Revoultionary road reviews by Atlanta https://padlet.com/atlanta_chapman/5h8gac7br81i en-us 2017-11-22 11:53:54 UTC 2025-11-30 23:25:05 UTC hello@padlet.com "It's not flowery writing and it doesn't seem to need to be. It was refreshing to read an author that isn't trying too hard. Poignant, thought-provoking descriptions of marital interactions that I suspect are largely universal, even in the best of relationships." atlanta_chapman https://padlet.com/atlanta_chapman/5h8gac7br81i/wish/209417483 I agree with this review as the main characters frank and April Wheeler are portrayed to be like any ordinary couple struggling to cope with their own problems. They seem to allow their own insecurities and negative feelings to form into arguments against one another.]]> 2017-11-22 12:02:10 UTC https://padlet.com/atlanta_chapman/5h8gac7br81i/wish/209417483 https://padlet.com/atlanta_chapman/5h8gac7br81i/wish/209767764 “There's another element of the past that Yates evokes beautifully: the way the 1920s' Lost Generation instilled in its sons and daughters growing up in the '50s the dream of escape to Europe. Filtering through Frank and April's days, you can breathe the scent of the old American romanticism and the way it hovered over ordinary couples like these” 

This is proven by April’s and franks childhood experiences of being the ‘outsider’, feelings of misery and longing to escape. ‘spent all his free time in a plan for riding the rails to the west coast’]]> 2017-11-23 18:15:02 UTC https://padlet.com/atlanta_chapman/5h8gac7br81i/wish/209767764 https://padlet.com/atlanta_chapman/5h8gac7br81i/wish/209769794 “Frank and April, you see, feel superior to their middle-class surroundings, and they have little but disdain for such hopelessly bourgeois things as tract houses and mailboxes emblazoned with family crests. This, after all, wasn't what these ''promising'' young people expected out of life”

I partly agree with this as frank constantly throughout the novel is condenscending to the middle class for example when he says ‘I mean it’s bad enough having to live among all these damn little suburban types’ However we do not see this directly from April. But It could be said that her Cold and emotionless exterior is caused by her resentment of middle class life therefore implying she believes she is superior to thsee surroundings. ]]> 2017-11-23 18:28:40 UTC https://padlet.com/atlanta_chapman/5h8gac7br81i/wish/209769794 “If, at times, we are tempted to see Frank as something of a deluded, ineffectual snob, we are also inclined to sympathize with him - so graceful is Mr. Yates's use of irony. His portrait of these thwarted, needlessly doomed lives is at once brutal and compassionate” https://padlet.com/atlanta_chapman/5h8gac7br81i/wish/209804118 This is evident when we see Frank as acting self centred and blaming others, such as when he argues with April after the catastrophy of the play and is almost putting the fault on her for the arguement beginning believing he has done nothing wrong ‘I know I damn well don’t deserve this’ However at other times readers do feel sympathy for Frank due to the use of pathos for example we see his regret after this arguement when driving Mrs givings home ‘the road lights were blurring and swimming in his eyes’ ]]> 2017-11-23 23:28:43 UTC https://padlet.com/atlanta_chapman/5h8gac7br81i/wish/209804118 Revolutionary road is definitely a book of its time, and it is dated. It does, however provide a fascinating insight into and a reminder of a time when anything and everything was possible as a world was rebuilding itself. https://padlet.com/atlanta_chapman/5h8gac7br81i/wish/209807294 I disagree with this statement as many of the underlying messages of problems are relevant to today in the novel. For example although it is made clear that Frank and April’s relationship has issues because of the pressure of middle class society it could be argued that there are issues because of the fact they came together for the wrong reasons; they both reduce the insecurities within each other, shown especially in Franks case when he reminicises meeting April ‘within five minutes he found he could make April Johnson laugh, that he could not only hold the steady attention of her wide gray eyes but could make their pupils dart up and down’ showing that April gives Frank a sense of control. This shows a type of selfish love which Yates could be criticising by the tragic ending of the novel. You could argue the book, observing it from this angle, is before it’s time as this type of love seems to be more predominant in today’s society. ]]> 2017-11-24 00:21:56 UTC https://padlet.com/atlanta_chapman/5h8gac7br81i/wish/209807294 “It was not a book that left you with good feelings at the end, and probably I would not read it a second time. But the dialogue between the characters, their awful truths, finally let out, and their internal thoughts that we had access to were very, very well done” https://padlet.com/atlanta_chapman/5h8gac7br81i/wish/209809234 I agree with this as the novel ends extremely tragically. However Yates intends to leave us with a feeling of unease and dissatisfaction to perhaps make readers question and reconsider there lives and values - to avoid living a dull conformed life such as the characters in his novel. ]]> 2017-11-24 00:51:10 UTC https://padlet.com/atlanta_chapman/5h8gac7br81i/wish/209809234