Miss Dent the Role of Thesis

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Furthermore, Miss Dent never achieves any real violence in Cheever's story, which raises serious questions as to her true level of agency -- especially in a work by Cheever (Facknitz 346). Even the appearance that she is somehow the more active of the two major characters in the story, as well as her sense of control, are misleading to one degree or another. Blake manages to dodge and avoid her for quite some time; he is not docile or impotent, but rather acts out of expediency -- and fear, yes, but the fear leads to the expediency -- in eventually doing as he is told. Miss Dent has actually been far more at his mercy than she his, and even her actions in the story were caused by him.

In this light, Miss Dent must be seen as a foil to Mr. Blake, and not the other way around. She serves a function of illumination and possibility for his character that he does not provide to her; she is a device to disrupt the life of this despicably modern everyman. She even alludes to as much herself at one point: "I've been thinking about devils. I mean if there are devils in the world, if there are people in the world who represent evil, is it our duty to exterminate them?" (Cheever 33). In asking this, Miss Dent is essentially asking if there is such a thing as true agency, of if she is merely doing what is required of her. This contrasts sharply to Mr. Blake, who has no apparent sense of duty and is therefore under much more direct control over his actions and his life.

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The choices he makes are predictable, unimaginative, and banal, but they are his choices. Society and circumstance might not have left Mr. Blake a very wide perspective, but he consciously shuts himself things off to anything that displeases his sensibilities -- his son's friend, his wife, his secretary -- while Miss Dent is unable to avoid them.

Ultimately, this story is about Mr. Blake's inability to see a world beyond his own needs and desires. He has no apparent concern or awareness of anyone else at the start of the story, and the reader is left to wonder if he has actually developed this awareness at the end of the story. Though Miss Dent seems to have traveled a definite arc, the reader knows that she is still an unbalanced an unemployable woman; this episode was far more important and formative for Blake than for Dent. Where Blake lack any real purpose, he retained his sense of agency. In contrast, Miss Dent is imbued with purpose, but it is again Blake's instead of her own.

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