The Enormous Radio
The titular radio that is huge; so huge that it may well be considered a metaphorical representation of every single eavesdropper who ever spread gossip in the history of the world. That the radio is a metaphor is beyond a doubt, but exactly what it is a metaphor for is open to argument. Cheever himself puts it best by removing all doubt:
“the new radio stood among her intimate possessions like an aggressive intruder.”
Miss Dent
As indicated by her name, the secretary in “The Five-Forty-Eight” who is dehumanized by her boss before turning the tables on him with a gun aboard a commuter train that might be properly termed on the re-orient express is a deeply damaged individual who until that train ride has made things all the worse for herself by keeping her hurt locked inside. One of Cheever’s most artful displays of the power of simile delineates this reality of character by subtly intimating that the comparison is about one thing when it is actually about something far more expansive.
“She lived in a room that seemed to him like a closet”
The Swimmer's Empty House
After laboring to make it home via swimming pool to swimming pool in his affluent suburban middle class neighborhood, the title character in “The Swimmer” is last seen pounding his fist on the door to an empty house. The imagery here ir rich with symbolic meaning. A common interpretation is that the empty home is a metaphor for Neddy Merill’s own spiritual emptiness as a human being. A less popular, but perhaps more incisive reading is that the empty house upon which he bangs is a metaphor for the spiritual emptiness of American suburbia with its indistinguishable homogeneity.
Bridge
The bridge is a metaphorical concept that runs appears in many of the stories and takes different forms. For instance, in addition to actual bridges, many of these suburban families play the card game called bridge. Whether actual constructed conveyances or competitive play, it is the idea of what a bridge connotes that is the thematic connection. Bridges are means of connecting one place to another and another, but in most cases these stories introduce the metaphor for the purpose of showing that a bridge often fails to connect people. In “Goodbye My Brother” the narrator admits playing a game of bridge was just as likely to stimulate exhibitions of familial bad blood as more likely contests like tennis and softball. A bridge game taking place is one of the things which the couple overhear on “The Enormous Radio.” The entire plot of “The Angel on the Bridge” revolves around a sudden manifestation of fear of crossing bridges which threatens to paralyze the protagonist.
Shady Hill
Shady Hill is an affluent suburban community in New York in which many of the stories are set or mentioned. The connective tissue between the characters, plots and themes in these stories serve to situate Shady Hill—especially due to its name resonating with the imagery of darkness and shadowy behavior—as a metaphor for any kind of locale that arises out of shared communal values and traditions.
