The Five-Forty-Eight Literary Elements

Short story

Manhattan, the commuter train, and the New York suburb of Shady Hill in the 1950s

The story is told from the third-person point of view by an omniscient narrator.

The tone is serious, and the mood is ominous.

The protagonist is Blake. Miss Dent is the antagonist of the story.

There are two major conflicts in the story. First there is the literal person vs. person in the conflict between Blake and Miss Dent. Second there is Blake's internal conflict: his contempt for others in tension with his own insecurity.

The story reaches its climax towards the end of the story, when Miss Dent forces Blake off the train and in the direction of a deserted area near the station. In those moments, Blake—and readers—expect that Miss Dent will kill him.

During Miss Dent's short-lived employment under Blake, she tells him that she had been in the hospital for eight months. Blake does not pay this much mind. He is, however, struck by her terrible handwriting, and interprets it as a clue to some violent trauma in her psyche. He does not take this as a warning, and later regrets his failure to do so.

In another example, Blake feels inexplicably afraid walking down the Manhattan sidewalk to the train station. Seeing that Miss Dent is following him, he cannot shake his fear, despite knowing that it is absurd to be so afraid. His fear in this scene foreshadows his very practical fear on the train, where Miss Dent threatens him with death.

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In one of Miss Dent's rambling monologues on the train with Blake, she vaguely quotes biblical verses from the Book of Job, asking Blake: "Where shall wisdom be found... Where is the place of understanding? The depth saith it is not in me; the sea saith it is not with me. Destruction and death say we have heard the force with our ears."

The imagery of the rain on a Manhattan evening creates an uneasy and ominous atmosphere. Later in the story, the vivid descriptions of the landscape rolling by on the train creates a counterpoint to Blake's fear and misery inside the train car.

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Cheever uses personification several times throughout the story. For example, when the train pulls into Shady Hill, passengers head home, walking "separately in pairs – purposefully out of the rain to the shelter of the platform, where the car horns called to them." The personification of the car horns evokes a mournful mood.

Blake's observations of the landscape outside the train window are also made more vivid by personification. A streak of orange light at twilight, for example, is personified: it moves "across the waves until it raked the banks of the river with a dim firelight."