I just finished a book called Revolutionary Road. I decided to read it because it has been made into a movie starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo Dicaprio, and the fangirl inside of me kind of loved this idea. (Spoilers for the book and thus probably the movie follow in this post.)
After reading the book, I for one thing cannot think of more ironically perfect casting. And for another thing, people are going to get a pretty serious shock for what they’re used to with this onscreen couple. I don’t know if Kate and Leo intentionally set out to destroy the fairytale image people have of them, but… well, I’m getting ahead of myself. I don’t even really want to talk about the movie version. The book itself got me thinking about a lot of things.
The book is about this couple, Frank and April Wheeler, who are having all these problems because they are disillusioned with their lives and their marriage to each other. Frank hates his job, April hates being a mother, they both hate where they live and they keep having conversations about the Hollow Emptiness of the American dream and so on. (This was written in 1961, for reference.) Nothing about their lives seems fulfilling. Eventually April is all, “Frank, I want to go to Paris, I’ll get a job at an embassy while you Find Yourself.” I guess he was also going to take care of their two kids. So, Frank gets ready to quit his job at wherever he works, some business place where he has a cubicle, and April starts applying for jobs, and they’re all happy and excited about this, and then suddenly April gets pregnant again, and so Frank spends like pages and pages trying to convince her not to abort it, and then finally he does, and then they have this huge fight where she’s like, “I don’t love you anymore,” and Frank’s like, “Yes, you DO love me,” and he throws a chair against the wall, and then she sleeps on the couch, and then Frank gets terrified that she’s going to leave him, but the next morning she makes him breakfast before work and she’s nice to him and apparently interested in his job suddenly and it seems like everything is going to be okay. Then Frank goes to work, and April tries to give herself an abortion, because I guess it was the only thing she could do to try to make herself happy? But it goes horribly wrong and she ends up dying. And then Frank goes home after seeing her in the hospital and cleans up her blood and stays in the closet where her clothes are. And then he moves away, and takes the kids to stay at his brother’s house and visits him on the weekends. It tells this ending through the gossip of the neighbors.
I loved the way this book was written. I think Richard Yates is a genius writer. I’m probably going to read more of his stuff. But at the conclusion of this story, as much as I enjoyed reading it, I’m still not really sure what the point was. Is it that life is depressing, and there’s no escaping it? That dreams can’t come true, and that you should just bear down and accept that? That nothing in this world is truly fulfilling?
If the latter is the case, then… very good point, book. Because nothing was so clear to me after reading Revolutionary Road than that, whether it was a point intentionally made or not. Every conversation these characters had was insipid and meaningless. The only motive anyone had for anything they did or said was to gain the admiration of other people. I don’t think we’re meant to realize otherwise about the characters (who are all brilliantly realized, by the way, I’ve never read a book with such beautifully realistic descriptions before). I’m not sure what we are supposed to realize about them. Maybe we’re supposed to feel a conviction that oh, we are no better than any of these people in the book, we talk and talk about doing something important and being something meaningful in the world but we never do anything about it, we just sit around dreaming without doing. We look down on other people who are really no different than us.
All right. Maybe.
Let’s pause for a moment so I can mention another book I’ve been looking at recently. It’s called Set-Apart Femininity by Leslie Ludy. This is the lady that wrote When God Writes Your Love Story and a lot of other books with her husband Eric. I haven’t finished it, but I’ve read a lot of it, and while I have my small and naive disagreements with some of what she says, one of the things I’ve gotten out of it so far is a new filter through which to look at relationships. So reading this book at the same time as I was reading Revolutionary Road was interesting for me.
I know that Yates doesn’t portray their marriage as one that people should have, but go with me on this illustration. In Ludy’s book, she talks about letting God guide your love story and your entire life, and that, I think, was what was most markedly absent from Frank and April’s marriage. The marriage between Frank and April is shallow and empty and fake. Towards the end of the novel, April wonders why they even got married, because there was nothing between them that should have warranted it, and she saw him still only as a boy she’d date for a couple months and then be done with. It’s heartbreaking. April doesn’t see any merit whatsoever in her marriage, she doesn’t want the baby she’s pregnant with and doesn’t like the two kids she does have. Then when she and Frank fight about whether she should have an abortion (twice, with the first baby and the third), Frank is more concerned about winning and gaining control of the situation than whether or not the baby stays alive. He feels victorious when they make it past the deadline (the time at which her home abortion would no longer have been considered “safe”) but he doesn’t really want another baby, he just wanted to win the argument. Neither of them are happy. Every situation they get into only makes them more miserable and in the end, they’re both dead – April literally, and Frank figuratively (their neighbor describes him as “a walking, talking, smiling, lifeless man”).
Here, ultimately, is what I’m taking away from this book.
The relationship between Frank and April is and always was based on falsehood. Frank wanted April to think, from the very beginning, that he was smart, funny, intelligent, and attractive. So he told her things she wanted to hear and never really let his guard down. Throughout the entire book he is constantly rehearsing things he’ll tell her when he gets home from work or wherever. It got annoying, actually… I know everyone does this from time to time, but Frank was obsessed with what April thought about him. Then, when he would tell her these things, and she didn’t react the way he expected or wanted her to, he would get angry and depressed, and they would fight about it. April, on the other hand, would try to open up to Frank about things, and he would tell her to stop being silly, or eventually, that she was emotionally disturbed. He was nice about it, of course, but some things sound bad no matter how you put it. Then she would agree with him, “oh, of course you’re right, you’re always right,” and Frank would breathe a sigh of relief and April would bottle everything back up and nothing would get resolved, and they would walk on eggshells around each other until the next fight.
I was so frustrated while I was reading this book. I still don’t understand why they couldn’t just talk to each other about their problems and why they wanted so badly for the approval of the other. Frank and April were both extremely selfish – they only cared about what was good for them.
Basically, everything about their marriage was exactly what Leslie Ludy writes against in the book of hers I’m reading. Revolutionary Road is a terrific “what not to do” illustration. And because I’m a girl, and I’ve been reading these two books in tandem, this has resulted in me thinking about what I want in my future relationship/marriage. And what is the point in having a blog if I don’t decide to publicize these thoughts? So, here we go.
I don’t want a relationship based on lies. (Duh.) I want to feel comfortable and safe with the man I’m with. I want us to completely trust each other with our hopes and dreams and fears and insecurities and everything else. I don’t want him to feel like he has to impress me all the time, the way Frank does with April (they didn’t even really know each other in the end, so deep was the illusion he built around himself). I want us to talk about problems that we have. And I never want to feel like the only important thing about an argument is winning it.
But most importantly…
The secret to a marriage thriving for a lifetime is selflessness. Nothing will kill a marriage faster than two people who are only concerned with meeting their own needs and desires. But nothing will cause the romance and beauty of a marriage to blossom like two people who put each other’s needs and desires above their own.
…[My husband Eric] grows more sensitive towards me and more romantic as the years go by. But it’s not because I drop hints, criticize, or complain. It’s because I allow my intimate relationship with Jesus Christ to fulfill the deepest desires of my heart rather than putting that pressure upon Eric’s shoulders.
The reason that our love story thrives is because we make Jesus Christ our first love.
I should have just posted that quote. It is my point exactly. You know… that. I want that. And I have hopes that one day I’ll find a guy who I can have that kind of relationship with. (ChaCha said his name might be Billy.) In the meantime, I’m learning a lot about patience.
And reading some more Richard Yates. Because boy can that dude write.
(Well… that should be enough blog post to last through the end of the year.)
Posted by sarahactually 
Posted by sarahactually 