extravaganza

Jim and Irene Westcott are the parents of two children. They sometimes have economic problems. But they are normally doing well enough. They differ from each other in many ways but the common pleasure they have is music, they spend so much time listening to music on the radio. Because the radio they had has some working problems Jim buys a new one with good amount of money. The function of the new radio is that later on it let them hear what neighbours were talking about, what problems they had and what kind of characters they were. Irene becomes addicted to listening that radio after this. For example; one day she went out for lunch with a friend of hers but although they had already decided to go also shopping, Irene excused to her and did not go to anywhere else after lunch but to listening to the enormous radio. She started having psychological problems because of learning other people’s lives with their so many problems and bad characteristics. She became really upset and in a conversation with her husband, which made Jim fix the radio again, from what she said it was clear that she was trying to be sure that they did not have lives like the neighbours had. But in the end of the story it is understood from Jim’s speech to her that she, in fact, had similar characteristic and made similar mistakes, maybe worse things. So the story simply tries to give a message to the reader. After that radio, Irene just sees the people so bad and she just pretends to see the situation like she was a real angel. So the radio brought Irene self-criticism and it helped her be aware of the mistakes and not to do them again. To conclude, we can say the message can be like: a person, who is aware of his/her characteristics and has self-criticism by looking at other people’s lives, has a more truly life because of examining her/himself everytime.