Five-Forty-Eight-john-cheever

http://meta4r.com/2009/01/style-in-the-five-forty-eight-by-john-cheever/

Style in The Five-Forty-Eight by John Cheever
January 21st, 2009 · 1 Comment

John Cheever’s short story, The Five-Forty-Eight, is an example of how an author can use connotations within his diction to manipulate reader’s sympathies toward the characters of a short story. A quick reading of this story may give the reader the impression that the protagonist, Blake, is a victim. Upon reading the selection more carefully, it becomes apparent that the author intends for the reader to understand that Blake is a villain.

Blake is a married man with a history of many affairs. His most recent was with Miss Dent, a lady he had employed as a receptionist. Blake was willing to try her out and found her acceptable except for a few things about her. She appeared to him to be overly sensitive and her handwriting was an anachronistic scrawl compared to her apparent level of functioning. Despite these imperfections, he beds her. Then he fires her. When she tries to see him, he refuses to, and the lady stalks him.

Although the author does not at first tell us what Blake had done, it is apparent from his diction that he had done something. When he saw Miss Dent “her face took on a look of such loathing and purpose” that the reader may believe she has a reason to hate him. In the next sentence, Blake feels guilt, not about anything he has done, but the astute reader is guided towards making a connection. Blake does not “turn and look back” to find the true source of his guilt. He “foolishly” listens as if he could hear the “something” that “had been torn down” through “the steel structure” that “was being put up.” This steel structure is not yet solid enough to block out the light. In the reflection from this light, Blake sees his world clearly and it is a world of “cups on the coffee table, magazines to read, and flowers in the vases.” However, the flowers are dead and the cups are empty. We discover the reason why when the “contorted face” of Miss Dent appears closely behind him.

Even before the author tells us what Blake had done to Miss Dent he carefully uses language that suggests Blake is afraid of her. When water runs down his neck it is described as feeling “like the sweat of fear.” Even the smell of the wet city is used to suggest his fear. At the same time, Blake has a “morbid consciousness … of the ease with which he could be hurt.” The author continues to prepare the reader for the acceptance of Blake’s fault as he stops for a “Gibson” and recalls what he knows of Miss Dent.

Miss Dent is described as a dark woman with dark hair and dark eyes leaving “a pleasant impression of darkness.” This suggests to the reader that Blake has dark tastes. Miss Dent is a person who imagines other’s lives to be more brilliant than they are. Blake is one of those whose life is not as brilliant as it seems. If he were so brilliant, would he have “been willing to try her out”? Try her out he does, but in order to do so he has to enter her room “which seemed to him like a closet.” This is a metaphor for where Blake keeps his dark tastes. This metaphor is repeated later in the story to describe the closet that he built at his house so the children would not “see his books.”

That this story is really about Blake’s hidden life becomes clear when the author uses language that suggests Blake is hiding that life. Blake appears “undistinguished in every way” but is concerned that others “could have divined in his pallor or his grey eyes his unpleasant tastes.” The author hides Blake within the “sumptuary laws” and places him in a bomb shelter of a train, described as stinky, filthy, and filled with rank smoke. It is almost possible to imagine Blake in the depths of his personal hell. Blake recognizes the futility of regret but feels the full force of it. His life is “nailed together out of scraps of wood that had washed up on the shore.” By now, the reader understands Blake’s unpleasant tastes are his real life. This “rubber heel” of a man is so distasteful that his son moved half his possessions to the neighbor’s house.

The author uses every bit of this story to show the reader how uncomfortable Blake is with himself. By the end of the story, it is clear to the reader that the results of his actions are written on cheap paper and feel “abhorrent and filthy to his fingers.” As Miss Dent wrote to him, “They say that human love leads us to divine love, but is this true?” For Blake it is not true and the author finally spells out what he has only inferred before. Blake represents evil and preys on weak people. He uses “calculated self-deceptions” to cheer himself. When the stationmaster leaves on the lights, Blake’s waiting room is well lit and Miss Dent sees how shabby it looks.

The plot of this story progresses as if Blake was a victim of a deranged lunatic. However, the author’s diction belies that explanation. Thanks to John Cheever’s style, the reader is clear that The Five-Forty-Eight is about Blake’s shabby morals and that even though Blake has been given knowledge of his own darkness, he will pick up his hat, put it on, and true to his villainous heart, resume his self-deceptions and walk home.