Revolutionary Road Flashcards
April
‘She was 29 a tall ash blonde with a patrician kind of beauty’
‘Bearing 2 children had left her a shade too heavy in the hips & thighs’
‘Had attended one of the leading dramatic schools in New York’
‘Visibly weakening’ ‘lost her grip’ pg 9 ‘Sensual grace’ ‘white knuckled immobility’
Frank
Pg 12
“the NB thing always was to remember who you were”
“veteran” “intellectual” - likes labels
“there was nothing average about his performance in the beery all night talks that had begun around him”
Suburbia
pg 1 = foreshadowing
“the brave idea of it the healthy hopeful sound of it”
“wouldn’t be able to live at all until they were out beyond the rumbling pink billows of exhaust”
“I don’t happen to fit the role of dumb, insensitive, suburban husband”
“one picture window is necessarily going to destroy our personalities”
pg 51
Frank’s Fantasies
“running home to swing his children laughing in the air”
“shining vision of a girl he hadn’t seen in years” “dissolve & change into a graceless suffering creature”
“Why do you always undervalue yourself” - needs validation
“Was it really good” - “glowing” “dishevelled”
Men and the Working Class
Pg 15
pg 21
“plan for riding the rails to the west coast”
“calluses and blisters”
Control
“we should never have let you gt mixed up in the damned thing”
“You in a trap! You in a trap!”
“you’re the most valuable & wonderful thing in the world. You’re a man”
Masculinity
what makes Frank feel like “a man” - “eagle” “lion” “did a lion apologise? Hell no”
“could a man ride home in the rear smoker, primly adjusting his pants at the knees to protect their crease”
“prove he’s got a pair of balls”
Anger
“it quivered in their arms & legs & wrenched their faces into shapes of hatred it urged them harder & deeper into each others’s weakest points”
Insecure Masculinity
“he found he could make April Johnson laugh” - pg 23
“you’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met”
“by any stretch of the imagination you can call yourself a man”
walks with “what he hoped was dignity”
fathers hands “still looked stronger & better than Frank’s” - “grip” pg 36
“my masculinity has been threatened somehow by all that abortion business”
“hide behind that maternity dress”
Abortion
“crime against your substance and mine”
= “unnatural” that A doesn’t want child = “his child” not theirs - concept of men carrying on lineage
“it wasn’t the idea that repelled him” - “all on her own” bothers him - “m than a little attractive”
The Past
“never undertake to do anything until you’ve-“
“knowing what she had always known. what neither her parents, Aunt Claire nor Frank had to teach her”
“her parents were alien to his understanding” “he could picture them only as flickering caricatures”
Failure
“false” “white knuckled immobility”
Shep wanted to escape “Brownstones and penthouse apartments” “private tutors” - became “insensitive ill-bred” not satisfied
comp of M & A - “remarkable” “nearly as well” - bedroom metaphor”
Failure to Learn from Wheelers
impersonal 3rd person narrative and last chapter set months later shows failure to learn from Wheeler’s - “his role during these recitals” “she cued him” “I almost died” - wife liked her story “neat with points and clearly felt their were too many loose ends”
Illusion Vs Reality
April’s “false” smile
“sitting tense as a coiled snake the edge of the sofa, gently closed her eyes & wanted to die” - juxtaposed by “gently”
“look at this magnificent food”
“assumed a convocational slouch for the sake of appearances”
Conflict
pg 28 italics & fragmented sentences
“Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong!” - repeated onomatopoeia = immersive
pg 49-50
“What’s that supposed to be a threat or a promise?”
