Revolutionary Revelation (Spoiler Alert!)

I finally watched Revolutionary Road last night and was quite impressed. For whatever reason, I expected it to be something of a 50s chick flick starring the classic couple Kate Winslet and Leonardo Dicaprio. I thought it’d be kind of like a Titanic 2: Had Jack Held On and Skipped a Few Decades. It was nowhere near as lighthearted and cute as I expected it to be. Rather, it made me actually think and draw connections to the wise words of the 20th Century French Philosophers I had recently grown so fond of, thanks to Professor Rudavsky and a less than lucrative major.

In the movie, Ms. Winslet’s wonderfully portrayed April is dissatisfied with her life. She is an aspiring actress who finds the American Dream—the perfect nuclear family in the perfect suburban neighborhood—to be blasé. She feels trapped by all of the institutions to which she has succumbed, including marriage, having children, and becoming a perfect stay-at-home mother. She yearns for something more—something authentic that allows her to be free of societal restraints. She decides that this authenticity comes in the form of moving to Paris, or really, anywhere besides the little suburban town she has grown so sickly used to.

Leo’s character, Frank, fleetingly endorses then dismisses his wife’s idea. He aspires to be a cashier while working as a docker. He is eventually offered a promotion, the reason why he rejects the idea of Paris (along with his wife’s happiness and his own chance to seek out what he actually wants in life). April constantly reminds Frank that there is no point in living when one has everything but hates his job, something he has to go to everyday that eventually defines him. This reminded me of Marx’s Estranged Labor. Marx described the unsatisfactory work of laborers who slaved away in factories, doing monotonous and repetitive tasks. Frank’s job is not too much different. This labor, according to Marx, takes the essence away from a human being. He becomes merely a machine. Sartre agrees, suggesting that falling into a societal role is inauthentic living. It is rejecting one’s freedom and ability to be a genuine individual.

There is a young man who routinely visits April and Frank with his parents. Aside from April, he is the only character in the movie who speaks his mind and says things as they are. He bluntly criticizes others, including Frank, with naked statements that are not glossed over by what is socially polite. This young man is a mental patient who has received electroconvulsive therapy multiple times. Because he does not conform and follow the social norm, he is deemed insane by his parents and society. Ultimately, April finds herself in the same position as the young man. She realizes that she does not fit in with all those around her who somehow find meaning and joy in their closed-off, monotonous lives. Upon realizing that Paris is not an option because of Frank and her third, unborn and unwanted child, April sees that she has only one escape. And that escape, to her, is more desirable than succumbing to an inauthentic life in which she feels like she is suffocating.

Suicide was April’s only escape. Most existential philosophers, however, do not condone it. They believe that there is a way for individuals to maintain their freedom without embracing death, even if it means living alone “underground,” watching the rest of society carry on above ground. Instead of killing herself, April should have used protection and moved to Istanbul! That would have made for an interesting Revolutionary Road 2. But honestly, I can see where April is coming from. While I love my suburban hometown and my family, I definitely want to explore bigger, better places. We all should. We only live once.

Ultimate Freedom: A Brief Analysis According to 3 Great Philosophers

In Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, the Madman goes to a marketplace in order to deliver the message that “God is dead” and that “we’ve killed him” to the people. However, he soon realizes he is the messenger who has come too early. The people he speaks to are still in the ascetic realm and do not realize the importance of the aesthetic. They still believe in the church and Judeo-Christian values and do not understand that the church is merely a catacomb for God, who is dead. And no, God is not dead in a literal sense nor did he once exist. Rather, Nietzsche believes the use of the Christian God for moral reasoning is no longer functional in society. The church represents inauthenticity. It is a structured institution that keeps people in line, providing them with security and comfort. This, however, limits peoples’ freedom and choices. This is further depicted by Nietzsche’s herd mentality in the sense that those who are part of organized religion go along with the crowd. They are just part of the masses rather than the Dionysion individual that Nietzsche pushes. Both Sartre and Camus reflect Nietzsche’s view of God in their works, emphasizing individual freedoms and choices representative of the Dionysion individual.

Sartre enforces that “freedom is existence, and in it existence precedes essence.” This means that we are not born into who we are, but rather our actions and choices in life define who we are. Thus, God does not instill a sense of purpose into our lives at birth. The defining of oneself happens at every given moment, so one must always be cognizant of his or her actions. This freedom of choice is the crux of Sartre’s beliefs. It represents authentic living. The opposite of authentic living is “bad faith,” introduced in Being and Nothingness. An example of bad faith is allowing roles to take over one’s life, making our actions monotonous and restricted. In this case, we are not free. “A grocer who dreams is offensive to the buyer, because such a grocer is not wholly a grocer. Society demands that he limits himself to his function as a grocer… There are indeed many precautions to imprison a man in what he is” (Being and Nothingness, 336). Similarly, the Christian that Nietzsche describes only plays a role. He prays, reads the Bible, goes to Church, and devotes his life to God within a societal institution. This represents the same kind of inauthentic living and bad faith as does the grocer who is trapped in his role by the imprisonment of society. Both the Christian and the grocer surrender their freedom for a secure role in a societal collective. Nietzsche and Sartre frown down upon this.

Like Nietzsche, Camus rejects God in his work, The Stranger. A Christian chaplain tries to convert the protagonist Meursault before he is to be put to death for his crime of murder. The chaplain tells Meursault that God can help him. Meursault, however, refuses this. He says, “I didn’t want anybody’s help, and I just didn’t have the time to interest myself in what didn’t interest me” (The Stranger, 117). This is because Meursault recognizes the absurdity of life. Life has no greater meaning or purpose; the world does not provide a basis for human value. This is related to the “Death of God” and how Judeo-Christian values, including a belief in a life of purpose as well as an afterlife, do not apply. Meursault ultimately embraces “the gentle indifference of the world” (The Stranger, 122). He accepts the absurdity of the world and his imminent death. In fact, he finds freedom in the execution that awaits him. “They were announcing departures for a world that now and forever meant nothing to me. For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman… So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again” (The Stranger, 122). With this passage, Camus addresses the inevitability of death. There is no discussion of an afterlife. Thus, it is implied that one should not live a Christian lifestyle in order to look forward to an afterlife. Rather, one should place more urgency on his or her “projects” in life, knowing that death in inevitable. These “projects” include our actions and choices made based on free will.