Rev Road Flashcards
1.1 As the play begins
‘The trouble was from the beginning they had been afraid they would end up making a fool of themselves’
‘Foolishly misplaced as a great many bright new toys that had been left outdoors overnight’
‘These small disorders were signs of mounting hysteria’
‘The black sky went up and up forever’
1.2 The great reassurance
‘The kind of unempathetic good looks that an advertising photographer might use to portray the discerning consumer of well-made but inexpensive merchandise (Why pay more?)’
‘(Was it really good, darling? Was it really good?)’
‘Turning his head a little to one side to give it a leaner, more commanding look’
‘By any stretch of the imagination that you can call yourself a man!’
‘You know what you are when you are like this? You’re sick.’
1.3 The hands which push the mower
‘It was April herself…. Wearing a man’s shirt’
‘There had never been anything tired about his father’s hands’
‘ Wood clung like gold in the hair of his father’s forearm’
‘My, don’t you look comfy’
‘And it seemed to him now that no single moment of his life had ever contained a better proof of manhood than that, if any proof were needed: holding that tamed, submissive girl.’
‘Hit him hard on the buttocks with the flat of his hand, twice, surprised at the stunning vigor of the blows’
1.4 All the world’s a stage
‘He studied this frankly flattering, definitely feminine girl his mind slid away in a fuddled erotic reverie’
‘The shyness of this request, and the sight of their trusting eyes, made him want to weep’
‘what suddenly felt like the only thing in the world he really and truly wanted to do: picking up a chair and throwing it through the picture window.’
‘Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity’
‘He knew now that he had told the same story to the Campbells before, using almost the same words’
‘The worst part of the whole weekend, if not his life to date- was the way that April was looking at him. He had never seen such a stare of pitying boredom in her eyes.’
1.5 The start of the business
‘Trying to make it look taller than its twenty stories’
‘With the anxious movement of his pocketed fingers on his genitals’
‘Swimmers far and near were moving… some treading water, others seen in the act of breaking to the surface or going under, and many submerged, their faces loosened into wavering pink blurs as they drowned at their desks.’
‘He counseled himself. A thing like this would need a little planning.’
‘If he focused his eyes on her mouth… it was possible to believe she was the most desirable woman in the world.’
‘In a paralysis of laughter at the very idea of going out with Mr Wheeler’
1.6 You were swell
‘As honest and as helpless as a child about to be sick on her party dress.’
‘With all the care of a conscientious farther’
‘Most interesting person April Johnson had ever met’
‘If he’d wanted to he could have very easily made it weep’
‘What would Norma say?’
‘But the only honest thing he could say was that he’d never felt more grateful to anyone.’
‘Listen: you were swell.’
1.7 Paris and Positivity
‘The way I was all weekend. The way I’ve been ever since I got mixed up in that awful play.’
‘Smash his fist against a tree or run for miles’
‘I mean I love you and everything’
‘The only way to stop her talking and get her out of sight was to kiss her mouth’
‘Only to remove the constriction of lace from her shoulders and let it fall away from her breasts’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been more bored and depressed and fed up in my life than I was last night.’
‘I’ve been making you live by it! My God, I’ve even gone as far as to work up this completely corny, soap-opera picture of myself.’
‘And they fell asleep like children.’
2.1 The Honeymoon
‘It could have been a week or two weeks before his life began to come back into focus’
‘How small and neat and comically serious the other men looked’
‘As easy to handle as Maureen Grube’
‘April had left a small pocket of guilt in his mind’
‘They were going to be new and better people from now on’
‘Yes, darling, but don’t talk quite so much, okay?’
‘She would sometimes go off quietly by herself and suck her thumb’
‘This whole country is rotten with sentimentality’ ‘it’s what’s killing the United States’
‘If he’d looked at the window at that moment he would have seen the picture of a frightened liar’
‘He had assumed that she too would be lazy and absent-minded in the daytime’
‘You’re always much better at things like that than I am’
2.2 April Wheeler- the fan fiction
‘Everything she called “vulgar” was his heart’s desire’
‘He was later to call it. “The time I sort of went crazy”… living in one of four hundred close-set, identical houses in the desert.’
‘He rapidly began to see himself as an imposter and a fool’
‘Pretending to be something he was not had led him into a way of life he didn’t want and couldn’t stand’
‘Bright visions came to haunt him of a world that could and should have been his, a world of intellect and sensibility that now lay forever in his mind with “the East”’
‘Her husband called her an ignorant cunt and broke three bones of his fist against the wall’
‘He had caught a faint whiff of something rancid.’
‘She was sweating all right, and the smell of her was as strong and as clean as lemons’
‘The memory of it could still make his fingers tremble in the buttoning of his shirt’
‘Shep wanted to say; tell us or don’t tell us. Who the hell cares?’
‘He didn’t want her warm, shuddering spine in the palm of his hand’
‘Oh, Jesus God, to be there with April Wheeler’
2.3 Mrs Givings’ scheme
‘Hard work, her father had always said, is the best medicine…. Of man and of woman.’
‘And it wasn’t until that instant, suddenly smelling the tea and seeing her, that Howard Givings realized that she was home.’
‘She even found a place in it for the Wheelers’ children’
‘The muscular contraction in both the Wheelers’ faces was so slight that the subtlest camera in the world couldn’t have caught it, but Mrs Givings felt it like a kick.’
‘Instead, splayed on the carpet like two toads, they were tough and knuckled with bunions, curling to hide their cornrows toenails.’
‘She had cried because she’d had such high, high hopes about the Wheelers tonight and now she was terribly, terribly disappointed.’
‘She cried because none of the girls had liked her at school and none of the boys had liked her later’
‘She never guessed he had turned his hearing aid off for the night.’
2.4 Employee of the month
‘All these seemed constantly to tell him he was destined to stay here forever’
‘I don’t think it’s possible for anybody to discover anything on the fifteenth floor of the Knox building, and I dont think you do either.’
‘We’re like a litter of suckling pigs waiting for a free tit.’
‘He pretended it was the last time he would ever do this, too’
‘Swing their arms with all the apparent “unit pride” of soldiers from the same platoon on pass.’
‘Feeling a drop of sweat creep out of his armpit and run down his ribs’
‘Planning how he would describe it to April tonight’
‘Excuse me a sec, Frank. Michael, you sit up straight, now.’
‘But she hadn’t said anything like that; she hadn’t even looked as if thoughts like that could enter her head. She was sitting here cutting and chewing in perfect composure, with her mind already far away on other things.’
2.5 Wheeler road
‘I don’t feel much like explaining everything fifteen times to somebody who’s too bored and silly to pay attention, either. So that’s that.’
Frank’s eyes grew as round as his daughter’s. He swallowed, and so did she, first removing her thumb from her mouth.’
‘The nice young Wheelers on revolutionary road, the nice young revolutionaries on Wheeler road.’
‘You want to play very nice house, very sweet home, then you got to have a job you don’t like. Great. This is the way ninety-eight-point-nine per cent of people work things out’
‘That’s why I’m quitting my job in the fall and that’s why we’re taking off.’
‘I’ve only met about half a dozen females in my life, and I think you got one of them here.’
‘I guess that means we’re as crazy as he is.’
‘He could feel the resumption of it now, despite the reassurance of her clinging at his back- a dread, a constricting heaviness of spirit, a foreboding of some imminent, unavoidable loss.’
‘As though she knew that a nestling of a shoulder blade was in order and she was doing her best to meet the specification.’
2.6 Pregnant and promoted
‘It was a relief at any rate, to be sitting down. It made Pollock less tall.’
‘Of course I kept thinking none of it matters a damn, but still; he really had me guessing.’
‘I was the accident, you see; I was the one they didn’t want’
‘An educated guess. I bet you went ahead and let your dad think his name had helped you get the job, just to please him. Am I right?’
‘Kind of stupid job, nothing I’m interested in, but the money’s nice,’
‘I believe it’d be a fine memorial and tribute to your dad.’
‘The whole point of going was to give you a chance to find yourself, and now it’s ruined. And it’s my fault! My own dumb, careless…’
‘Oh, of course it’ll be a nothing-job, but the money! Think of the money!’
‘And what do you think you’re going to do? Do you think you’re going to stop me?’
3.1 The final countdown
‘I wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t come at me with it like that, before either of us had a chance to discuss it in any kind of rational way.’
‘She halfway wanted to be talked out of it’
‘The other idea, however she might try to romanticise its bravery, was repugnant’
‘His main tactical problem, in the initial phase of his campaign, was to find ways of making his position attractive.’
‘You’d be committing a crime against your own substance. And mine!’
‘His bitten fingernails out of sight’
‘A man confronted with the bleakest and most unnatural and conjugal problems, a wife unwilling to bear his child, could still be nice’
‘Don’t ‘moral’ and ‘conventional’ really mean the same thing?’
‘He could have hit her in the face’
‘He really does think that way; the words really do mean something to him.’
‘All I know’ she said at last ‘is what I feel, and I know what I feel I’ve got to do.’
‘Is that what women are supposed to be expressing when they don’t want to have children? That they’re not really women, or don’t want to be women, or something?’
‘His job now was to consolidate this delicate victory in as many ways as possible, to hold the line.’
3.2 USA and affairs with your secretary
“Really April this is the best news I’ve had in I don’t know how long”
‘It was that he was going to have a child, and he wasn’t at all sure he wanted one.’
‘He shut off the machine and got slowly to his feet, moving toward her with loose, almost sleepy gait of a man who knows exactly what he’s doing.’
