The Hard Lesson of the Huge Radio John Cheever's "The Huge Radio" begins with Jim and Irene Westcott who are an average American couple with an average American family. Cheever describes them as middle-aged, with two young children, a nice home and a sufficient income. On the surface, they seem to have a perfect life, but underneath it is not. During the story, Irene's imperfections are revealed by a hideous X-ray. The radio was purchased to give the Westcotts listening pleasure, but then they discover that it can hear all of the neighbors' conversations. Irene becomes so obsessed with listening to her neighbors' conversations that it blinds her to her own problems. It seems that Irene's life is innocent and she does a good job of keeping her life as perfect as possible. Cheever describes how she selects “the furniture and colors of her living room as carefully as her own” (817). The radio did not fit into her decoration, so she considered it “among her intimate possessions like an aggressive intruder” (817). Burton Kendal said, “Even before the radio begins to broadcast conversations from neighboring apartments, its mere presence in the house oppresses the atmosphere” (128). This is a clue to the reader that the radio was not only an interruption of Irene's setting, but also an interruption of her life. As Irene became obsessed with the radio, she "began to feel depressed, instead of elated as she had been before." summer" (Giordano 57). The radio revealed to him the most intimate secrets of his neighbors' lives. It showed conversations that no one would share with others. As Jim tells his wife, "It's indecent. It's like a toilet... middle of paper... in his community. According to Giordano, the Westcotts' "lives, on the grand scale of events, were just another example of ordinary life in just another apartment in just another town" (58). Irene has the radio on and she is turns to her in the hope that "the instrument might speak kindly to her", but "the voice on the radio was dulcet and evasive" (829). This reveals that daily life goes on and that everyone has daily problems. , including Irene Ultimately, Irene's attempts to hide her problems fail. She realizes that everyone has problems and that they cannot be avoided by putting on blindfolds. only makes life more difficult if we don't solve our problems and understand the fact that no one has a perfect life Work Cited Cheever, John "The Enormous Radio Ed. New York: HarperCollins.., 1991.