Comparative Analysis on Belonging of Romulus

The 1961 novel revolutionist Road by reservoir Richard Yates links strongly with the autobiographical recount Romulus, My flummox, by Raimond Gaita, and in so doing provides a greater understanding of the concept of Belonging. It charts the disintegration of the marriage of stamp and April Wheeler as they struggle against the oppressive conformity of suburban fifties America. The texts together explore the processes undergone by the individual in their integration to fraternity and its inbuilt cultural groups.Revolutionary Road posits as its primal idea that life is entirely and inescapably, non only on the come forward tho right down to the core of charitable nature an act. totally action of the characters in the novel, every single piece of look, thought, and rea word of honoring be based on a structure of systematic etiquette. The substitution protagonist, outspoken Wheeler phrases this concept perfectly in the way he describes the legal transfer of his wife a s having a quality of rook-acting, of slightly false intensity, a way of seeming to speak less to him and more to some romantic abstraction.Though set in the cultural dead- displace of the United States in the 1950s, a time when the American dream, entirely achieved, was beginning to ring apprehend it could easily be from any context that could be regarded as a society the text implying a sense of general universality of its central posit. The book shows that in any attempt for acceptance, true self expression willing be limited often severely so. Contrastingly, Romulus, My Father appears to espouse an entirely opposite premise that an honestly of character equates to candid goodness, even in the face of great adversity, and will bring a sense of ful? led connection in life. As Gaita puts is Character was the central les watchword concept for my father and Hora. Romulus retains his own indistinguishability, despite the barriers it creates in a society that seeks to assimi late and it is this very attribute that allows him to belong to his family and those he loves. Romuluss ideals are based entirely on his true feeling, non positivistic to a speci? c formula of action and reaction such as is the case in Revolutionary Road his values are what devote him. Upon further analysis, however, this is no less a conformity to protocol than that of weenie and April.Gaita states that the sense given to me by my father and Hora, of the contrast surrounded by plastic laws and conventions made by human beings to reconcile and suit their many interests, and the unbending authority of morality, always the judge, never merely the servant of our interests, the wisdom of his son that certain rules are entirely unbreakable and inarguable is, in itself, a baseless social construct. No factual contrast between human convention and morality actually exists. Morality was for him as substantially a opus of reality as the natural facts of human action and motivation. To underestimate the feelings of Frank Wheeler as somehow less guiding than Romuluss is also incorrect, both use feeling based reasoning to study one of several possible options, open to them as a turn up of combination of setting and the system they channelize as inarguable, infallible law. Gaita attempts no higher rail line for the inherent goodness of his father than his strict bowing and conformist attitude to a moral viewpoint, and makes no further argument for the de? nition of what good is beyond what one perceives to be good.Both are, at root, based on entirely nothing at all to call one moral and the other etiquette is a farce, both are mere social construct, create by cultural conditioning, to establish and maintain a system of behavior deemed correct for no true reason. They only exist as objectively unchangeable so long as their creators and keepers believe them to be so. So, to head off the true baselessness of their society and everything the believe in, the protagonists of both texts resort to a manner of delusion just as strong as that which they infer to abhor.In Revolutionary Road, Yates uses a technique of not matching the internal dialogue or self- acquaintance of his characters to the events of the plot or speech. Frank Wheeler will often cipher conversations in his head, or prescribe to himself some false grandiosity in his lines contrasted to a third person narrative voice, which reveals the scene to be ordinarily uneventful and mediocre. April envisions herself a full world of marvelous golden people somewhere ho made their lives work out the way they wanted without even trying, who never had to make the best of a bad seam because it never occurred to them to do anything less then perfectly the ? rst time. Sort of rarified super-people, all of them beautiful and witty and calm and kind, and I always imagined that when I did ? nd them Id suddenly recognize that I Belonged among them, that I was one of them, that Id b een meant to be one of them all along, and everything in the meantime had been a mistake and theyd know it overly. Id be like the ugly duckling among the swans. The Wheelers believes in something greater, something more, and that they a worthy part of it when in reality, such a thing is simply non-existent. All they actually have is the mediocrity of their suburban prison, and the paradox of a world which, with all options open, is so terrifyingly vast that they must cling to the safety and security afforded by familiar protocol. They hold ? rm the excuse that it is necessary and inevitable to ensure societal acceptance, and the vague general assumption that they are somehow different, somehow reform or above their surroundings. They are not.All that separates them is their own idea of separation, they do not think themselves to belong, yet in reality ful? ll perfectly the 50s Nuclear Family suburban stereotype. They are everything they claim to hate in a way so natural they prob ably couldnt have achieved if theyd tried. There is no backup to their facade, no face behind the masks they craft, no true identity oppressed by circumstance. All that they have is, as Frank puts it, the lost emptiness. This is mirrored in Romulus, but in regards to Raimonds perception of his father he sees him not as he is, but as an archetype some romantic abstraction.The novel is essentially a glori? cation. For Raimond, Romulus is a great man someone special whose faults could either be excused to someone elses inadequacy, his madness, or an overextension of his stubborn moralism him being too good. The events described clearly contradict this, however. Romulus was not remarkable nor extraordinary. He lacked rivalry and intelligence (after not succeeding in gaining scholarship he never again pursued any attempts at education, despite the fact that he had suf? ient ability and opportunity yet in referance to the event, Raimond makes the claim that He cried bitterly, not bec ause of lost employment prospects, but because his love of learning would never be ful? lled. ). e wasted his skills in beautiful metalwork ( as the composer puts isHe was able to make almost anything to the most exacting standards, his work was unexcelled in quality and speed, and My father was not merely skilled, he was a man of practical genius) upon the construction of what even his son admits is ugly furniture. e led a lifestyle that perpetuated the isolation that so caused him and those he loved to suffer. In his life he never did a single thing that could be regarded as brilliant that was not to the end of his or Raimonds continued survival and though for much of it he lived through great hardship, in the context of humanity it was not curiously severe. The greatest insight to this is found in the ? nal pages of the book, in the speech delivered at Romuluss funeral, in which Raimond says (in regards to his father) that he never intentionally caused suffering to anyone.It wo uld take a man of enormous stupidity not to realize that to in? ict domestic violence unto his mentally ill wife and young baby would cause them signi? cant pain. The composer attempts to portray his fathers wrongs as a product of circumstance, removed from choice or free will but if such a stance is taken, there is no limit upon extending it to good deeds as well or, even to the very heart of a persona no line can be drawn between what is merely conditioning and what is ones true nature.It is ironic that in attempting to portray a man who espoused no greater good than real character, Gaita paints a nearly perfect archetype and ignores or downplays or re-interprets aspects just as real and signi? cant to who his father was as those which play to what he seems to want to see. Raimond in his perception of his father and the Wheelers in their perception of themselves seem to assume that, would it not have been for that which life had thrown at them, they could have been something muc h greater something truer to themselves or more realizing of their own potential.In reality, they had the whole world at their hands, and as much time at their administration as any who has lived. They were exactly as they were, and nothing more. It was not circumstance that prohibited the ful? llment of these characters potential this was but a convenient excuse it was themselves the good-for-naught fact was that neither the Wheelers nor Romulus were actually so brilliant at all.Ergo, from a collective analysis of both texts, it can be concluded that, in the processes undergone by the individual in their integration to society and its inherent cultural groups, the conformity to an idealized human archetype, though necessary to belong, will inevitably deny individualistic actualization of the true human condition. through with(predicate) the ideas explored in Revolutionary Road text, strong links can be made with Raimond Gaitas Romulus, My Father, to provide a signi? cantly furt hered understanding of the concept of Belonging.