"He wore his graying hair cut very short, he dressed in the kind of clothes his class had worn at Andover and his manner was earnest, vehement, and intentionally naive."
The description of Jim uses imagery to convey the sense that it also explicitly lays out: Jim appears to be a throwback to an earlier age of innocence. That one word “intentionally” is troubling, however. Is Jim really so naïve or is he putting on an act? And if he is putting on act, to what purpose? The imagery here is ripe with the aroma of foreshadow. Like his neighbors, Jim may not be absolutely everything that the narrator tells us he is. He may have secrets.
"Irene Westcott was a pleasant, rather plain girl with soft brown hair and a wide, fine forehead upon which nothing at all had been written"
The imagery here all contribute to creating one singular perspective the reader is intended to take toward Irene. She is an innocent. Pleasant, plain and with an empty head. Irene is a 20th century Eve situated in the beautiful Garden of Eden known as the statistically average American family.
"the new radio stood among her intimate possessions like an aggressive intruder"
Into this Eden slithers a serpent about to tempt the innocent inhabitants with forbidden knowledge that will bring about an end to their blissful ignorance and naivete.
"Irene had two Martinis at lunch, and she looked searchingly at her friend and wondered what her secrets were."
The imagery is positively sublime in following the allegorical concept of Jim and Irene as a latter day version of Adam and Eve losing their innocence and falling from grace. The effects of the serpent inviting Irene to pluck fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is taking root. She no longer blithely assumes she is even living in the midst of any sort of paradise. All around here are the potential purveyors of corruption. Of course, she need not look around. She is no longer quite the pleasant innocent; she is even given to taking two-Martini lunches.
"Why are you so Christly all of a sudden? What's turned you overnight into a convent girl? You stole your mother's jewelry before they probated her will. You never gave your sister a cent of that money that was intended for her - not even when she needed it. You made Grace Howland's life miserable, and where was all your piety and your virtue when you went to that abortionist?”
And finally comes the answer to that question: why “intentionally” naïve? It turns out the Jim’s naïve innocence was an act. And so was Irene’s. The serpent entered this garden a long time before the enormous radio. In fact, by the end of the story, the enormous radio seems not so much a Satanic tempter and more like one of those mysterious ways in which God’s judgment moves people toward redemption.
