their ideals and how they would not let themselves be branded as just another suburban what normal couples do. They vocally shared their need to be different, to experience life to the fullest. Everything seems to be sweet and promising until circumstances and certain comforts lead them to where they're not supposed to be. Soon the wife becomes frustrated, bored and helpless while the husband slowly falls into a comfortable routine, enjoying the role of any suburban father, providing security and stability. They had hope to be different at the first part of the novel, but the horror is that they are ending up to be the exact same persons they didn't want to be, the normal unimaginative suburban family. As they tried to pursue each other’s dreams, they soon realize that one has to give way to the other. The wife tends to be the one passively sacrificing until she became fed up to the point of hating the relationship and hating the her husband as a person. 

They are individuals who are in love with the figment of their dreams and hopes for each other. They both wanted different things in the beginning and it’s haunting to have them realize it too late when they already have roles to play and kids to consider. The husband knew the needs of his wife, but he wanted to present the better life to her thinking it was enough. The wife knew she would reach the breaking point but decides to continue simmering until it was too late. Hurtful words and dialogues far too real to be heard in ordinary couples clinch this book into a massive force. It’s not enough that the author efficiently speaks out the mind of Frank Wheeler or the acute observations on April Wheeler, but the conversations and interactions are very much an integral part of this whole masterpiece. “If you hate me so much, why are you living in my home? Why are eating the food that I provide?!”

Here marriage is an illusion and nothing’s more haunting than being involved in that.