The short story called “The Enormous Radio” by John Cheever, narrated in a third person point of view, is mainly about a middle-class couple from New York City, Jim and Irene Westcott, with 2 children. They had a worn-down radio that stopped working one day, so they decided to get a new expensive, vintage radio that would transmit domestic sounds, like people arguing or doorbells, rather than playing music when lowering the volume. This is where the story displays a sense of gothic irony. The new radio represents the precariousness of interfering into other peoples’ lives. It builds up the tension and suspense into the family’s lives, since Irene starts finding out her neighbors’ darkest secrets and conversations, while also starting to contradict her own marriage. Irene starts to develop a sense of addiction with the radio, intentionally rushing home from her whereabouts just to listen to what people around her are saying, and it becomes normal to her. She gains a sense of paranoia and starts to have trust issues as well, which depicts the feeling of a character in gothic fiction. Jim and Irene start to question their marriage towards the end of the story. It brings out a similarity to “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Lottery,” since what was considered normal in the beginning of the story changes drastically, and isn’t at all what the readers would expect to be the new normal. This goes to show that “The Enormous Radio” has its gothic qualities.

While the story displays some gothic irony, there are also effects as to how it’s not gothic either. For instance, everything about the story seems realistic, such as the setting, the main characters are an ordinary family that has their flaws like everyone else, the radio didn’t have any supernatural features to it, and everything that went on with the other people that Irene heard through the radio were realistic. Additionally, the story itself stuck to Irene being paranoid and questioning her marriage instead of everything getting back to normal. Jim, who never yelled at her throughout the story, starts to yell at her towards the end of the story. This means that while the story displays some sense of gothic irony, it wouldn’t be considered gothic.