Category: Coffeehouse #4 (Page 1 of 2)

The Enormous Radio by John Cheever is a story that contains various gothic elements. One of the elements that I noticed is gothic emotions that are extreme and gothic actions, such as acting irrational. In the story, Irene becomes obsessive over listening to the radio that Jim had bought her. Irene during the story faces extreme emotions of doubt about her own life. Whether or not she is truly happy in her marriage with Jim and if her life is as happy as she thought it was. The gothic element of actions is also prevalent. Being that she is thriving in her own negative and thoughts.

On the other hand, The Enormous Radio could not be a gothic story. My main reason for thinking so is because there is no abstract return to normalcy. Unlike other stories such as the lottery, where the characters literally murder their own friends and go about their day afterward, Cheever’s story is less dramatic. Irene at the end of the story attempts to return to her normal life after the events of the radio. Although it may be difficult and she wishes that she had remained ignorant of what had been occuring. Another factor might be where the story takes place, there are no daunting landscapes or locations in the story. The setting is on the scale of being more normal than the other stories that could be considered gothic.

“The Enormous Radio” by John Cheever is a story told in third person narration. The story is not gothic because the setting. Jim and Irene Westcott are a wealthy family with children and a maid. Irene stays home all day and Jim works. Irene wears her jewelry and fur and attends lunch with her friends. They both enjoy listening to the radio together when Jim arrives home.

 Jim buys Irene a new shiny radio to make his wife happy even though they seem to be not as wealthy as the year before. When the new radio is being used, they do not hear music but everyone in their private apartments. Jim and Irene find this amazing and continues to listen as if it was a reality show. Irene sees her neighbors in the elevator and judges them in her mind by what she hears through the radio. However, after reading this short story I realized that it had some allegory elements. Jim and Irene were wrapped up in listening to their neighbor’s personal conversations and judging them that at the end you learn they are having money problems of their own as Jim yells at her over her unpaid clothing bill, $400 for a new radio and Irene acting like she is saint when Jim really knows who she is. Instead of Jim and Irene being nosey they should’ve been working on their own marriage and home instead of judging others.

This story has gothic elements as well because the way the story ended. At the end the Central Gothic Irony comes in to play as Jim was yelling at Irene, she listens to the radio hoping to hear the neighbors, but she hears the weather and a railroad disaster in Tokyo. The radio starts to play when Irene wants listen to her neighbors instead of hearing the truth Jim has to say.

In “The enormous radio” by John Cheevers there are elements of this story being gothic. We meet a couple Jim and Irene westcott that get a new radio that plays music and also can hear sound from other apartments. Some gothic elements examples that “the enormous radio” has is dread. Irene seems to me a bitter and just mad women, she doesn’t like things she hears and just is mad at everything bringing negative energy. From hearing from her radio she also finds out about Mr. Osborn beating up his wife. What she is doing is very wrong but yet she still does it sitting there and listening to her neighbors which is very wrong and shouldn’t be done. This ruined her relationship with her husband making the whole situation negative and making him more judgmental and less loving.

Also, in “The enormous radio” by John Cheevers there are also non gothic traits like the huge one is the setting. Gothic settings take place in like castles, or anything that’s like dark and gloomy setting. They live in a normal place with normal people and nothing that has to do with magic or a gothic setting. Also Irene lives a normal life, there is no return back to reality and isn’t like in a dream or in something supernatural setting that she comes back to live in her normal life, she lives a normal life even though it’s messed up and not how you wanna live she lives a pretty normal life with her neighbors who also live a normal life expect Mr. Osborn for what he did.

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.

The short story “The Enormous Radio” by John Cheever has many traits being gothic in nature. The story is about Jim and Irene Westcott who replace their broken-down radio with a new radio. This new radio can play music as well as play other people’s conversations. The story starts to show gothic elements such as gothic emotions and gothic hallmarks like pushing the limit. This is prevalent when the couple repeatedly uses the radio. As we read on we can start to notice that Irene’s perception of her relationship with John starts to be altered by the radio. This leads to her becoming more aggressive towards John and this, in turn, caused John to go towards the same path bringing up Irene’s past. By the end of the story, we see that Irene has trust issues and judges everyone.

One reason why the short story “The Enormous Radio” by John Cheever could not be gothic is because of the setting. The setting takes place in John’s and Irene’s house where there is no gothic style setting. Gothic style settings usually portray dark themes like crypts, churches, graves, underground, basements, attics, forests, darkness or dark spaces, bleak or stormy settings. This story has no substantial setting like those and is just a regular house. There is also a lack of return of normalcy. In the end, we see that Irene still portrays emotions such as trust issues and loses herself to her paranoia.

The Enormous Radio by John Cheever reminds me of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown in that everything seemed quite ‘normal’ in the beginning when the characters are introduced. It quickly goes downhill from there once Jim Westcott and his wife, Irene, acquires a radio to replace the one that became broken. Like how Goodman Brown goes on a journey into a dark forest and meets people that he thought he knew, Irene notices that the strange ugly radio was able to receive their neighbors’ sounds and the surrounding apartment complex. The shock of being able to listen to elevator, doorbells and even to the apartment next to their apartment led to an increased fascination of the radio. So much so that Irene purposely cuts her time short with her friends just to go back home and listen to the radio, as if overly addicted. She does transform to become a person who never leaves the house and invents a new goal in life, which is to only listen to the radio. By doing so, Irene changes her perspective of everything around her, including her husband, due to the influence of said radio. The Enormous Radio is a gothic story because it shares traits with Young Goodman Brown that involves a character changing what they consider to be their normality into a completely different one. In addition, the new radio that the Westcott’s purchased was rather strange and foreshadows the darkness that resulted in Irene’s and Jim’s marriage becoming conflicted at the conclusion of the story.

The only way I believe that The Enormous Radio would not be a gothic literature is if the story progresses like how it normally is, up until the point where instead of Irene becoming obsessed with the new radio, she would either dispose of it or attempt to stop crime as if she was trying to be like Batman. This is because the new, ugly radio functioned like what the modern American Federal Bureau of Investigation did after the deadly events of September 11^th, 2001. The agency actually spied on the American population for fear of another terrorist attack. Many New Yorkers were also encouraged to report strange actions done in the MTA subway system, with many “If you see something, say something” advertisement posted all over MTA property.

The Enormous radio is a story that does display many traits of it being gothic in nature. The story revolves around the story of a family specifically the parents, Jim and Irene Westcott. after having endured the use of a faulty radio. they managed to get a new radio that had the strange quirk of being able to tune into conversations of others living in their apartment complex. At the first discovery of this insight it was used for a regular night of amusement but Irene slowly started abusing it to fully eavdrop on everybody around. This was the beginning of the descent of negativity that soon consumed Irene as she had access to the unfiltered worlds of all her neighbors. This all leads to a classic example of gothic irony as confronted with her own dirty past by Jim, Irene sought comfort into the Radio to drown out her own problems of those of others but was met with a regular news broadcast which is what she originally wanted in a new radio.

This story might not be classified into the genre of gothic mainly due to the lack of supernatural themes. the setting is in a ordinary place, with a very ordinary family that of course is not perfect by any means that reside in a building with a lot of other faulty humans that one can find in any genre. all of the problems of everyone are also in line with reality as it does not deviate from anything of the unususual the only element that represents the supernatural in this story is the radio, but this can just be explained as a faulty radio that was just extremely sensitive to sound as was expressed in the early impressions of the radio and the ability for it to relay regular broadcasts since it’s acquisition to the Westscotts.

-AAB

Raymond Osoria

The short story “The Enormous Radio” by John Cheever depicts many aspects of what could make this short story a gothic story. This story centers around a couple Jim and Irene Westcott, the story talks about a radio that Jim had purchased for Irene. However, the radio came with some surprises of its own. The plot within the story begins to thicken as the gothic element of negativity building up within Irene. When Jim surprised Irene with the radio at her first glance she already disapproved of it without even giving it a chance, her reasoning was because of how the radio cabinet didn’t match up with her sense of furniture style. In most cases this would be a normal situation to handle until she turns on the radio and suspense within the story begins to build. When she turned on the radio everything seemed ok aside from the volume being loud, however, once she lowered the volume that’s when the suspense and tension begins to build because the radio starts to pick up many different signals from the surrounding apartments (phone calls, home appliances, bells sounds, etc.). This experience that Irene went through with this radio begins to change her perception on her relationship which causes her to develop trust issues and become paranoid which are both elements of gothic actions. The radio itself is an element of gothic fiction it brings its own mysteries and suspense to the story.

While there are many aspects that could lead you to think that this story is gothic fiction however, there are certain aspects of this story that could call its genre into question. For instance the setting of the story, the setting of the entire story is set in an average apartment living room were as most gothic fiction settings are in dark and gloomy places like a dark castle or forest or even an abandoned building. Something else that the story lacked was the return to normalcy, the couple in the story never got that return to normalcy for themselves, instead the story held on to the wife’s paranoia and mistrust.

   In “The Enormous Radio” by John Cheever, middle-class couple Jim and Irene Westcott replace their broken-down radio with an expensive model that, along with playing music, transmits sound from the other apartments in her building. “The Enormous Radio” can be described as gothic due to strange events surrounding the radio which is seemingly a supernatural force. The radio malfunctions can have a legitimate, natural explanation but appear to originate from otherworldly forces – especially since they got it ‘repaired’ multiple times. Irene is transfixed by the radio ability to tune into her neighbors’ lives, comparing her neighbors’ abundantly growing issues to her and Jim’s perfect marriage. However, their marriage is indeed not perfect, the radio resurfacing secrets during an explosive argument in which Jim confronts Irene’s fascination with the neighbors. The radio forced Jim and Irene to face the ugliness of their marriage, they would’ve been better without the radio cause Irene was ignorant to her neighbor’s problems and her own unhappiness in her marriage. 

      Admittedly, “The Enormous Radio” cannot be referred to as gothic from the abstinence of stereotypical gothic elements – most noticeably the lack of a haunted or gloomy appearance. Jim and Irene Westcott is a typical marriage, unable to confront their imperfections they reside in this facade, like the rest of their building. The radio is certainly a faulty appliance, but not supernatural. Instead of emitting normal station frequencies, it picks up the frequencies of other radios nearby. In the era of the story, during the 1940s almost every household owned a radio, the unadvanced technology not immune to issues. Further evidence the radio isn’t supernatural is it’s completely fixed at the end of the story. During the ending argument, Irene repeatedly turns the dial, hoping the radio will emit something comforting, but it only broadcasts the news. Their marital issues aren’t as out of the ordinary as any marriage, especially compared to some of their neighbors. 

“The Enormous Radio” by John Cheever is a story centered around the couple, Jim and Irene Westcott. The story is about a radio that Jim purchases for Irene, that can pick up their neighbors’ conversations. This story does have gothic elements involved in it such as the suspense and tension that are built through the couple’s experience with the mysterious radio. This radio changes Irene’s perception of her own relationships causing her to develop trust issues and paranoia. The radio is a supernatural sort of object which brings a suspenseful and mysterious mood to the story, just like an element that would exist in gothic fiction. The tension built throughout the story between the couple is also a similar element to the tone that would be present in gothic fiction.

The story doesn’t follow the entire formula of gothic literature however. There are elements missing such as the return to normalcy, the concept of a dream, and the scary setting. The couple doesn’t return to normal after their experience with the radio, far from that. Irene who was originally a normal and content women who began to feel paranoid and guilty after her obsession with the radio drove her to a change. The couple began to have a rift in their relationship because of problems that didn’t exist before the radio had taken a toll on Irene. The concept of a dream or illusion isn’t present either since everything that occurs in the story is happening in the realm of reality that the characters belong to and are aware of. The setting is also normal and not special or scary like it normally would be in gothic fiction. The story does contain elements that are relevant in gothic literature, but is also missing several important elements that would identify a story as gothic fiction.