Interpersonal Relationships In Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road

Part One of Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, comments on the way societal standards in the time period influence people’s interpersonal relationships. In specific this paper will examine chapter two (28-30) where we enter a scene in which April and Frank are coming to the end of a heated argument. The silent mutual agreement to return home, takes us back to their first encounter with Revolutionary Road. The flashback highlights the hopeful ideals the protagonists had before being constricted into the very plastic suburban culture of the area, later observed in this passage. When contrasted with the present time, it is clear that falling into conformity is the reason for the development of their poor communication skills and diminishing …show more content…
She uses the oxymoron “perfectly dreadful” to compliment her earlier statement, referring to the houses being painted in “nauseous pastels”. The idea of perfect is something good, immaculate—faultless, whereas dreadful is something regrettable, even atrocious in nature. Pastels are known to be calming colors, yet oddly enough she says the colors are nauseating. It is ironic that the road is named “Revolutionary Road” because, something that is revolutionary is straying away from conformity and yet, as mentioned earlier, the structures, vehicles and individuals we can assume to live along the road are the exact opposite of revolutionary.
Continuing at the bottom of the page, Frank mentions when April searches for his approval of the large “picture window” that he “[supposes] one picture window [will not] destroy [their] personalities”(29). Quite contradictory to his belief at the time, it is prevalent throughout part one that the “picture window” in a sense, if referred to as a metaphor for the picture perfect life they’d imagined and hoped for (which can be read throughout this passage), did in fact do just