The Enormous Radio summary

Jim and Irene live in an apartment with their two children and maid. The both enjoy listening to the radio. One day the radio breaks beyond repair, so Jim tells Irene he is going to surprise her with a new one the following day. When the radio arrives Irene describes it as an ugly large piece of gumwood cabinet. After listening to the radio for awhile Irene realizes it has a lot of interference with the outside appliances which Jim has repaired. After the radio is repaired Irene begins to listen to it again and hears voices instead of music. It is in fact every station on the radio is a different room of their apartment. Irene hears a lot of terrible and harsh things about the people she is living around and becomes frighten, depressed, and upset with this. Once again Jim has the radio repaired. Irene is somewhat scared by what she heard from the radio and other couples around them thus making her act differently towards Jim. Jim comforts her and all is well until he tells her about their money issue and how they have to start being more careful with how they spend. They argue for awhile and Irene is afraid that the radio can hear them, allowing other people to hear them. The story was very odd. For me, I understood it to be about "what we don't know, don't hurt us". I believe that everyone hides something from someone. People can have personal problems the people Irene was hearing through the radio, for example ""I found a good-sized diamond on the bathroom floor this morning, a woman said. It must have fallen out of that bracelet Mrs. Dunston was wearing last night."". (p 535) We may view others differently by what we know or hear about them, when deep they are the same as us, good human beings. I don't think we should determine how someone is, based on what we hear. We should find out ourselves and not assume everything is bad.