Television set

The Television set is the central object in Sara Goldfarb’s apartment and the instrument through which hope becomes entangled with loss of control. Harry Goldfarb repeatedly takes it to Abe Rabinowitz’s pawnshop, while Sara works to redeem it and keep watching. Later, a telephone invitation from McDick Corporation makes the screen seem to offer Sara a place in the life she has long observed from her chair. As her expectations intensify, the set’s programs cross into her perception of the apartment, turning a source of comfort into an apparent public tribunal.

A Household Object in a Repeating Cycle

The Television set has a history of repeated removal and return. Harry takes it from his mother, and Sara repeatedly redeems it; Abe Rabinowitz’s ledger, titled with Sara’s name and the set, records pages of payments over several years. On one occasion she arrives at the pawnshop with two neighborhood boys to help move the set. She has only three dollars to give Abe, and tells him she will pay more the following week. His suggestion that she report Harry to the police meets her refusal: Harry is her only child and relative, and she fears that criminal punishment would expose him to worse influences. Her hope that he will grow up, settle down, and make her a grandmother helps keep the cycle intact.

After a pawnshop visit, Sara has the set chained to the radiator. The chain makes the object more than a possession: it is a safeguard against another disappearance, but it also becomes the immediate focus of conflict when Harry comes to take it. He disconnects the rabbit ears and pulls the set until the chain catches, nearly making it fall. Sara is locked in the closet, and Harry interprets the chain as an attempt to make him feel guilty or cause an accident. She explains that it is meant to deter robbers, not him. He unlocks the chain and carefully rolls the set out of the apartment; Sara stays in the closet, rocking and trying to imagine that the removal is only a commercial break and that everything will soon be restored. The object’s departure is therefore also a brief rupture in the reassuring routine the screen supplies.

The Screen as a Domestic Script

When the Television set is in the apartment, Sara watches commercials and soap operas as closely as she watches the people around her. She responds to advertisements for toothpaste, detergent, cleaners, and prepared meals as if their small dramas offered evidence about health, marriage, and family life. A thin child in an advertisement reminds her of Harry; a spotless home and affectionate couple suggest the kind of wife she hopes he will find. When the couple eats a television dinner, Sara shares their happiness while recognizing that the meal is prepared food. She checks her money afterward and realizes she will have to go without lunch for several days to keep the set. The sacrifice makes plain how much the screen matters to her, even as the programs supply an ideal of comfort that her own apartment does not provide.

The programs also teach Sara to expect that distress will be resolved. During a televised hospital drama, she follows a mother’s decision to let a surgeon operate on her son and anticipates the recovery that will follow. She imagines the boy leaving the hospital with his mother, and rests in the certainty that the ending will be happy. That confidence reaches beyond the program: Sara reassures herself that Harry is a good boy and that things will work out for him. Television thus becomes not only entertainment but a pattern for interpreting life, one in which fear is temporary and a favorable ending can be trusted even before it appears.

An Invitation from the Screen

The Television set is on when Lyle Russel of McDick Corporation calls to invite Sara to be a quiz-show contestant. As she adjusts the rabbit ears to clear lines in the picture, she struggles to reach the telephone before the call ends. Russel’s bright, announcer-like voice seems continuous with the television she is watching; she looks between the phone and the screen, trying to locate the source. His announcement that the company represents quiz shows, including new programs planned for the next season, overwhelms her. For a moment she is so absorbed by the invitation that she forgets the television altogether.

After the call, the set helps shape the practical and imagined preparations that follow. Sara worries about what she will wear and decides that she must lose weight before appearing. She thinks of her red dress and gold shoes, then rejects the dress as unsuitable for the screen. She checks the mailbox for the promised information, continues dieting, and later receives a package of diet pills after visiting a doctor. The relationship between invitation and object becomes increasingly close: the set remains on while Sara studies quiz shows, rehearses being a contestant, and imagines herself answering questions before an applauding audience. The promised appearance is not confirmed in the evidence, but the Television set gives Sara a recurring place to stage it as if it were already happening.

From Audience to Apparent Spectacle

As Sara’s expectations and distress intensify, she no longer only watches the Television set. She imagines figures stepping out of its screen and inspecting her apartment. A little girl in red and an announcer move through the rooms, silently judging the old furnishings and lack of light. Sara tries to explain the apartment’s condition, but the visitors return to the screen and bring an audience with them. Cameras and equipment seem to enter the room; cables stretch across the floor, and Sara sees herself on television, seated in the very apartment she fears the audience is condemning.

The imagined broadcast turns private shame into public exposure. Sara tries changing channels, but the same scene appears everywhere, and she believes millions of people can see her. She clings to the Television set as if she could hide its screen, then folds down in front of it in her red dress. The set’s role has reversed: formerly it offered Sara the position of a secure viewer, able to watch distress resolve from her chair; now it seems to make her the exposed subject of a spectacle she cannot escape. The contrast is sharpened by the actual programs she continues to watch. She pictures herself poised on quiz shows, winning presents and receiving public affection, even while the screen’s imagined audience subjects her home and appearance to disapproval.

Gift, Attachment, and Significance

The Television set also becomes Harry’s chosen instrument for trying to repair his relationship with Sara. After years in which his taking it has hurt her, he decides to buy her a new one, reasoning that the old set has been worn by repeated trips to Abe Rabinowitz’s shop. He tells Marion Silver that he intends to buy a large, high-quality color set, and later apologizes to Sara for having been a bad son. He says he wants to make things right and tells her that a new Television set is coming from Macy’s, with a service contract. Sara responds with delight and imagines how pleased her late husband, Seymour Goldfarb, would be. Harry resists the guilt she begins to express, but the gift leads to a kiss between mother and son, an affection neither had planned and one Sara welcomes.

The gift does not resolve the tension attached to the object. When Harry later discovers that Sara is taking diet pills, he tries to warn her; she answers through the hope of fitting into the red dress and appearing on television. The set remains bound to the future she believes is approaching, while Harry sees the pills as a danger. Sara continues to wear the dress and gold shoes, watch quiz shows, and imagine applause and recognition. In this progression, the Television set holds together several opposed meanings: a repeatedly lost household possession, a costly comfort for which Sara gives up meals, a medium that supplies ready-made images of happiness, and the apparent gateway through which she expects her own story to receive a triumphant ending. Its screen gives her a script to inhabit, but cannot make that script real.