The Enormous Radio Essay

George Saunders writes about human behavior with some modern and not so modern examples. He invites the reader to imagine themselves at a party where someone is speaking into a megaphone. Soon the focus of the party becomes the topic the megaphone speaker is flooding into the party atmosphere. Saunders also talks about new broadcast,he mentions a news reporter reporting busy shopping activity at a mall during holiday season . What a surprise!

-Jim keeps the same five cents on a string around his neck as the five cents Tom left for the candles

   John Cheever’s "The Enormous Radio" represents the enormous amount of hidden truths in American society of the 1940s. The problems with society during this time were hidden behind a facade of goodness; however, this false innocence becomes visible through the radio owned by the Westcotts. The radio causes the Westcotts to evolve from an innocent, naive pair who believe that everything they see is real, into individuals who realize that appearances are deceiving.

After sharing a cigarette, Ashley excitedly offers Jim a job in this bird sanctuary, an idea that had only just presented itself to him. They shake on it and it is confirmed.

It crushed Tom’s high spirits when he learned that sadly, Jim was captured and chained. He was furious that they would not set Jim free and that he should rightfully be free.

    Many authors use the personification of inanimate objects to symbolize the feelings and expressions of their characters. One example of this is in John Cheever’s short story, "The Enormous Radio." Although critics argue that the characteristics of the radio are the opposite of those of Jim and Irene Westcott, the radio actually reflects the couple’s life.

strongly about what she is speaking about. She is trying to get the attention of the listeners/viewers and

Power 106Fm is broadcasting one of the largest Hip-hop and R&B radio stations in the Los Angles Community. During the weekdays from three pm to seven pm anyone may tune in to listen to the stations personal DJ, DJ Felli Fel. As everyone may know a DJ can turn listeners away or make everyone enjoy themselves and come back for more. Well in this situation this DJ was very enjoyable and would definitely have listeners coming back for more. As well as this station has an equal balance between commercials and music and overall has pure quality. It plays plenty of the newest and greatest hits and also voyages back to the past to keep everyone entertained.

After the First World War, many people were looking forward to good times. The 1920’s presented people with this time of fast-paced fun and adventure. Entertainment was the foremost part of everyday life during the 1920’s. Radio introduced a whole new practice of entertainment to people’s everyday lives. Likewise, through the utilization of the radio, people were able to experience a new medium to entertain themselves. Furthermore, the radio changed the face of society’s culture through its widespread use. In addition, radios provided people with a new, effective and efficient means of communication. Radio was a fundamental aspect in people’s lives during the 1920’s as it provided many people with news and entertainment in their

Jim had become fed up with Irene’s obsession with the enormous radio. He did not understand why she listened to it so intently if all it did was bring her misery. Meanwhile, Irene constantly nagged at Jim for even an inch of reassurance that they had better lives than those on the radio. Jim fought himself to hold in all his built up anger and frustration towards his wife and replied "Of course we’re happy" (Cheever 823). Jim knew that they had just as many problems as the next family. He tried to discuss them with his wife, but as TaVeta Smith points out, she "doesn’t address Jim’s concerns at all" (59).

Imagine if you were the captain on the Titanic and it was just struck by an iceberg. Your automatic action is to send a distress signals for help and get everybody on lifeboats. Everyone survives and lives happily ever after. What really happened was the distress signals got jammed and it delayed help. 1,000 lives were lost and the act of 1912 was born. In the early days of radio, radio was poorly regulated and created chaos.

The first line of the story, “Jim and Irene Westcott were the kind of people […],” reminds me of a movie that begins with a gradual zoom in on a family while the narrator gives a brief description of them, and I envisioned the narrator giving this description with a Morgan Freeman voice – slow, monotonous, and insightful. I pictured the narrator as a woman because the main focus of the story revolves around Irene, a woman. The speaker does not express emotion or her opinions or thoughts through her narration. Instead, she keeps the narration in formal language and in third person omniscient. Ironically, the narrator’s point of view reveals Irene’s secrets, just as Irene is able to know the private lives of others. While the narrator describes

For decades, National Public Radio has maintained a legacy as a successful worldwide news organization. However, the news produced tends to be consumed mainly by an older audience. It has a reputation among millennials as one of the less entertaining news outlets. It is essential for news to be exciting in order to capture the attention of this millennial audience, and NPR tends to lack the excitement value it needs to fully reach this massive demographic. In order for the station to better attract and maintain millennial readers, viewers and listeners, the organization needs to cater to their lifestyle habits and preferences. In a constantly changing and developing world, NPR needs to be ahead of the game in technological advancements.

As movers and shakers of early rock and roll, disk jockeys choose which records they played, and how many times they played them. The law states that it is a federal crime for any radio or television station to accept or agree to accept money, services, or anything of value for broadcasting any material without disclosing acceptance or agreement to accept (Smith, 54). Over the years, various payola scandals actually helped many artists recording careers; at the same time helped to end the careers of many disk jockeys. Unfortunately, in radio, the guilt of a few reflects on the mass.

Radio initiated in the latter portion of the 1900’s, a race war and world war shattered America was becoming gradually different than any time in her history. Thanks to the radio and its widespread adoption across the country as the collective form of mass media and entertainment. “The world of fantasy created by commercial radio programming was the most popular medium of entertainment in the United States from the 1920s until the 1950s. Tens of millions of citizens tuned in thousands of stations to hear news, sports, drama, comedy, and the various other formats by which broadcasters had adapted radio to aural entertainment.1