The Enormous Radio

The unauthenticity of society In today’s society we focus a lot on authenticity and being authentic. We go to great lengths to make sure we are and everything we have is genuine. Unfortunately, in order to achieve this, we sometimes lose the very essence of what we were trying to achieve. John Cheever’s famous work, “The Enormous Radio” demonstrates just that. In this essay I will be focusing on the inauthenticity of society as illustrated in “The Enormous Radio”. I will argue that that the inauthenticity in society illustrated in the story is caused by the fear of what others thinks and the need to keep up appearances. To begin I will look at how the text identifies and understands authenticity. I will continue by discussing how this causes…

An Analysis of Obsession on the Knowledge of the Others’ Private Lives in John Cheever’s “The Enormous Radio” The desire of discovering the others’ secrets is part of human nature, but it becomes a problem if it is too excessive. “The Enormous Radio,” by John Cheever, is a simple tale which can be interpreted as a lesson of life. The story focuses on Irene, a middle-class woman, who enjoys listening to the music on the radio. She is obsessed by the new radio which allows her to eavesdrop on…

"[Irene Westcott] was struck at once with the physical ugliness of the large gumwood cabinet"(Cheever 251). While its size is immediately referred to upon the very first description of the radio, the emphasized quality of the radio is not its size, but its aesthetic dissonance. "Irene was proud of her living room...[but] the new radio stood among her intimate possessions like an aggressive intruder"(Cheever 251). The constant remarks in regard to the radio's physical appeal serve as more than…

In the short story “The Enormous Radio,” John Cheever describes for us what happens when people get addicted to anything, similar to what we saw in Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited. He shows how by obtaining a certain item, people get haunted with its function and can’t control themselves until it starts to affect their own lives. In this story, the abruption of the smooth sailing life of the Westcott family was the enormous radio that Jim bought for his wife Irene. People that are high up…

Communism was shunned and not welcomed into America, McCarthy made a point to make that clear. In John Cheever’s “The Enormous Radio”, Irene Westcott, known as a wife and loving mother, becomes fascinated and drawn to the new radio her husband bought after the old one breaks. In further discovery, that she can eavesdrop on her neighbor’s lives through the radio stations and takes it to her advantage. She took away her neighbor’s privacy without them knowing by taking advantage…

Success, in the scope of literature, has very often been depicted as a situation that only occurs when you are a high class citizen with connections, money, and have preserved an elite status. This translates into a perpetual cycle where society has developed unrealistic standards that are consistently prompted to be upheld in the middle class. John Cheever, in “The Enormous Radio”, “The Country Husband”, and “O’ Youth and Beauty”, portrays couples that struggle with fitting into these standards…

In 1947, John Cheever wrote a short story titled “The Enormous Radio” about the darkness that is hidden inside others and inside us. He does this through a masterful use of symbols, contrasting Irene and the radio, and dynamic character development. The radio and the protagonist of the “The Enormous Radio” are symbols demonstrating the journey to self-awareness. Cheever conveys this message through the journey of the dynamic protagonist, Irene Wescott—who begins this story as a naïve middle-aged…

The lack of harmony shown in Mr. and Mrs. Westcott’s relationship is represented through the faulty tone of the radio. In our diagram, this is shown through the different shades on the scale showing harmony and discord. Immediately marked for its “mistaken sensitivity to discord,” the reactive nature of the radio is mirrored in Mr. and Mrs. Westcott’s conflicting personalities. Jim Westcott, not wanting to waste his youth on slipcovers and other extravagances was an extremely practical man who…

I believe John Cheever wrote The Enormous Radio, to show how the effect of secrecy affects the person, and a relationship. On how the radio effect Irene being the person and her marriage. And in three paragraphs I’m going to prove my point. The first sign that shows how Irene was being affected, was when she got up out the bed at night to get her son water. But afterwards, goes into the living room to listen to the radio and hears a conversation from a middle-aged couple discussing something,…

Try and remember the last time you were in a store. There’s always a string of the weeks “top 40” songs, early 2000s boy band ballads, and 1980s one-hit wonders continuously playing over the speakers to amuse you while you shop. It’s difficult to pinpoint any time where you were not serenaded by the radio while you were out running errands. All of this is thanks to the invention of broadcast radio. Broadcast radio was by far one of the most important and revolutionary inventions, paving the way…