Revolutionary Road

1. Why do so many Americans have an idea of the suburban life as a phony sort of hell? What is it in particular that people fear or hate, and what is it that they desire instead?

2. What makes for a dull life and what makes for an interesting one? What makes someone interesting to you?

3. What does it mean to remember who you are? What does it mean to try to find who you are? Have you found yourself?

4. Why is “What do you do?” so often one of the first questions we ask someone? Do our jobs define us? How do you perceive someone differently based on “what they do”?

5. Do you struggle with thoughts about what you could have been or could have done if you had made different decisions or had knowledge and wisdom in the past that you possess now?

6. Frank and April both have concerns about being considered a real man or a real woman and are sensitive to what might threaten these identities. What did you think of the themes of masculinity and femininity in the book? How important is it for you to be seen as masculine or feminine? Why is this important?

7. Why might Frank and April fear that a house with a picture window might destroy their personalities?

8. Do you live your life the way you want or do you live your life to prove something to someone? Do we generally do things we don’t want to do because those things are “the right thing to do” or is this often a false narrative that we cling on to out of fear?

9. Did you empathize with Frank and April? Did you like them?

10. What did you think of Frank’s desire for April to love him the way their kids love him (knowing what forgiveness is, taking him for better or worse)? Is it true that to love is “simple and necessary”? Do we overcomplicate love and what it means to love someone?

11. “What the hell kind of life was this? What in God’s name was the point or the meaning or the purpose of a life like this?” Was Frank and April’s life pointless? If so, what could have given it a point?

12. Do you sometimes feel like there’s nothing to talk about with your friends? Do you fill awkward pauses with courtesies or topics that you don’t genuinely have interest in?

13. Would life have been better in Paris? Would life have been better anywhere or would it have become just as boring?

14. “Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity.” What did you think of this running theme about the typical people (“all the idiots”) surrounding Frank and April? Do you think Frank and April were different than the people living in the surrounding houses?

    • Is the idea of a “drugged and dying culture” as relevant today as it was during the time of this book?

15. What did you think of Frank and April’s aversion to sentimentality? Do cute little winding roads and cute little houses painted white and pink and baby blue represent self-deception and a disconnection from reality? What would make Frank and April’s life more “real” to them?

16. Do you often stop yourself from doing something you want to do because it seems like it’s not realistic?

17. What do think of April’s idea that it’s a delusion that people have to “resign from real life and settle down when they have families”?

18. Do we often have a misplaced idea that we should have been “a bigger deal” when we are simply living lives that aren’t in line with our authentic selves and what would contribute to our well-being? Do you care more about being exceptional or happy?

19. What do you think of the idea that artists and writers are the only people entitled to live lives of their own? What does this mean?

20. “I mean isn’t that really what’s the matter, when you get right down to it? I mean even more than the profit motive or the loss of spiritual values or the fear of the bomb or any of those things? Or maybe it’s the result of those things; maybe it’s what happens when all those things start working at once without any real cultural tradition to absorb them. Anyway, whatever it’s the result of, it’s what’s killing the United States. I mean isn’t it? This steady, insistent vulgarizing of every idea and every emotion into some kind of pre-digested intellectual baby food; this optimistic, smiling-through, easy-way-out sentimentality in everybody’s view of life?” Are these ideas just as relevant today?

21. What did you think of Frank feeling the most alive during war? (“…inside I never felt better. I kept thinking: this is really true. This is the truth.”)

22. What did you think of April’s frustration about the meaning of the words “moral” and “conventional”? (“Don’t ‘moral’ and ‘conventional’ really mean the same thing?”) Are these words often used synonymously? Do you have any views of morality that are unconventional? April also has this frustration about the word “mature” – do people know what they mean when they use words like “moral” and “mature”?

    • “All I know is what I feel, and I know what I feel I’ve got to do.” What did you think of this sentiment?

23. What did you think of the topic of abortion as presented in the book? (“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?”)

24. Do people generally start relationships based on lies? (“Oh, for a month or two, just for fun, it might be all right to play a game like that with a boy; but all these years! And all because, in a sentimentally lonely time long ago, she had found it easy and agreeable to believe whatever this one particular boy felt like saying, and to repay him for that pleasure by telling easy, agreeable lies of her own, until each was saying what the other most wanted to hear—until he was saying ‘I love you’ and she was saying ‘Really, I mean it; you’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met.’”)

25. What do you think the meaning is of the ending of this book (and the book as a whole)? What is the symbolism behind Howard Givings turning off his hearing aid as Mrs. Givings is talking about how the Wheelers were strange, irresponsible, unwholesome, etc.?