Author: JiaNing

John Cheever’s “The Enormous Radio” is Gothic because it has the element of emotional distress and supernatural due to the radio having the ability to play out their neighbor’s private life. In the story, Irene’s husband Jim had bought a new radio for her to listen to as she enjoys listening to music from it but the old one was broken. When Jim got her the new radio, the radio didn’t play the music she wanted but instead, she overheard her neighbors’ lives. She realizes that their carefree facade in public was all fake and that behind the closed door were all living terribly. She was then depressed about life after hearing all about their neighbor’s darks’ secrets and pleads to her husband in hopes that their relationship wasn’t like their neighbors. Jim then tells her that she didn’t need to listen to any of this because he bought the radio for her to enjoy but instead it caused the opposite effect and made her feel gothic emotions such as anxiety and depression.  When Jim finds out that Irene didn’t pay her clothing bill, Jim raised his voice and got mad at Irene and scold her for being irresponsible thus causing Jim to express all the bad things she has done causing a ripple to their relationship and making Irene realized that she was in denial and that she has been listening to her own life as well.

John Cheever’s “The Enormous Radio” is not Gothic because although the story had emotional distress, it didn’t feel like Irene had an insane mental breakdown at the end of the story and she just realized she was just equally as bad as their neighbor and that she shouldn’t be the one to judge their lives because their neighborhood lives were supposed to be private. The story also didn’t have a gothic setting, most of the story took place in their home which was a regular home.

When reading Alan Lloyd Smith on American Gothic, several important ideas was shown in the text and these were the five most important ideas to me when I was reading.

#1. What led to American Gothic was the frontier experience of inherent solitude, potential violence, fear of European subversion, and anxieties about democracy which was new during its time, and the absence of a developed society racial issue concerning both slavery and Native Americans. (Page 4)

#2.  Gothic deals in transgressions and negativity, perhaps in reaction against the optimistic rationalism of its founding era. (Page 5)

#3. Gothic explores and tackles taboos such as religious profanities, demonism, occultism, necromancy, and incest. (Page 6)

#4. Gothic deals with extreme states of past traumas and guilt. (page 6-7)

#5. Gothic exposes the landscape of nature. In time these tropes of atmosphere, architecture, and landscape can become metaphorical to the Gothic setting. (Page 7)

In my perspective, Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” was the most enjoyable short story we had read for our assignment. The story had a lot of foreshadowing in it made the twist a lot more interesting. My favorite foreshadowing in the short story had to be when the kids were picking up rocks for a game just before the lottery was about to start. I as the reader found it odd how the kids were picking up rocks for a game, but the game was never mentioned till we see another moment when someone threw the rock at Tessie. I also enjoyed how the author didn’t tell us what the lottery was. When we think of the lottery in modern times, we always think about the power ball where you win millions of dollars if you were the one who bought and guessed all the correct numbers in the lotto. But in the story, it’s the complete opposite where you didn’t want to be the chosen one to win the lottery because instead of winning millions of dollars, you get stoned to death instead. The story had made me think about questioning our traditions. The story implies that this was an ongoing tradition and that it was normal to stone someone to death. In fact, when I was reading the North village in the story wanted to give up on their lottery tradition, and old man Warner called them out for being crazy. This situation reminds me of the modern-day where a lot of conservatives like to live in the old way of times while the newer generation wants to have new rights and laws so that the future of their generation would live in a better world. Overall, this was my favorite short story because it had foreshadowing and because the author tackles on things like questioning our traditions just like we do in our modern time. -Jia Ning Li