32 pages • 1 hour read
John CheeverThe Enormous Radio
John CheeverFiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1947A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Disruption of Domesticity
The dramatic tension in this story coincides with waves of disruption that greatly impact the Westcott household. Those disruptions begin when the old radio, an important domestic entertainment appliance, breaks down and needs to be replaced. Such disruptions only grow more severe when a new radio is introduced into the family space. First, there is the size and ugliness of the new radio, a visual disruption that has negative ramifications for Irene’s finely curated decorations within the home. This is followed by several auditory disruptions, with each subsequent sound disturbance providing a growing level of disarray to the Westcott home. There is the volume level that jumps up, presumably of the radio’s own accord; this unsettling issue disrupts both wife and husband. There is also the earliest manner in which the radio amplifies surrounding noises, bringing first a “crackling” or “burning powder fuse” (34) sound that interferes with the music on the radio. These interferences become recognizable sounds from other areas in the apartment complex, including elevator noise and the electrical buzzing of household appliances.
The disruption of domesticity grows more severe when the radio’s most extraordinary power is revealed. Once Irene is able to eavesdrop on neighbors, she becomes obsessed with this activity, and this voyeurism creates the greatest disruption yet experienced in her life. She starts to see life and others through a darker, disillusioned lens, and then begins to behave in strange, erratic ways. This unwelcome change in her personality is apparent to her husband. He comes home to find her fallen into depression and despair. In that moment of high tension, Irene demands that her husband play an active role in dismantling another mainstay of acceptable domestic practices in the first half of the 20th century: the deployment of domestic abuse. It is notable that Irene is unable to go upstairs to face Mr. Osborn, the abusive husband, herself. Her inability to act represents the constraint of gender-specific norms then employed to maintain a patriarchal hegemony. Men are in control throughout all of 1940s societal structures, from great positions of power all the way down to the smallest social unit, the family. This is the reason for Jim’s ultimate decision to not just turn off the radio but to have it fixed properly once and for all. This closing reactionary measure can be seen as the husband’s forceful response to such disruptions. With the radio fixed, Irene can return to being the happy, complacent homemaker a patriarchal society intends her place in life to be.
Compartmentalization of Gender Roles and Marital Duties
This story strives to illustrate the importance of compartmentalized roles and duties in America in the mid-20th century. Jim, as head of his household, has his duties set for him. He is the breadwinner and the member of the family who deals with certain managerial aspects of upkeep in the home. Irene, as Jim’s wife, plays a subservient role to her husband. She has her own marital duties to tend to, and there is a clear demarcation between a husband and a wife’s distinct duties. To move outside the scope of such expected duties is to cause disruption and disarray. As Irene begins to learn more about the secret lives of others, her distressing emotional response gets in the way of maintaining a happy household with prescribed roles and duties. Jim’s need to return his wife to a happier state of mind demonstrates how psychological responses are also required to remain compartmentalized in mid-century America. Family members should be calm, collected, and happy in the face of all challenges they face. Any demonstration of excessive negativity is a failure to compartmentalize unwelcome emotional responses.
Employees embody further compartmentalization of duties in the Westcott home. Emma, as a domestic servant, takes on certain familial duties that would fall on Irene’s shoulders if the Westcott family were not wealthy enough to afford such assistance. The handyman who is briefly mentioned comes into the Westcott home to assist with certain tasks. Presumably, he is available to fix things around the apartment when needed, but he is not the person the Westcotts rely on when their radio breaks down. Instead, they depend on repairmen who visit when this assistance is required. The repairmen represent specialized knowledge. They take on duties that are concentrated on a very small area of expertise. Jim, though he is the head of his household, does not possess this kind of knowledge. He can only “strike the side of the cabinet with his hand” (33) to fix things, so he must rely on others to maintain order in the home. This reliance is juxtaposed with Irene’s own reliance on a maid, whose expertise with housekeeping and childrearing does not negate Irene’s own capabilities as a housewife. When the maid is not on duty, Irene is perfectly capable of cooking the family meals and tending to the children. With this juxtaposition, the story provides a comparison of gendered roles, one that suggests that men were growing more reliant on support from others as compartmentalization continued to redefine modern life in the 20th century.
The Dangerous Pursuit of Knowledge
In this story, the dangerous pursuit of knowledge has clear biblical undertones. Irene, like Eve in the Garden of Eden, is tempted by an “aggressive intruder” (34). With its “malevolent green light,” the radio is described in a serpent-like manner, a monstrous appliance that invades a domestic paradise with “violent forces” (34) waiting to be released. The radio is more than just a tempter; it is a symbol of truth and the embodiment of the forbidden fruits waiting to entrap unwary listeners. The radio houses hidden knowledge similar to what is held in each piece of fruit growing off the tree of good and evil. Irene, like her biblical antecedent, tempts her husband into trying “something else’” (36). She coaxes her husband to indulge in that forbidden fruit.
The Westcotts’ story forks away from the biblical narrative in notable ways. Rather than echoing the same narrative of expulsion for both husband and wife, Irene is the sole sinner, continuing to indulge in the radio’s furtive fruits to the point of obsession. Each listening session allows her to overhear examples of “indigestion, carnal love, abysmal vanity, faith, and despair” (37). These lessons provide her with the knowledge she needs to witness the sinful suffering of the world. She is moved to a point of despair reminiscent of the shame that Adam and Eve felt when they first recognized their own nakedness.
Jim labels Irene’s voyeuristic actions as “indecent” (39). At this point in the Westcotts’ narrative, Jim isn’t presented as one of the sinners but as a judge. He weighs his wife’s actions the way most men would in a patriarchal society as domineering as their own. As head of their household, he is seen as being godlike in stature: What he decrees is tantamount to scripture and to law. He renders judgment upon his wife in a way that echoes the Lord’s judgment on Adam and Eve. The clear difference has to do with the question of expulsion. Rather than expelling the sinner, Jim roots out the cause itself, the knowledge heard from the gumwood tree’s speakers. By expelling the radio’s extraordinary powers, Jim is ensuring that his small domestic paradise will never be pervaded by such “violent forces” (34) again.
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