Atmospheric Pressure
...could happen, it only gets worse. One night he is sitting on his couch, he looks to one side out the window and sees his neighbor’s kids having a party. The children are carefree and happy. Then he looks to his other side and witnesses his wife sewing elastic into his children’s underwear. Cash thinks about the lives of the kids next door, who are oblivious to the responsibilities they will take on as adults. They remind him of his life and how many responsibilities he has to his family rather than just living for himself. Cash knows he has responsibilities to his wife and kids, yet he wants to be carefree. In “The Enormous Radio”, Jim and Irene Westcott spent a lot of their time to appear normal and happy in their society’s eyes. Their lives revolved around their appearances. They frequent the theater an average of 10.3 times a year, they live near Sutton Place, and hoped to live in Westchester someday with their two kids. Cheever goes through a great deal explaining who the Westcotts are, because they are an average couple who do not stand out, with dreams to move up in their middle class society. When their radio breaks, they buy a new big, ugly radio that would disturb the effects in their living room. This radio does not stop there, instead of broadcasting radio stations, it broadcasts their neighbors apartments. This ugly radio tells the ugly secrets of all their neighbors. When miss Westcott first saw the radio, she wanted to hide it so it wouldn’t be seen, but ironically, it tells all the secrets their neighbors don’t want anyone to hear. Miss Westcott gets so rapped up in the radio’s secrets that she needs to be reassured that she is normal and her household does not have the problems as her neighbors. Yet while she becomes addicted to her neighbors problems, she doesn’t realize that she has a lot of the same secrets that her neighbors are hiding. In “The Sorrows of Gin”, John Cheever exposes the atmosphere of social drinking and alcohol in a middle class society. The story is told through the eyes of a young child, named Amy. Amy lives with her parents and the consumption of alcohol is a common event in her home. When her parents entertain guest, and they become intoxicated, their acts in the state of their drunkenness are ignored. Everybody consumes alco...