Revolutionary Road: Part 3, Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

In the two-year period when Frank, April, Shep, and Milly were becoming close, but before they had joined the Laurel Players, the two couples had often gone to dance at Vito’s Log Cabin to the music of the Steve Kovick Quartet. Steve Kovick is a washed-up drummer who tries to put all his passion into his performance, but mostly hurts the audience’s ears. The bar is full of high school students who drink without showing ID, tough guys in leather jackets, and lonely bar regulars. Frank discovered the place and decided it was “so awful it’s kind of nice.” The two couples stopped going to the Log Cabin during rehearsals for The Petrified Forest, and have not been back since the play ended.

One night, after failing to come up with conversational topics, Frank, April, Shep, and Milly go back to the Log Cabin. April is withdrawn and silent, but Frank thinks of her unhappiness as her own problem. Frank feels confident because he’s wearing a new suit similar to Bart Pollock’s, and because of his affair with Maureen. He feels he will have to end the affair soon, but in the meantime, it is satisfying him perfectly. Her roommate has been home lately, so they have gone to a hotel where the anonymity makes him feel free.

Frank dances with Milly, because he knows if he dances with April, she will say she wants to go home. Milly gets too drunk and needs to be brought home, but when they look for their cars, one is blocked in. April says that Frank should take Milly home while she and Shep stay at the bar until the car is free. Shep can hardly believe that he is left alone with April. He realizes that it would have been just as logical for April to drive Milly home, leaving Frank, and wonders if this means April wants time alone with him. April and Shep go back inside. As they dance, he shyly touches her back and remembers pressing himself against her last summer, on a night when she had been too drunk to care. Now she seems receptive to his touch. They have another drink, but Shep can think of nothing to say. He goes to check the car, praying that it is still blocked in. It is. He feels angry at himself for thinking something might happen between himself and April, but cannot shake his hope that it will.

Shep returns to the bar. To his pleasure, April says she doesn’t mind that the car is still there and they must stay longer. She begins to talk about the music the band is playing, saying it doesn’t make her nostalgic because she never had any dates in grade school to dance to it. Shep says it is hard to believe that she didn’t have dates, but he is too shy to say that it is unbelievable because she is lovely. Instead he says she must have had fun on vacations. April says she never had fun on vacations either, which is a sure sign that it was her own “Emotional Problem” to blame for her unhappiness. Shep says he didn’t mean that. April continues to talk, and Shep feels she is airing out grievances to him, without being interested in speaking to him.

Suddenly, April asks Shep to jitterbug. Shep abandons himself to the dance, enraptured by the way April looks dancing. They have another drink, and Shep is sure that April is interested in him. He thinks about going to a motel or finding a place in a pasture to lie on his army poncho under the stars. In the parking lot, April kisses him, then they get into the car. He says he wants to take her somewhere, but she insists on having sex in the backseat of the car. Afterwards, Shep tells April he loves her, but she tells him not to say that. Shep is shocked to remember that April is pregnant. He says she must think he is an idiot. April says she doesn’t think he is an idiot, but she doesn’t know who he is and she doesn’t know who she is herself either.