Symbolism

I think the use of symbolism is something that could be really interesting to discuss. What about Knox Business Machines as Frank’s place of employment? What about Frank’s working place hallmark, Speaking of Production Control, and how that relates to the greater situation in the book? What about Revolutionary Estates and Road? Frank's unfinished stone path? What do you make of the names in the book themselves? Wheeler. Givings. Campbell, Grube (which in German means “hollow cavity, hole”). Brace? Other examples of symbolism you can think of?

Revolutionary Road

Anxious and round-eyed, two by two, they looked and they moved as though a calm and ordinary escape from this place had become the one great necessity of their lives; as if, in fact, they wouldn’t be able to begin to live at all until they were out beyond the rumbling pink billows of exhaust and the crunching gravel of this parking lot, out where the black sky went up and up forever and there were hundreds and thousands of stars.

This is when Yates had me hooked. This final line of the first chapter, so beautifully written and exquisitely crafted, was where I knew I would enjoy the hell out of this book even though the Oscar buzz had me aware of the content (“This novel locates the American tragedy squarely on the field of marriage” – Alfred Kazin) and stupidly, due to some unfortunate TV viewing, the ending got spoiled for me before I opened the first page. Also, reading it over again now having considered the novel as a whole, the sentiment expressed above from the first chapter read again in context of the entire novel is just a further testament to Yates’ symmetry and craft here. Obviously, this club has brought some weighty, emotional, and depressing literary business down upon us. However, I can’t help saying that I loved this book. Not just for the book club, but in life, people. It may very well be one of the best books I’ve ever read.

From what I’ve found, a lot of people respond negatively to Revolutionary Road, particularly women. This is a book that takes place before feminism (or at least before The Feminine Mystique) and I’ve read in many places that Yates himself was a “marital traditionalist,” which I think is perhaps just a nice way of calling him a chauvinist. Of course, that and the context and place in history where the story takes place, forces you to be a bit forgiving of some of this in your reading (or at least that was the case with me). The thing that really got me past this anti-woman message that so many claim is a prominent factor in the book is that fact that both of our protagonists are so deeply flawed. They equally contribute to their unhappiness as a unit and both of them are, in the end, kind of unlikable characters. April and Frank both are kind of fucked up. And, one of the central issues in the book, I think, is whether or not it is (at least entirely) their fault.

Obviously, they are both very unhappy people. It seems as though Frank is the kind of person who has that IT factor, something that draws people to him, a handsomeness and natural charisma. However, we're constantly forced to question just how "natural" that charisma is as he constantly is rehearsing conversations, speeches, courses of action in his head before he actually carries any of them out. April is in many ways the same, a natural beauty and talent who at heart is a romantic. She feels there is something better out there for her, but at the same time understands that her situation and the parlance of the times has her tethered to her husband, who she emotionally manipulates as much as he her. Throughout the book though, you feel this tremendous pressure from the world around them. They feel like they need to be or want to be the perfect bohemian intelligentsia that flies in the face of the suburban drawl that weighted down so many WWII veteran families in mid 50s. This pressure seems to come most notably in the form of the Givings ("She cried because she'd had such high, high hopes about the Wheelers... and now she was terribly, terribly, terribly disappointed") and this suburban funk in the form of the Campbells, who the Wheelers seem to detest but can't seem to shake themselves from. There really is just so much to talk about here and I want to see where this discussion leads us before I say too much more...

In the end, regardless of the questions of content and theme, what I really appreciated mostly was the craft of the book. The beautifully written sentences. The skillful and seamless handling of flashback as a way to move the story forward. The very seldom and difficultly used omniscient third person narration.Though Yates himself seems to have been a sad and unhappy man (I read his follow up to this, a collection of short stories called Eleven Kinds of Loneliness for Christ-sakes) there is no doubt that he was a superb wordsmith and, in the end, I think that kind of skill is necessary to keep a reader engaged throughout this kind of story.

Anyway, enough for now. I created a couple of posts below containing prompts for the facets of the book that I think could be interesting to discuss. By all means though, please have at it however you'd like. I'm really curious to see what everyone thought.

John Givings

Beside the proposal for the trip to France (something every reader, I think, knows will never happen) the one real curve-ball, the one real Thing that happens in the story, is the appearance of John Givings. Though he is mentioned several times, what do you make of his two most notable appearances, Part 2 Chapter 5 and maybe more importantly Part 3 Chapter 1? What role does he serve in both the definition of the Wheelers as characters and the general theme of the story?

Now you’ve said it. The hopeless emptiness. Hell, plenty of people are on to the emptiness part; out where I used to work, on the Coast, that’s all we ever talked about. We’d sit around talking about emptiness all night. Nobody ever said ‘hopeless,’ though; that’s where we’d chicken out. 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.

Structure

How does the structure of the novel serve the story? Two examples…

--You could make the argument that the novel begins and ends with a performance. First, The Petrified Forest, at the end Mrs. Givings’ “performance” for the Braces.

--The skilful use of flashback throughout. My favorite? From the last chapter of Part 2 to the first of Part 3.

Misc.

A few more things that crossed my mind as I read...

--What do you make of the role of alcoholism in the novel?

--What role do you think each of the Wheelers’ extra-marital affairs had both in terms of defining the story and each of their characters?

--What do you make of the role of parenthood in the novel and Yates' commentary of it? As exhibited by Frank's and April's parents, Frank and April themselves, the Givings', the Campbells'?

--I mean, can we avoid it: abortion? It comes up at two distinct points in the story and the lives of Frank and April. How is it used by the characters and by Yates throughout Revolutionary Road?