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Addiction in John Cheever's "The Enormous Radio" George W. Hunt has written that Cheever's "The Enormous Radio," is about "the mysterious communality of evil [. . .]" (238). Without entirely disagreeing with Hunt, I suggest another interpretation for this well-known story. "The Enormous Radio" is actually a study of addiction: the kind of addiction common to many obsessive-compulsive personalities. No stranger to addiction, Cheever wrote the following in his journal: "Since I know so much about incarceration and addiction why can't I write about it? [. . .] I am both a prisoner and an addict" (quoted by Clemons 92). In fact, he was an alcoholic who recovered sufficiently to stay sober the last seven years of his life (Clemons 92). He was well equipped to write a story about an urban housewife's addiction to an eavesdropping radio. Through her addiction to the radio and what it reveals about her neighbors, Irene discovers the "communality of evil" Hunt refers to. Before the advent of the new radio, the only way Jim and Irene Westcott differed from their upwardly mobile "friends [. . .] classmates, and [. . .] neighbors" was in the fact that the couple had a mutual liking for "serious music" (Cheever 791). At first Irene is rather put off by the "physical ugliness of the large gumwood cabinet." Its "dials flooded with a malevolent green light," and inside the cabinet held "violent forces" (792).
Approximate Word count = 830
Approximate Pages = 3.3
(250 words per page double spaced)
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