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In their stories “The Things They Carried,” “Enormous Radio,” and “Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta,” Tim O’Brien, Lorraine Hansberry, and Kate Braverman, inform their audiences, in different ways, about the social problem of addiction, and how this addiction is rooted in people’s problems. In “The Things They Carried” the soldiers are addicted to tangible drugs, which they use to escape their suffering, while in “Enormous Radio” and “Tall Tales of the Mekong Delta” the drugs that causes the addiction of the protagonists are a metaphor that could symbolize anything from alcohol to any other hard drug and that are used for escaping the boring reality that the protagonists live in.

Short stories “The Enormous Radio” by author John Cheever, and “Tall Tales From the Mekong Delta” by Kate Braverman, are similar because both authors use a symbol or metaphor for representing a drug and deal with the problem of addiction. In “The Enormous Radio,” the protagonists of the story, the Westcotts family, already have an interest in the radio because it brings them the music they admire (one might compare this to the initial compensations, be they personal or social, alcohol initially brings to the incipient alcoholic). Soon they discover the radio has other offerings - the private worlds of their neighbors. The first reaction is paranoia: "'Maybe they can hear us,'" says Jim. This gives way to curiosity: "'I guess she [the nurse] can't hear us,' Irene said. 'Try something else'".

Jim, perhaps because he has to work all day and therefore is not tempted by the radio, does not become hooked with the radio’s peculiar characteristic. His has a non-addictive personality. Irene, on the other hand, cannot stay away from the radio, she likes to hear other peoples’ conversations, but she hides her new interest from the maid. Like the alcoholic hiding his booze, she is “furtive.” She becomes astonished and uneasy over the revelations about her neighbors in the high-rise apartment building, neighbors whose lives are far more "melancholy" and filled with "despair" than she had imagined. Moreover, Irene cannot wait to be alone in the house to hear the radio speaking; she “waited at the door until her children and her husband carried away in the elevator” making sure that nobody is around. The euphoria experienced by most addicts soon gives way, typically, to depression: "I've been listening all day," she tells her husband, "and it's so depressing." "Everyone's been quarreling," she says. "They're all worried about money.” The radio, which used to give pleasure, now gives