In Cheever’s “The Enormous Radio,” Jim and Irene Westcott are a middle class married whose new radio unexpectedly allows them to eavesdrop on their neighbors’ interactions. The radio reveals that the Westcotts’ seemingly well-to-do neighbors are hiding numerous secrets, and Irene begins to recognize that many people around her, including her friends, wish to preserve their social standing above all else. As a result of this realization, Irene becomes distrustful. Eventually Irene attempts to break this tacit code of secrecy by interfering in her neighbors’ lives; ultimately, however, even Irene yields to the pressure of maintaining the status quo. Cheever’s portrait of a community obsessed with appearances illustrates how peoples’ outward behavior is often deeply at odds with reality—and how the pressure to adhere to unspoken rules of social respectability can triumph over truth.
From the beginning, the story’s characters actively attempt to present an air of normalcy. The Westcotts’ display secrecy even in innocuous circumstances in order to preserve their reputation. They are introduced as a decidedly average couple, an image they are clearly concerned with upholding. They differ from those around them “only in an interest they shared in serious music,” yet the narrator points out that they “seldom mention” this passion to their friends or neighbors. Although the Westcotts’ love of music does not harm anyone, Jim and Irene specifically choose not to reveal it; they seem unwilling to draw any attention to themselves whatsoever.
Like the Westcotts, other characters are also hiding secrets. When the Westcotts begin to use their new radio to eavesdrop on their neighbors, they overhear, among other things, “a monologue on salmon fishing” and “a bitter family quarrel” about money. These various revelations indicate how everyone in their community keeps some subjects to themselves, whether these are merely personal interests or serious problems. The range of these secrets illustrates the community’s widespread aversion to rocking the societal boat in the slightest. By prioritizing appearances, everyone in the apartment building, including the Westcotts, becomes incapable of genuinely knowing those around them.
What’s more, as Irene becomes more aware of secrecy’s ubiquity, she becomes increasingly distraught. She uses the radio to listen in on “demonstrations” of “carnal love, abysmal vanity, faith, and despair.” As she is a “simple and sheltered” woman, these overheard revelations “shock” her. She feels “troubled” and “astonished,” indicating that the breadth of her neighbors’ secrecy feels overwhelming to her. Inevitably, Irene’s turmoil begins to manifest as mistrust: for example, when she gets into her building’s elevator, she looks at the women assembled and notes their “impassive faces,” and wonders “which one” had “overdrawn her bank account.” Irene then has lunch with her friend, and wonders about the “secrets” this friend might be keeping. Irene now realizes that even the people closest to her—such as her friend—maintain appearances to appear untroubled.
Ironically, Irene does not rebel against societal norms despite her growing awareness of her peers’ fixation on social standing. For example, when Irene and Jim go out to dinner, she does not mention the neighbors’ secrets; instead, she merely seems “sad and vague,” and comments that the street musicians are “so much nicer” than everyone else. In this way, she chooses to leave her concerns unvoiced despite her deepening cynicism. She avoids telling Jim the truth directly, and thus maintains the status quo: she chooses to leave difficult truths unspoken in order to keep her family’s life—and her husband’s understanding of others—uncomplicated.
Eventually, however, the constant secrecy overwhelms Irene. When she overhears one of her neighbors, Mr. Osborn, assaulting his wife, she asks her husband to “go up there and stop him,” beseeching him to break the bounds of social decorum to reveal Mr. Osborn’s cruelty. For a moment, Irene becomes willing to overlook society’s tacit code of silence in order to protect a neighbor—thereby valuing, if momentarily, truth over appearances.
In response, however, Jim turns off the radio and tells her she does not “have to listen.” By switching off the radio, Jim offers Irene the option to maintain the status quo. Irene, realizing that ignorance is easier than action, takes this easy choice and switches the topic: she asks Jim not to “quarrel with” her and starts “sobbing.” In taking Jim’s suggestion, Irene chooses to ignore the dark secrets in her community, and maintain a false equilibrium among her neighbors. Ultimately, it seems, Irene finds it easier to pretend everything is normal than to stir up controversy. The Westcotts, who are unwilling to tarnish others’ good opinion of them, therefore choose to maintain a façade of respectability. Cheever’s story thus illustrates how preserving one’s social standing often prevails over truth and empathy.
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Appearances, Reality, and Social Respectability ThemeTracker
Appearances, Reality, and Social Respectability Quotes in The Enormous Radio
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 bulletins. They were the 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 on an average of 10.3 times a year, and they hoped someday to live in Westchester.
Irene Westcott was a pleasant, rather plain girl with […] a wide, fine forehead upon which nothing at all had been written […] You could not say that Jim Westcott looked younger than he was, but you could at least say of him that he seemed to feel younger. He […] dressed in the kind of clothes his class had worn at Andover, and his manner was earnest, vehement, and intentionally naïve. The Westcotts differed from their friends, their classmates, and their neighbors only in an interest they shared in serious music. They went to a great many concerts—although they seldom mentioned this to anyone—and they spent a good deal of time listening to the music on the radio.
She was struck at once with the physical ugliness of the large gumwood cabinet. Irene was proud of her living room, she had chosen its furnishings and colors as carefully as she chose her clothes, and now it seemed to her that the new radio stood among her intimate possessions like an aggressive intruder [ … the radio] filled the apartment with the noise of music amplified so mightily that it knocked a china ornament from a table to the floor […] The violent forces that were snared in the ugly gumwood cabinet made her uneasy.
Jim was too tired to make even a pretense of sociability, and there was nothing about the dinner to hold Irene's interest […] She listened for a few minutes to a Chopin prelude and then was surprised to hear a man’s voice break in. “For Christ’s sake, Kathy,” he said, “do you always have to play the piano when I get home?” The music stopped abruptly. “It’s the only chance I have,” a woman said. “I’m at the office all day.” “So am I,” the man said. He added something obscene about an upright piano, and slammed a door. The passionate and melancholy music began again.
“Did you hear that?” Irene asked. […]
“It's probably a play.”
“Those must be the Fullers, in 11-E,” Irene said. “I knew they were giving a party this afternoon. I saw her in the liquor store. Isn't this too divine? Try something else. See if you can get those people in 18-C.”
The Westcotts overheard that evening a monologue on salmon fishing in Canada, a bridge game, running comments on home movies of what had apparently been a fortnight at Sea Island, and a bitter family quarrel about an overdraft at the bank. They turned off their radio at midnight and went to bed, weak with laughter.
Irene shifted the control and invaded the privacy of several breakfast tables. She overheard demonstrations of indigestion, carnal love, abysmal vanity, faith, and despair. Irene's life was nearly as simple and sheltered as it appeared to be, and the forthright and sometimes brutal language that came from the loudspeaker that morning astonished and troubled her. She continued to listen until her maid came in. Then she turned off the radio quietly, since this insight, she realized, was a furtive one.
Irene had a luncheon date with a friend that day, and she left her apartment at a little after twelve. There were a number of women in the elevator when it stopped at her floor. She stared at their handsome and impassive faces, their furs, and the cloth flowers in their hats […] Which one had overdrawn her bank account? […] Irene had two Martinis at lunch, and she looked searchingly at her friend and wondered what her secrets were. They had intended to go shopping after lunch, but Irene excused herself and went home.
A Salvation Army band was on the corner playing “Jesus Is Sweeter.” Irene drew on her husband's arm and held him there for a minute, to hear the music. “They're really such nice people, aren't they?” she said. “They have such nice faces. Actually, they're so much nicer than a lot of the people we know” […] Irene looked up at the spring stars. “‘How far that little candle throws its beams,’” she exclaimed. “‘So shines a good deed in a naughty world.’”
“Mr. Osborn's beating his wife. They've been quarreling since four o'clock, and now he's hitting her. Go up there and stop him."
[…] "You know you don't have to listen to this sort of thing," he said […]
"Don't, don't, don't, don't quarrel with me," she moaned, and laid her head on his shoulder. "All the others have been quarreling all day. Everybody's been quarreling. They're all worried about money. Mrs. Hutchinson's mother is dying of cancer in Florida and they don't have enough money […] and that girl who plays the ‘Missouri Waltz’ is a whore, a common whore, and the elevator man has tuberculosis and Mr. Osborn has been beating Mrs. Osborn.”
“But we've never been like that, have we, darling? Have we? I mean, we've always been good and decent and loving to one another, haven't we? And we have two children, two beautiful children. Our lives aren't sordid, are they, darling? Are they?” She flung her arms around his neck and drew his face down to hers. “We're happy, aren't we, darling? We are happy, aren't we?”
“Of course we’re happy,” he said tiredly […]
“You love me, don't you?” she asked. “And we're not hypercritical or worried about money or dishonest, are we?”
“I'm sick to death of your apprehensiveness. The radio can't hear us. Nobody can hear us. And what if they can hear us? Who cares? […] Why are you so Christly all of a sudden? […] You stole your mother's jewelry before they probated her will. You never gave your sister a cent of that money that was intended for her—not even when she needed it […] where was all your piety and your virtue when you went to that abortionist? I'll never forget how cool you were.”
