I thought it might make you happy. I wanted to make you happy.
Jim paid a great deal of money to buy a new radio. In spite of the fact, that he couldn’t afford it then, he did it. He thought it might make her “happy”, what was more important, he “wanted” to make her happy. However, instead of happy and grateful Irene, he gets a depressed and sad one. Although it is not his fault, he starts considering Irene’s unhappiness as a direct accusation and a sign of his failure.
Life is too terrible, too sordid, too awful. But we’ve never been like that, have we, darling?
People tend not to notice their own flaws but rarely miss them in others. Irene has been listening to the radio all day long and by the time Jim returns home, she is convinced that “life is too terrible, too sordid, too awful.” She is shocked by the number of unhappy marriages and violence. However, she overlooks that she and Jim have been “like that” for many years too.
Why are you so Christly all of a sudden?
Jim finds it is amusing that Irene has turned into “a convent girl” overnight. He remembers that she stole her mother’s jewelry “before they probated the will” and never gave her sister “a cent of that money that was intended for her – not even when she needed it.” She made someone’s life “miserable” and went to the abortionist “to have that child murdered.” It is possible that Jim tries to make the situation look worse that it really does, but there is at least one seed of reason. Nobody is perfect and nobody’s life is flatness.
