Glad I didn't see the movie

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

I didn’t like this book. It’s not that it doesn’t flow but it doesn’t flow anywhere quickly. It plays in the space of the psyches of an American couple that moved to the suburbs from the city to raise their growing family. As the book cover explains, “they may have married too young and started a family too soon, but they always figured greatness was around the corner. But now they are beginning to doubt…”.

To me, these people were lost before they even got married. Both were trying to fit into an ideal of what they wanted to be and not recognizing & loving the person they actually are. They played into their roles so much that they continued to play house into marriage and then into a family. They were setting themselves up for misery by never being themselves.

But that also makes you think how realistic this is. Very, I think. Maybe not to the same extreme as Frank and April Wheeler but we all have ideas of how we want ourselves to be perceived and work hard to attain that perception. Whether it is being seen as the leader at work, the loving mother at home, the in-love, perfect couple…we all care about how we are perceived. That is why it is important to have that place of true honesty in our lives. The really free ones have that place with them all the time but for the majority of us, we are not that brave (at least I’m not). For some, that place of honesty is at home where they can lay it all out without pretension or worry about how they look or sound to their family because it is their family and they love and support no matter what as a family should. Or it could be with your buddies or a lover or maybe even a stranger. At the very least, everyone should be able to be honest in the bathroom. It’s important to have and very necessary. I think everyone needs that person in their life that sees them at their basest self, without any witty phrases or charming smiles, see them with their weaknesses, failures, and successes and have that person be able to look back with love and understanding. Simply for the fact that both of you are willing to share the most intimate part of yourself and not blink (at least not too much).

It sounds like I’ve deviated from the book but I haven’t. Frank and April Wheeler never had this place of refuge. Not at what point were they ever at peace with themselves or with each other, never at one point were they truly honest. And therein, misery lies.