Revolutionary Road

The immediate years following the end of World War II saw an unprecedented rise in American power and influence. It also witnessed the terrible consequences of mankind’s search for greater weapons, namely the advent of atomic weapons and the possibility of complete annihilation. The developments of the Cold War and the Korean War placed Americans in a situation unparalleled in the nation’s history. Americans became more affluent than ever before, and this affluence became a line of demarcation between American capitalism versus Soviet communism. Moreover, with the Soviet Union being a single-party communist republic, Americans saw themselves as not only the defenders of capitalism but of democracy. These circumstances resulted in a national desire for a clear-cut definition of the American way of life and a desire to retract into a safe and secure haven where the problems of a dangerous world could be ignored. Thus, the 1950s witnessed a call for conformity that redefined the characteristics of the American populace.

One redefinition was the role of men in society. In the aftermath of war, men were tasked with adapting military masculinity to one confined to suburban spaces, specifically as a father, a husband, and most importantly, a consumer. This transformation is best personified in Revolutionary Road through the character of Shep Campbell. During the war, Shep was the stereotypical American tough guy. He shied away from all things cultural and intellectual, preferring to work with his hands and street smarts. The idea of a man’s hands being built for physical labor is a notion with which Frank Wheeler struggles. Throughout Part 1, Chapter 3, Frank remembers his father’s hands: “it wasn’t only their strength he envied, it was their sureness and sensitivity” (36). By comparison, Frank views his hands as “bloated and pale” (35). Later in the chapter, Frank goes out to work on the stone pathway in their yard, a task he considers “man’s work” (45). He is wearing some old army fatigues, another reminder of his previous masculinity. Frank served in the army during the war, but he doesn’t have the sort of credentials Shep has. Shep was a paratrooper, and he won the Silver Star and a field commission, both difficult to achieve. The Silver Star is the third highest combat metal, and a field commission means that because of exceptional leadership skills displayed on the battlefield, a non-commissioned officer (NCO) becomes eligible to move to the rank of a commissioned officer (lieutenant and higher). If the reader ever doubted Shep’s masculinity, his military record provides proof enough. Regardless, men like Shep and Frank transitioned from military life into one of complacency and consumerism, and many of them struggled to redefine themselves in society.

Despite being more traditionally masculine, Shep is the one who adapts best to these new circumstances. According to his biography in Part 2, Chapter 2, he only experienced one existential crisis in Arizona, but moving back east and realizing that he could not easily recover his lost chances for an intellectual life, he accepted the first job offered to him. After the war, Frank too sought freedom in intellectualism; however, unlike his counterpart, Frank could never find work that gave him contentment. Shep was able to adapt better than Frank because he had selected a career he felt was “unquestionably masculine” (139): mechanical engineering. In Shep viewing his career as such, he felt less emasculated in a consumer lifestyle, a lifestyle previously associated solely with femininity.

It is through such character illustrations that Richard Yates attempts to show the difficulties many men faced returning from war to a new definition of the masculine American male. The soldier was removed and, unlike those from the First World War, was not transplanted into a society that esteemed the hard-working, highly productive male laborer who could see the results of his hard work. Rather, they returned to a society with a growing number of white-collar jobs whose productive results were subsumed by the corporation, resulting in labor alienation. With this, a man’s primary role was to serve as father, husband, and consumer to fuel the capitalist engine. While Shep adapts to this role more readily, Yates highlights his imperfect happiness; he is wistful when thinking about intellectual life, and he is in love with April, not his wife. As such, Yates undermines the validity of stereotypical American masculinity as ultimately unfulfilling.