ipl-logo

John Cheever's The Enormous Radio

763 Words4 Pages

Evan Meyer Professor Cara Snider English 102:21 March 5, 2018 When put together, insight about John Cheever's childhood, paired with the characterization in this story manufactures and reinforces the stories most evident theme: appearances can be deceiving. To start off, the reader is given a bleak description of an average couple living in Manhattan in the 1940's, with the only thing separating them from their peers is their taste in "serious music." When their radio finally breaks, the husband buys a new one. The radio, bought for their pleasure, did not work correctly. Instead of playing music as it should, Jim and Irene Westcott find that they are tuned into the lives of their neighbors. Irene finds she can’t stop listening to it. …show more content…

Cheever shines light on that trait in the opening of The Enormous Radio with a master class in characterization: "Jim and Irene Westcott were the kind of people who seem to strike that satisfactory average of income, endeavor, and respectability that is reached by the statistical reports in college alumni bulletin boards. They were parents of two young children, they had been married nine years, they lived on the twelfth floor of an apartment house near Sutton Place, they went to the theatre an average of 10.3 times a year, and they hoped someday to live in Westchester."(Cheever, 1). The whole of the story is encompassed in those two sentences. There is also an expressionless element to this description, a severing disconnection, that not for the final time questions the figure narrating …show more content…

That he was expelled from Thayer Academy in Massachusetts as seventeen. You might even find that, "With the eventual failure of the shoe industry and the difficulties of his parents’ marriage, he had an unhappy adolescence." (Britannica, 2). Because of the downfall of his father's business, "His mother owned a gift shop and supported the family with the shop's profits." (notable biographies, 1). This strained his parent's marriage. However, Cheever's family always appeared respectable, and middle-class. Never wanting to truly show that they were not what they appeared to

Show More
Related
813 Words | 4 Pages

Shortly after his father had passed, his mother sent him to live with other relatives in Baltimore. Between the years of 1866 and 1878 he was a shoemaker’s apprentice. He later on become a barber. Dissatisfied with the work he was doing, he decided to further his education. In the year of

Read More
798 Words | 4 Pages

His father, who worked at home, was known all around (New World Encyclopidia)it’s even thought that one of his uncles was killed during a radical political experiment. His father wrote articles that would sometimes be published explaining how the English were evil or even how Catholics were the devils of the world. But with that factories started taking away many of the business that local men got and forced them to go and work for factories. His father was a too extreme risk to take on so he was left without a job. They had to borrow 20 pounds from people around the town to get a ticket to America.

Read More
372 Words | 2 Pages

In addition to not fitting in with society, Crooks, Lennie, and George stand out since they all have become a specific archetype. Steinbeck describes his character

Read More
1359 Words | 6 Pages

He grew up knowing very little about his identity as you was not familiar with his birthdate, did not know his father was and he was separated from his mother at a very early age. Born during the time of slavery he was set to be a slave as that of his mother and was left to an elderly woman too old for field work to raise him. During

Read More
965 Words | 4 Pages

He was forty years old and was a revolutionary . He was a family man. He worked hard to get to the life he had. He went to Harvard College, which is a very prestigious school, and worked very hard to graduate. He was a farmer which means that he worked very hard in the land to be able to provide

Read More
1929 Words | 8 Pages

Being that he was African American and living in the south in poverty, his escape from his everyday

Read More
194 Words | 1 Pages

His father had a hard time holding a job and was frequently sick. Many articles speak of his father as a man who was taken to alcoholism, certainly to spending too much time in the bars, or saloons.

Read More
844 Words | 4 Pages

He did not really have enough power within himself to make choices because everyone normally told him what to do. He started getting more involved in the life of the streets and started becoming a part of “clicks.” He got arrested numerous times and had many phone calls from school to his mother. Overall, it was all he knew, that whole life became who he

Read More
1423 Words | 6 Pages

He said,"We were poor, but the glory of it was we didn't know it." This impacted him in his childhood, particularly in high school, in which he did excelled in school and was granted a Harvard scholarship,

Read More
315 Words | 2 Pages

Everyone looked down to him, because he would always be in the wrong place at the wrong time, so he would always get blamed for things. He was blamed for stealing the shoes, because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. (sachar 7) He also got bullied a lot at school, like everyone laughed at him when he walked down the hallways. No one could really trust him because they think he stole the shoes.

Read More
1593 Words | 7 Pages

With no source of income to provide for the family, John Cheever’s mother opened up a gift shop. Having been economically privileged all of his

Read More
660 Words | 3 Pages

Later he was beaten up by the principal. He wanted to be a successful

Read More
1390 Words | 6 Pages

He did not have a rough childhood, moneywise because his father was a successful person in his profession. Most thirteen year olds are into sports, and some people could not even imagine doing it later in their life. He has been an overachiever since he was that young, and his adult life was nothing shy of success and perfection. In his life, many historic things happened, but as already stated, they did not have a high impact on his life. While George was at West Point, he was awarded brevet second lieutenant in the United States Corps of Engineers.

Read More
1582 Words | 7 Pages

Once again, the author incorporates music into the background of the scene to add to the importance of Connie’s push for maturation and desire for whats on the other side. As the girls got picked up from their nightly adventure and were headed toward home the author states, “she couldn’t hear the music at this distance” (319) giving the implication that once Connie is back under the watch of an elder, she isn’t free to be herself and act as if she is an adult, she is pushed back into her lone shell of childhood. When Connie is

Read More
338 Words | 2 Pages

6.) Changes in school: He dropped out of school in third grade and began raising himself. 7.) Traumatic experiences in childhood: After killing his brother and his family abandoning him he was taken advantage of. 8.)

Read More

More about John Cheever's The Enormous Radio

Related Topics

Open Document