Author: Abuu Khamis

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.

1.) The background information given prior as to how it relates to the real life occurrences today (page 4).

2.) The Gothic includes pushing towards extremes, whether they are cruelty, rapacity and fear, or passion and sexual degradation (page 5).

3.) The free-thinking characters that appear frequently in the Gothic are generally up to no-good, disbelieving in the significance of virginity (page 5).

4.) The acknowledgment of the continuing existence of magic, religious and demonic forces within a more and more secular society (page 6).

5.) Among the most striking features of the Gothic genre is the style of the architectural settings, often as medievalist (page 7).

Out of the short stories that we’ve read so far, the one that had captivated me the most would be “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. I chose this short story as my favorite one so far because of its use of irony, conflict and foreshadowing throughout the story. Every year, the community plays an annual game with all of the villagers writing their name in a piece of paper, and someone would pick out one piece of paper with someone’s name on it. Any reader would most likely assume that the person whose name was picked out would win something out of the lottery. Instead, the person would end up getting stoned to death by all of the other villagers. That part really caught me off-guard, and it had me intrigued for what happened afterwards. It was also ironic because Tessie Hutchison, who was chosen in the lottery to get stoned to death, was among those who were excited as to whose name would get picked in the lottery, only for her to be the name picked later in the story. I was intrigued by the surprising turn of events, and I wouldn’t have thought that she would end up getting picked. It made sense as to why they would do it annually, since it’s seen as a tradition for the villagers, but I felt that they could’ve gone about the lottery in a better way than to kill the chosen villager. Additionally, I liked how they used a sense of foreshadowing in the story by using the children playing with the stones as a form of foreshadowing to the fatal stoning. I also chose this story, since it was interesting to me that they presented it as a person vs. society form of conflict, as it revolves around Tessie Hutchison against the other villagers. Therefore, the use of irony, conflict and foreshadowing made the story fascinating for me to read, and contributed as to why this was the short story that stood out to me the most so far.