Hipocricy And Self Delusion In “The Enormous Radio”

2 Pages 574 Words

Hipocricy and Self Delusion in “The Enormous Radio”

Everyone likes to get away from their daily lives and forget about their troubles every once in a while. We may take a vacation or escape from reality by watching a movie. Once the film or trip is over though, we must face our problems once again. In “The enormous Radio” however, Irene Wescott is on a permanent hiatus, denying her own flaws and constantly criticizing others. This story is about the way people can distract themselves from their own lives by getting involved in other people’s lives.
Irene is shown to be a supercilious person through her actions. We first see Irene’s denial in her “coat of fitch skins dyed to resemble mink.”. She was “proud of her living room, she had chosen its furnishings and colors as carefully as she chose her clothes…” . Although she “was struck at once with the physical ugliness of the large gumwood cabinet,” she “decided that tone was most important and that she could conceal the cabinet behind a sofa” . Also her arrogance comes out when she tells her husband that “some woman in this building is having an affair with the handyman—with that hideous handyman.” She is more disturbed about who the woman is having the affair with than the fact that she is having an affair at all.
Irene is so caught up in other peoples lives and so intent on escaping from her own reality, that she “had two Martinis at lunch, and she looked searchingly at her friend and wondered what her secrets were. They had intended to go shopping after lunch, but irene excused herself and went home.” It is no small thing for Irene to skip shopping as we see later in the story that she has run up quite a clothing bill.
Her self delusion is never more evident in the story than in her response to Jim’s question, “Why do you have to listen to this stuff if it makes you so miserable?” Irene says, “Life is too terrible, too sor...