| A Story is a Promise |
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| Essays on the Craft of Writing |
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| About the Author |
I often break down simple novels like Harry Potter or Twilight because what I call the dramatic truths of the characters are transparent and accessible. In a novel like Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, the truths of the characters are, in their way, accessible, but authors like Yates are going for a deeper vein of truth.
The novel opens with a quote from John Keats that speaks to the story's promise: 'Alas! when passion is both meek and wild! This one sentence speaks to the deeper truth of the novel's main character, Franklin H. Wheeler. He served in the army in Europe at the end of WWII, traveled in Europe, and then went to college where his gift for gab and glib insights marked him, to his estimation, an intellectual. He uses his inflated sense of self to marry 'the right kind of girl,' who had previously been out of his reach. The novel opens on the night a company of mostly non-actors has a final rehearsal. The final dying sounds of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless, blinking out over the footlights of an empty auditorium. This moment is a commentary on the life of Franklin. The director of the production lets the cast know he has never expected much from them, but somehow that night they '...were all putting your hearts into your work for the first time.' He continues, "Do that again tomorrow night," he said, "and we'll have one hell of a show." This sets up an anticipation about how the show will turn out, but it also sets up this response from the cast, They could have wept with relief. Instead, trembling, they cheered and laughed and shook hands and kissed one another, and somebody went out for a case of beer and they all sang songs around the auditorium piano until the time came to agree, unanimously, that they'd better knock it off and get a good night's sleep. In this short passage Yates communicates that these people are shallow dilettantes. This opening segues into an introduction to this time and place and who The Laurel Players are, how they have gathered to speak about Ibsen and Shaw and O'Neill and are now posed to do a performance of The Petrified Forest. Next, Yates writes that the players '...would see a landscape in which only a few very old, weathered houses seemed to belong; it made their own homes look as weightless and impermanent, as foolishly misplaced as a great many bright new toys that had been left outdoors overnight and rained on.' Yates here is using a dramatic truth about the environment to get to a deeper truth about these people. Details about environments ring true when they express a truth that arises from a story's promise; in this novel, about people who are both meek and wild. The description of the houses above is a suggestive way or restating something about these people. Another example of writing about an environment in a way that rings true from later in the novel, But for all its plainness, the Knox Building did convey a quality of massive common sense. IF it lacked grandeur, at least it had bulk; if there was nothing heroic about it, there was certainly nothing frivolous; it was a building that meant business. Compare this description to saying the building was ordinary or non-descript. Yates evokes the dramatic truth of this building. Continuing with the novel, as opening night arrives, 'The main thing, though, was not the play itself but the company—the brave idea of it, the healthy, hopeful sound of it: the birth of a really good community theater right here, among themselves.' And the lead actress is Claire Wheeler, Franklin's wife. The chapter ends with the audience fleeing at the end of the play, '...they moved as if a calm and orderly escape from this place had become the one great necessity of their lives; as if, in fact, they wouldn't be able to begin to live at all until they were out...' To this point, the main character of the novel has only been seen at a distance in the audience. But now Franklin must deal with his anxiety about the outcome of the play and whatever his wife's feelings about the evening turn out to be. The storyteller introduces Franklin in a state of high emotion that reveals much about his inner life. Even the physical details here are telling. '...carrying one hand in his pocket to conceal and dry the knuckles he had sucked and bitten throughout the play.' This is the difference between saying Franklin has a nervous habit and evoking the depth of his anxiety through this habit of sucking his knuckles. This technique is also called 'putting it on the body,' expressing some inner feeling by giving it a physical expression. At first the author tells us that Franklin 'Smiling, he was a man who knew perfectly well that the failure of an amateur play was nothing much to worry about....but in the intervals between his smiles, when he shouldered ahead through the crowd and you could see the faint chronic fever of bewilderment in his eyes; it seemed more that he was in need of comforting.' This is a man torn by anxiety, compounded by the fantasy that a great show would lead to some great sex with his wife. Instead, he finds himself unable to either comfort his wife or explain why she shouldn't care about what happened. What she makes clear is that she wants nothing to do with listening to his gift of gab. For Franklin, this gift of gab, this ability to spin verbal floss into gold, is what defined him as a college student. So his wife's rejection of his gab is a rejection of Franklin. This leads Franklin to wonder about how he got into a dead marriage in suburbia, especially when in college, '...talks that would often end in a general murmur of agreement, accompanied by a significant tapping of temples, that old Wheeler really had it. All he would ever need, it was said, was the time and freedom to find himself.' And he's in a situation where he's run out of time and he has no illusion of freedom. After his wife's rejection leads to a terrible fight, he muses, 'But there always had been a way, dignified or not, discovered through the simple process of apologizing first and then waiting, trying not to think about it too much.' The story question raised here, can this couple survive the degradation of their college-fueled fantasies of having a great purpose in life? Can this marriage survive? What will be the result of this looming implosion reveal and create for these characters? Richard Yates clearly understands how to get at the deeper truths of his characters and how to express those truths in lyrical language. As Franklin says, "Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity." There's nothing quite like a character damning themselves without realizing it. Top of page