The Enormous Radio Analysis

As I read “The Enormous Radio,” my interest was immediately piqued by the author’s use of the word “malevolent” when describing the radio’s green light. The radio has the power to look into other people’s lives and show their secrets to others and judge them for their sins. Irene finds herself judging other people in her building based on what she heard on the radio and she gets drunk on the power it provides her. She wants to see that their problems don’t exist in her own marriage, but she can see that they do which causes a rift in her marriage and puts her in a state of mindful observation. The realization that life is not always ideal completely changed her world view, similarly to how religion changes people’s perspective. The radio has power over her and uses it to force her to hear what is happening on the world around her, inevitably destroying her life as she knew it. In the
She is being yelled at by her husband-an extreme contrast to the first paragraph-and the one thing she turned to for happiness was not there for her. Similarly to religion and other practices of blind faith-you turn to it, but sometimes hard things are just hard. The shift in the radio’s message to Irene alongside the fact that the author is known as one who often writes about marriages breaking apart, leads me to believe that Irene and her husband’s marriage fell apart as well. Since the radio does have a rather simple utilitarian purpose, such as informing people of the weather, it is possible that everything just went back to normal and that they settled back into their previous life. I am unsure if Irene would be happy in the “satisfactory” life the author mentions in the first paragraph, but the author could have wanted that ambiguity of a simultaneously happy and tragic