The "Second Lost Generation": a Reading of Suburban Emptiness in Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road

• Type: Article in National Scientific Journal
• Date: 2019

Authors

Castilho, Maria Teresa (Author) FLUP; Pacheco, Rita (Author) Other

Journal

Title: Via Panoramica: Revista de Estudos Anglo-Americanos

Serial No. 3 Vol. 8 No. 2

Pages: 56-65

ISSN: 1645-9652

Publisher: Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Letras. Departamento de Estudos Anglo-Americanos

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CORDIS: Humanities > Literature

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Resumo (PT): Tendo como ponto de partida uma abordagem em torno da paisagem suburbana na década de 50 do século XX enquanto responsável por um mal-estar e ansiedade generalizados, resultantes da estratégia de conformismo e domesticidade, que marcou o pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial nos Estados Unidos da América, propomos aqui uma leitura crítica do romance Revolutionary Road (1961) de Richard Yates. É no romance de Yates Young Hearts Crying (1984), na intervenção súbita de Al Damon, personagem cuja função parece ser somente a chamada de atenção para o facto de a geração dos subúrbios do pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial ser uma “segunda geração perdida”, que se sustenta a nossa problematização do romance Revolutionary Road. Discutiremos o sentimento de claustrofobia e de vida mundana trazido pelos subúrbios; uma paisagem de onde os personagens em Revolutionary Road sonham poder escapar, parecendo assim regressar aos passos da boémia Geração Perdida dos anos 20, também ela armadilhada. Na sua biografia de Richard Yates, intitulada A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates, Blake Bailey refere o autor como um “unabashed worshipper” de F. Scott Fitzgerald, para quem The Great Gatsby representa uma “formal introduction to the craft” e um “definitive milestone of his apprenticeship”. Revolutionary Road é sem dúvida um romance que explora as contradições da busca por sonhos e fantasias; um romance onde, como afirma Steven Goldleaf, encontramos um “persistent theme of characters striving toward some ideal of behaviour and always falling short of achieving that ideal.”

Abstract (EN): Paying close attention to the suburban landscape of the 1950s as conducive to a generalized malaise and anxiety caused by the strategy of conformity and domesticity in post-World War II America, this text offers a critical reading of the novel Revolutionary Road (1961), by Richard Yates (1926–1992). Taking as a starting point Yates’s understanding that the post-World War suburban generation was a “second lost generation”, as stated in his novel Young Hearts Crying, we will discuss the claustrophobia and the inescapable mundanity caused by the suburbs, from where the characters in Revolutionary Road dream to escape, seeming thus to follow the path of the bohemian Lost Generation of the 1920s. In his biography of Richard Yates, entitled A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates, Blake Bailey describes the author as an “unabashed worshipper” of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Great Gatsby as Yates’s “formal introduction to the craft” and “the definitive milestone of his apprenticeship”. Revolutionary Road is a novel that explores the contradictions in pursuing dreams and fantasies, where, as Steven Goldleaf states, “[we find a] persistent theme of characters striving toward some ideal of behaviour and always falling short of achieving that ideal.”

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

Notes: Disponível em: http://ojs.letras.up.pt/index.php/VP/article/view/6827