Enormous Influences
How does life circumstances and experiences influence and affect what a great writer publishes? This is very important question one should ask themselves before delving into any reading. John Cheever, a renowned short story writer, novelist, and story teller, is not exempt of this rule. One of his most famous works called “The Enormous Radio”, is a great work to judge how strongly Cheever’s influenced his work. In this story, the exceptionally normal Westcott family buys an expensive radio. Once they begin using it, they realize their neighbors interactions can be heard on the stations. As the story progresses, Mrs. Westcott begins to obsess over the radio and hearing all of her neighbors’ private lives (especially their
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One of the problems he dealt with was economic issues. He never seemed to fall into economic despair, but at times he and his family had to scrape by like many middle class families do. Scott Donaldson in his book “John Cheever: A Biography”, discusses many things that influenced Cheever’s writing. One of which was Cheever’s economic experience. Donaldson described Cheever and his wife Mary as early in marriage being, “Financially […] neither well off nor improvised.” (Donaldson 93) Cheever and his wife never fell into the lower class or poverty, but they did have issues much like many middle class families. The Cheever’s felt the issue of being stuck in the middle. During these year Cheever’s wife worked a publishing job to ensure the two made it by. The middle class economic struggle was definitely present in Cheever’s …show more content…
It is not totally exactly when his abuse started, but it definitely influenced his life. For a long period of time, Cheever tried his best to hide his issues and keep it secret. He worried what would happen if people found out his struggle, and eventually he had had enough. Samuel Coale wrote about John Cheever’s Struggle with alcohol in his book “John Cheever”. He recorded that “he (Cheever) was fighting a losing battle against severe and chronic alcoholism” so he decided to go, “for a month to Smithers, an alcoholic rehabilitation center in New York City” (Coale 8). During this time he no longer cared to keep his struggle a secret and admitted and reported his alcoholism in many interviews. After spending a month at Smithers Cheever left a fully rehabilitated man. He felt like he had let those he cared about down and he desired to no longer have to bear the weight of his secret and both of these feelings he attributed to his recovery. Both of those reasons were his spoken motivations for his recovery. The greatest unspoken motivation for him was probably his near death experience with a heart attack around this time. Cheever struggled but eventually he championed and overcame his alcohol
With a large family such as the Stanleys, financially supporting everyone in the family is difficult with a stable economy, let alone during a period of struggle (Frontline Video, 2013). During this time, the middle class was in poverty, meaning people in poverty originally, are far financially worse (Frontline Video, 2013). The father, Claude, was a pastor (Frontline Video, 2013). The mother, Jacki, made efforts to find work (Frontline Video, 2013). She spent most of her time helping her husband run the church (Frontline Video, 2013).
George Saunders, a writer with a particular inclination in modern America, carefully depicts the newly-emerged working class of America and its poor living condition in his literary works. By blending fact with fiction, Saunders intentionally chooses to expose the working class’s hardship, which greatly caused by poverty and illiteracy, through a satirical approach to criticize realistic contemporary situations. In his short story “Sea Oak,” the narrator Thomas who works at a strip club and his elder aunt Bernie who works at Drugtown for minimum are the only two contributors to their impoverished family. Thus, this family of six, including two babies, is only capable to afford a ragged house at Sea Oak,
As every well-read person knows, the background in which you grow up plays a huge role in how you write and your opinions. Fuller grew up with a very strict education, learning multiple classic languages before she was eight years old. Fern grew up with writers all throughout her family and had a traditional education and saw first hand the iniquities of what hard-working had to contend with. Through close analysis of their work, a reader can quickly find the connections between their tone, style, content, and purpose and their history of their lives and their educational upbringing.
“The Swimmer” by John Cheever is a short story about Neddy Merrill and his journey through alcoholism. Alcoholism plays a detrimental role in Neddy Merrill’s life because it has been ruined due to his dependence on this awful substance. The author symbolically presents the stages of alcoholism, its effects on the alcoholic, as well as how the alcoholic’s family and friends change towards Neddy.
In the beginning of the play, Walter is foolish and quarrelsome, with his heart set on becoming affluent. As he grasps how hard work his father worked and how hard his family works, he reasons that living by his standards is more important than gaining wealth, and he stops feeling resentful towards them. This play highlights how many members of society focus more on making money than living by their ethical
When a writer starts his work, most often than not, they think of ways they can catch their reader’s attention, but more importantly, how to awake emotions within them. They want to stand out from the rest and to do so, they must swim against the social trend that marks a specific society. That will make them significant; the way they write, how they make a reader feel, the specific way they write, and the devotion they have for their work. Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgard Allan Poe influenced significantly the American literary canon with their styles, themes, and forms, making them three important writers in America.
Short stories are temporary portals to another world; there is a plethora of knowledge to learn from the scenario, and lies on top of that knowledge are simple morals. Langston Hughes writes in “Thank You Ma’m” the timeline of a single night in a slum neighborhood of an anonymous city. This “timeline” tells of the unfolding generosities that begin when a teenage boy fails an attempted robbery of Mrs. Jones. An annoyed bachelor on a British train listens to three children their aunt converse rather obnoxiously in Saki’s tale, “The Storyteller”. After a failed story attempt, the bachelor tries his hand at storytelling and gives a wonderfully satisfying, inappropriate story. These stories are laden with humor, but have, like all other stories, an underlying theme. Both themes of these stories are “implied,” and provide an excellent stage to compare and contrast a story on.
Humans are creatures of this planet that act in complex ways. A writer’s job is often defined as a way to reveal the complexity of the characteristics of people and to illustrate them. John Steinbeck the author, Of Mice and Men, exemplifies a multitude of characters that have an overall lonely existence. Although most are unhappy, Lennie Small is a warm-hearted, sympathetic man. Lennie has the unfortunate aptitude of carrying out massive destruction in others life’s, even though, it was never intended.
Gwendolyn Brooks once said “I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it, and experiencing the challenge”. For some, writing may not be enjoyable or easy, but for Brooks writing was her life. Gwendolyn Brooks not only won countless awards, but also influenced the lives of several African Americans.
From the time Ernest Hemingway became a renowned author, his works, as well as his life, have been analyzed by many. Under such scrutiny, many aspects of Hemingway’s works and life experiences have been in question to the realities and fallacies, which he laid forth. Much of Hemingway’s life, especially his time volunteering as an ambulance driver in Europe, has been in question to the true validity of his myth as a true adventurer and hero. However, as I have found, much of the mythology surrounding Hemingway is very true indeed, which leads me to believe that he did not embellish his life but rather used his experiences to create some of the greatest works of literature to be written throughout the twentieth century.
In the short story by John Cheever called "The Enormous Radio" it begins with Jim and Irene Westcotts appearing like the perfect American family. Cheever describes them as "the kind of people who seem to strike that satisfactory average of income, endeavor, and respectability" (Cheever 1). What is ironic about this story is the Westcotts are far from being the perfect family and the community they try to conform to is just as imperfect as the Westcotts themselves. A way the Westcotts try to live up to their society is by keeping secret the fact that they listen to the radio and attend musical events. This is because these activities were not something members of their community did. For example, Cheever says the "Westcotts differed from their friends, their classmates, and their neighbors only in an interest in music. They went to a great many concerts although they never mentioned this to anyone" (1). In the rest of the story Irene Westcott has an addiction to an eavesdropping radio that reveals the personalities and business of her friends and neighbors.
Head, Bessie. “Life.” Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahn, et al. 6th ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002. 349-355.
Theodore Dreiser was a writer whose dramatic life shown through into his works indirectly. He led a life that could be considered a “typical American” one by the standards of persons reflecting back upon his upbringing and his climb to literary greatness. Dreiser was influenced by the social and political changes during his lifetime, as well as his family and upbringing and the impression those around him had on his life. Born in 1871 in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was the ninth of ten siblings born to a German father and Mennonite mother. Unfortunately, Dreiser’s family had suffered great losses before he was even born. His father, who had started his own business in wool, suffered a great loss when his mill caught fire and was severely injured and left disabled for life (Smith). This is not something that the family could ever recover from, and so Theodore Dreiser grew up impoverished and with a Father, whose own mental stability undoubtedly not only influenced his writing, but his own mental well-being. Dreiser never finished high school, and did one year at University before leaving his formal education behind him completely. He began his writing in the 1890’s as a journalist for the Chicago Globe. Although his writing did not elicit a “by line” that created a following for him through the newspaper, his experiences there are another aspect of his life which shaped some of his writing (Rizzio). He was a naturalist writer who was influenced by the popularity of social Darwinism at the turn of the century. Dreiser’s first novel, “Sister Carrie” is one that was controversial for its time, but would not be considered as such now. Publishers were hesitant to promote this novel, but were not successful in squandering its p...
By having even the slightest bit of ‘magic’ in a fabulist work of literature, the author is able to tell the story within a very real setting and yet be able to place a spin on events, subjects, or objects with the ‘magic’ in order to express their message. Thus, an author like Ray Bradbury is capable of using the technology within the house setting as his sole protagonist (though through various pieces of the technology). With Cheever’s The Enormous Radio, the radio affords him the ability to express the secrets and stories of the other characters of the story without having to explicitly describe them or introduce them as characters in the way he does the Westcott’s. Furthermore, the radio is a more upfront way in which to present the minor characters that also prevents Cheever from having to build a full story behind each character and permits him to give the reader the smallest glimpse of the character that contains all that the reader will ever (and ever need to)
Writing about any artist or author makes us more curious about the writer and his or her view of life. I believe every writer reflects his or her own perspective in their writings even if they did not talk about themselves; this will appear to the reader in one way or another.