The Crazy Clairvoyant and the Dull Demon

The Crazy Clairvoyant and the Dull Demon
In his story “The Five-Forty-Eight,” John Cheever constantly shifts both the reader’s and the character’s perception of the people to whom they are introduced. He is able to do this so successfully by showing the depth of seemingly one-dimensional characters.
Blake and Miss Dent are people who can be approached from many different angles. Physically, Blake is described as “undistinguished in every way,” (11) and Miss Dent as “small” and “common” (63). In other words, if you ever saw either of them walking down the street, you would not even pause to notice them, despite the fact that one is crazy and the other is diabolical. At the beginning of the story, Blake seems like a victim because he is trying to escape from a stalker and potential killer. However, the reader quickly learns from Blake’s own thoughts that he is an evil man dedicated to cheating on his wife by scamming insecure girls into sleeping with him. Because Miss Dent is stalking Blake, we originally see her as crazed. Then, when we hear why she is stalking him, she appears more rational (during the course of a day, the guy exploited her and then fired her, so even if she is trying to kill him, her reasoning is solid). Finally, we see that she is in fact certifiably insane (or else a completely successful, if not somewhat misunderstood, clairvoyant). Blake himself is a judgmental man, as evidence by his intense dislike of Mr. Watkins, who has been presumptuous enough to have “long and dirty hair” (14). Also, the character’s perceptions of each other shift. Blake originally sees Miss Dent as quiet and meek, a stark contrast to the crazed women we later meet. Miss Dent views Blake as a god before she realizes what a pathetic and evil man he really is. Blake even has flashes of a happier, more fulfilling childhood with “gone summers and gone pleasures,“ (60) which hints that he may not be as despicable as he appears. Over the course of the story, the reader is presented with an ebb and flow of perceptions: we are led to believe that character traits are not as rigid as they first appear.
The atmosphere that Cheever portrays in his story is filled with isolation and conformity. On the five-forty-eight, when Blake is in danger, he needs to quite literally reach out to his neighbors, and yet he is unable to do so. Considering the many hints throughout the story that Blake is a reasonably wealthy man, it can be said that his attempt and failure to connect with others who live in his community is an example of the quiet desperation of upper-middle class American life. Miss Dent also notices how lonely and unfulfilling this life can be when she comments that she didn’t expect where Blake lived to “look so shabby” (57). No one on the train stops to notice Blake’s predicament, and one can imagine that Blake himself had often times waited to be picked up without making any meaningful connection with his fellow commuters. When the last man leaves him to face his fate, Blake even feels a deep sense of regret for the “unwanted parting of the spirit and the heart” (57). It takes a gun pointed at his belly for Blake to even attempt to make a connection with fellow human beings.
As the above paragraphs show, Cheever’s overall goal in this story is to illustrate how upper-middle class life boxes people into one dimensional personalities that do not entirely fit them. Even though we see that Blake and Miss Dent are complicated characters, they are living lives that, “like the rest of us,” (11) appear conventional and dull. In this way, the five-forty-eight is a microcosm of all upper-middle class life: everyone is searching for fulfillment by trying to conform to a tired stereotype that precludes any sort of human connection. (657)