LIFE

Do We Know What We’re Worth?

What misconceptions of ‘Revolutionary Road’ reveal about societal gatekeeping

Frank Okay on Unsplash.

“They would all agree and the happy implication was that they alone, the four of them, were painfully alive in a drugged and dying culture”

In Richard Yates’ 1961 novel Revolutionary Road, we meet our protagonists — Frank and April Wheeler — at the end of a play gone sour. After moving to suburban Connecticut upon unexpectedly becoming pregnant with their first child, April and Frank find themselves struggling to fit in with the rest of their community. Once so proud of their lofty ambitions and grandiose ideals, the Wheelers become increasingly dissatisfied with their reality as they find themselves the same as everyone else — that is, mediocre. Once so assured that they were better than everyone else, somehow above the “suburban trap,” the Wheelers discover that the greatest disappointment of all is that they are not special.

But, back to the play. Unfortunately, the production is a disaster and not one that Frank lets April forget. The car ride home is enormously charged as the couple battles the resentment they feel towards one another and the rage they feel for their present, resulting in…