Photo by Ian Hayhurst licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommerical No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License. In today's one hour block we discussed the short story "The enormous radio" by John Cheever.
I was quite impressed with these discussions overall. Many students were well-prepared and had a lot to say. I wanted to share some particularly insightful interpretations I heard today.
As we know, the Westcotts shared a love of classical music, yet they didn't often mention this to their friends. Many students said that music is the only thing they share, since there has been a communication breakdown in their marriage, and Jim is always working. Several students also mentioned that classical music has a perfect rhythm - the Westcotts' marriage seems to have a perfect rhythm, but by the end of the story we have come to understand that this is just an illusion.
I was so pleased that some students picked up on the theme of the postwar American Dream: owning a big house in the suburbs, two children, economic security, the "perfect life". Here we can definitely see the irony of the story: the Westcotts have financial problems, Irene has stolen from her family and treated her friend badly, and moreover she has had an abortion, which Jim clearly did not agree with. The abortion is not really shocking to modern readers, but in 1947, when the story was published, abortion was illegal in America and shocking indeed. In other words, their family life is far from perfect. Cheever may even be criticizing the very concept of the American Dream as a naive illusion, always unattainable.
I think we need to be a bit careful about the cause and effect relationship in this story. The enormous radio doesn't actually cause the marriage problems; rather it reveals them. So is Cheever primarily criticizing the media? I'm not so sure. The problems existed long before the enormous radio arrived. I loved the way one student mentioned that the enormous radio represents postwar life, the new life. Irene's addiction to media and voyeurism are certainly themes in the story, but the overall theme is probably hypocrisy and the lie of upper middle class American life at that time.
Some students complained that there wasn't much 'action' in the film. Students had some difficulty overall defining the genre. We can describe this story's genre as realism with a touch of fantasy, or even as psychological realism since most of the action takes place in the internal lives of the characters.
There are dozens of very interesting interpretations of this story, and I encourage you to read some of them. You can find some short explanations here.
I hope some of you will write on your blogs about this story!
I really believe that we should also consider the fact that Cheever did work on the characters rather deeply. So I couldn't stop myself from analyzing them while I was getting ready to our class today. And some comments on some of the authors' points. I'd like to share these with everyone :)
ReplyDelete"Irene satisfies her ego in a social way by pitying her neighbours' issued lives. Even then she cannot be relieved so at the end where she got struck by the fight she heard in an apartmant, she asks her husband wheter their lives were perfect and if they were happy for conformation.
Her husband Jim is aware of this situation being immoral because she is violating a lot of moral and legal subjects. But he cannot understand why she can't keep herself from listening to that radio all the time. And at the end he realizes that all of her concerns were based on their social stand and the societies' sanctions over human beings, Irene being a good example for it.
The author mainly directs you to question ethic conflicts and to think about the society you live in, not asking the question directly but remotely: how intimate are you in your own life?"
It is very smart of the author to use the radio ironicly in order to make it show the problems of the Westcott family.As you mentioned in your writing Sonja; his main focus is not the radio,although he has named the story "The Enormous Radio".He generally observes the issue of human being's usage of media and technology. So mainly it is our option to whether be the bad affected one or the good user.
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