Dr. Clifton Snider, Sample Story Analysis. Here is a paper I wrote that is an example of one kind of Reader-Response criticism.
Although it seldom uses the first person singular, it does reflect my personal knowledge of the issues the story deals with and hence my personal response as a reader.  Nevertheless, I do provide evidence for my thesis, as should you, both from the story and from research sources.
For your own papers, follow MLA style as follows (though you should have a half-inch margin on the top and 1-inch margins on the bottom, right, and left).  Also, you need at least two secondary sources, as well as the primary source.  Remember to use the present tense in writing about what happens in the story.
Double space throughout the essay.
Please underline your thesis statement.

John Cheever in his later years.

                                                                                                                                    Reitzel 1
Anton Reitzel

Dr. Clifton Snider

English 384 [or 385]

4 April 2001

                                               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). Many alcoholics will tell you

that they initially hated the taste of alcohol, and no one will  doubt that for them alcohol contained

"violent forces." The same is true for any addiction, be it  for gambling, overeating, undereating,

or any drug.

        Of course most such addictions develop over a long period. Within the limits of the short

story, Cheever must condense the process of becoming hooked, as it were, living through the

addiction's torments, reaching a bottom, and beginning recovery.

        The Westcotts already have an interest in the radio because it brings them the music they

admire (one might compare this to the initial compensations, be they personal or social,

alcohol initially brings to the incipient alcoholic). Soon they discover the radio has other

offerings--the private worlds of their neighbors. The first reaction is paranoia: "'Maybe they

can hear us,'" says Jim (794). This gives way to curiosity: "'I guess she [the Sweeney's nurse]

can't hear us,' Irene said. 'Try something else'" (795).

        The third response is delight and mirth, tinged with uneasy astonishment. The radio's

offerings leave them both "weak with laughter" (795) by the end of the day. Jim, perhaps

because he has to work all day and therefore isn't tempted by the radio, doesn't become

"hooked."  His is a non-addictive personality.  Irene, on the other hand, can't stay away from the

radio, but she hides her new interest from the maid.  Like the alcoholic hiding his booze, she is

"furtive" (796). She becomes astonished and uneasy over the revelations about her neighbors in

the high-rise apartment building, neighbors whose lives are far more "melancholy" and filled

with "despair" than she'd imagined (795).

        She becomes "sad and vague" (796). This feeling turns into a "radiant melancholy" Jim is

unaccustomed too. Her personality has changed, like an alcoholic on the bottle. She is

uncharacteristically rude: at a party, "she interrupted her hostess rudely and stared at the

people across the table from her with an intensity for which she would have punished her

children" (797). Her addiction now matches the definition for chemical addiction given by the

National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence: "The loss of control and compulsive use of

mind-altering chemical(s) coupled with the inability to stop the use in spite of the fact that

such use is causing problems within one's life."

        The euphoria experienced by most addicts soon gives way, typically, to depression: "I've

been listening all day," she tells her husband, "and it's so depressing." "Everyone's been

quarreling," she says. "They're all worried about money" (797). The radio, which used to give

pleasure, now gives only sorrow. In a very short time she has reached her "bottom," and in doing

so she has lost self-control: she can't turn the radio off.

        Jim solves the problem by having the radio "fixed" at a cost of four hundred dollars (798).

The price is expensive, not only financially, but also emotionally and spiritually, for now Jim

complains about money problems and the two have an altercation about the subject. The old

paranoia returns ("Please," she tells him, "They'll hear us," 799); and Jim throws all her past

shortcomings at her. "Disgraced and sickened" (799), she must now face real life, not only her

own problems but those of the world (the "fire in a Catholic hospital for the care of blind

children" and so on, 799). And, like all recovering addicts, she must face these problems

without the help of her drug of choice, so to speak.  By means of this obsession she has come to

new knowledge about evil in the world, not unlike Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown after his

night journey, and faced the truth about her own life. The world will never be the same for her.

                                                                              Works Cited

Cheever, John. "The Enormous Radio." The Story and Its

        Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Ed. Ann

        Charters. 2nd Ed. New York: St. Martin's, 1987. 791-799.

Clemons, Walter. "The Cheever Nobody Knew." Newsweek 22

        October 1984: 92.

Hunt, George W. John Cheever: The Hobgoblin Company of

        Love. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983.

National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. "Recovery Central:

        Resources for Dependency & Addiction Recovery." 7 Sept. 1999.

        <http://www.recoverycentral.org/helpself/definits.html>
 

--Copyright © Clifton Snider, 2007.  All rights reserved.