Yates Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road was not revolutionary in the sense that it was not the first piece of writing to expose the cracks in the American suburban facade. However, what makes Revolutionary Road enduring enough to resurrect it for the silver screen is that the story is about more than just disenchantment with one facet of American life. The story of Frank and April Wheeler can be applied equally as much to life in urban and rural social enclaves, although the principle themes of Revolutionary Road continue to ring far more true for suburbia than anywhere else. Suburbia continues to put a stranglehold on quality of life in America, and elsewhere in the world that has succumbed to the pattern of life characterized by strip malls and homogenized dining experiences.

Revolutionary Road offers a blueprint for everything not to do to achieve happiness. It is like the Dalai Lama's anti-novel. Seek elsewhere, everywhere outside...

Blame others for your problems, and if possible, blame society as a whole so that you can cultivate a generic hatred that makes up for your own impotence to foster meaningful change. Blame yourself, so that you can use your self-pity as a tool for your own wanton self-destruction. Ignore everything that everyone from mom to Confucius told you about morals and ethics, because you are beyond that. This is America, where we can do what we want, when we want, now.
The dream of moving abroad is a curious thread in Revolutionary Road. On the one hand, the dream reeks of escapism. On the other hand, the proposition of moving to another country is one that Americans should probably entertain more readily. Too many Americans, and most certainly suburbanites, become stuck in a xenophobic rut. Americans tend to believe more than any other country on earth in their own superiority. Even the French and the Chinese do not have as…