When you think about life and death, are you excited to live or are you scared to die? For many people all over the world, this becomes an intense thought and concern when they’ve reached a certain age. Suddenly, their life starts to flash before their eyes but slowly, as if taunting them that their youth has been lived and death is approaching. Or so it seems. There have been many studies to determine whether or not the “midlife crisis” is fact or fiction and I believe that The Swimmer by John Cheever reflects this myth in a thought-provoking and self-assessing way. From the beginning of the aforementioned short story, The Swimmer, Cheever sets the tone with lots of bright, fun, youthful descriptions. Our story’s protagonist, Neddy, is envisioned as having the “especial slenderness of youth” and compares him to a “summer’s day.” By giving us the impression that this man …show more content…
According to an article by Francesca Di Meglio, which is published by Today, one sign of a man experiencing a midlife crisis is him expressing or feeling like “life is a bore” (Di Meglio). Di Meglio then explains that some men react that way around a certain age, not because they feel like they haven’t accomplished enough in their youth, but simply “because they have accomplished so many career goals that they wonder if there is anything left to do.” Another written analysis of Neddy in Sparknotes agrees, saying “he begins to understand the discontent he’s always stubbornly ignored is more present in his life than he realized”
Many people have a feeling of unfulfillment at some point in their lives. They feel that they are not living life to the fullest, and make drastic changes in order to reach that feeling of true fulfillment. This feeling is usually manifested as a “mid-life crisis,” which is when middle-aged people face a major shift of identity and self-confidence, causing them to act out and buy sports cars and have affairs with younger women in order to feel younger and more fulfilled. However, these feelings of unfulfillment can be manifested in other ways. In Hermann Hesse's novel Siddhartha and the movie Into the Wild, the main characters, Siddhartha and Chris McCandless, have these same feelings and make major life changes in order to reach complete happiness
Blythe, Hal, and Charlie Sweet. “An Historical Allusion In Cheever's 'The Swimmer'.” Studies In Short
Cheever, John. “The Swimmer”. Short Fiction: Classic and Contemporary. 6th ed. Ed. Charles Bohner and Lyman Grant. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
Throughout the story, John Cheever uses the the literary device of symbolism to illustrate the theme of a cyclic human experience that erodes away every day. Throughout the story "The Swimmer," Cheever uses this device to represent a plethora of symbols. For example, the main and initial symbol perceived in everyones minds are the aqua swimming pools. While wasting the day drinking at his neighbors house, he has an epiphany to swim through all the pools on the path back home. Before this however, the main character, Neddy, complains about the days where everyone just moans that they drank too much last night. The day is tedious, and nothing out of the ordinary occurs on the horizon. Neddy's trip turns out to be not much different. For that every pool the stereotypical suburban scrub swims through, he only just goes through a period of time and monotony. These pools are all the same, and when he comes out the other side of one, he isn't even aware of what has just passed. Analyzers of this poem have muttered, “He has been swimming in the Westerhazys' pool. And what does one swim in a pool but repetitious laps? Even the stroke he uses is repetitious” (Blythe & Sweet). This is backed up by Cheever's writing: "He swam a choppy crawl, breathing either with every stroke or every fourth stroke and counting somewhere in the back of his mind the one-two one-two of a flutter kick" (Cheever). Cheever’s intentions along with Blythe and Sweet in these quotes are that nothing is new, everything is the same. For that many can relate to this idea, and for that everyone is a swimmer in their own way. Swimming unvaried strokes in similar pools of lost time and repetition.
The Swimmer by John Cheever begins at Helen and Donald Westerhazy’s pool when Neddy Merrill makes the decision to journey eight miles home by swimming through a series of pools, he calls the “Lucinda River” (297) and walking when unable to swim. While he making his way back home, he stops at fourteen old friends’ houses and drinks before continuing on if possible. By the end of Neddy’s journey, he is exhausted and comes to the realization that he has lost not only his house but also his wife and daughters, and also his so-called friends and even a mistress. Cheever suggests that alcoholism is a destruction of life through the use of symbolism, imagery, and characterization.
In conclusion, John Cheever’s short story, “The Swimmer,” is an all-encompassing piece of fiction that deals with the heavy topic of life and time. Incredibly, Cheever drew inspiration from his own life and mixed specific, personal elements into the work. This tactic proved successful, as it has given “The Swimmer” the capability to portray a bleak, yet accurate depiction of the human condition. Cheever sheds light on the parts of life that most people much rather ignore than face. In essence, Cheever used his abilities intelligently and as a result, gave the literary world the wonderful story that is “The Swimmer.”
The setting of “The Swimmer” is in the suburbs, describing the aquatic adventure of Neddy, an energetic and cheerful father and husband. After attending a cocktail party, he decided that he would swim his entire way home through various swimming pools. Through his adventures, the protagonist makes a great discovery that his marriage life is a great lie. The journey from the cocktail party to his home converts him from a vibrant man to an old impoverished man whose life is in a major crisis. As he arrives at his house, he finds his children and wife have abandoned him. Different settings intertwine to showcase the middle class crisis he was experiencing. In this sense, the setting of the story clearly depicts the ignorance that people have. Neddy for instance has been thinking that he has a happy family, something that even surprises the reader who finds that the protagonist does not come into terms with the new reality of life (Cheever 93).
Since Neddy decides that he is bored of his repetitive life, he decides to repetitively swim across all the way back to his home. Each pool represents a period of time, most likely a couple of months. Unfortunately, Neddy is trapped inside his routine and does not realize of the changes around him. For that everything he sees in his suburbs are the same, just middle class houses that all look alike. The story does an excellent job in showing how unaware Neddy is in his own decline. In John Cheever's "The Swimmer," Cheever uses diction and symbolism to express the theme of repetitive human life that decays daily.
However, the word “swimming” has a deeper meaning than simply just enjoying the water. Have you ever heard the saying “[I’m] going to drown myself in alcohol?” That’s exactly what Neddy was doing. He was ‘swimming’ in gin and tonic. The next part where Cheever describes that Neddy was “breathing heavily and stertorously” builds on the idea that Neddy had too much alcohol and that he was struggling to stay conscious...just like when one is drunk in real life. The next part of the sentence “the heat of the sun, the intenseness of his pleasure” can also be applied to the act of being drunk. One’s body temperature rises when they have had a certain amount of alcohol. The literal meaning of this sentences is that it was just straight up hot, but the symbolism behind it is that he had too much to drink. The claim is further supported by what Cheever says right after that. The phrase “the intenseness of his pleasure” seems to support the claim that he’s had a little too much to drink and that he has reached a point in which the alcohol has made the pleasure so
Cheever, John. "The Swimmer." The Northon Anthology American Literature. 8th ed. Vol. E. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.
In John Cheever’s short story, “The Swimmer” he conveys the transformation of the character through the use of the literary element of setting. The story begins in an American, middle class, suburbs. After what seems to be a night of partying and drinking. Neddy Merrill, the main character initially appears very optimistic; he has a perfect family, high social status and very few problems in his life. In spite of his age, he feels young and energetic therefore decides to swim across town through the neighborhood pools. However, his journey becomes less and less enjoyable as the day unfolds. The water become murky, uninviting and he becomes exhausted. Also the people in his surrounding become less cordial including his mistress who wants nothing to do with him. His voyage then comes to an end when he arrives to an empty, abandoned home. The central idea suggests that an unhealthy obsession with the materialistic aspects of life can lead to alienation.
In the short story The Swimmer by John Cheever, one of the dominant themes is the passage of time. In this short story time seems to pass as reality does with us unaware of its passing. The main character is the protagonist hero, Neddy Merrill who embarks on a traditional theme of a homeward journey. The scene opens on a warm mid-summer day at an ongoing pool party with Neddy and his wife Lucinda. The pool is “fed by an artesian well with a high iron content, was a pale shade of green.
Set in 1960's suburbia, “The Swimmer” follows a man's nightmarish journey home as the very aspects of life blend, fusing realism and surrealism to create an “imaginative and vital myth of time and modern man” (Auser 292). The story opens with Ned Merrill deciding to swim across the county only using the pools of his neighbors in an attempt to celebrate the day's beauty. As the story progresses, it begins to take on a more dark and surrealistic tone as Ned loses his will to continue. Finally, he stumbles home, only to find his house desolate, grim, and vacant. John Cheever, author of “The Swimmer,” could intend to create Ned in the image of a modern tragic hero following the archetypal themes of journey, discovery, and initiation or use the story to satirize the lives of the privileged in the middle of the American century; however, the greatest purpose of Neddy's surreal journey home is to create an allegorical tale of Ned's dive through the effects of alcoholism.
The main ideas that are expressed in John Cheever's The Swimmer, is how Neddy lives through a variety of stages of alcoholism and how they each affect his everyday life. In The Swimmer, Neddy takes daily swims through multiple swimming pools. This represents the journeys in his life. He goes from being cheerful to complete sadness and depression. When Neddy is or is not swimming also represents the emotions he is going through. For example, when Neddy is not swimming, he will feel down or angry for no apparent reason. Because of his alcohol addiction, he is usually looking for alcohol during this period of time. Once he has had a few drinks, he is feeling much better and is ready to swim again. “He needed a drink. Whiskey would warm him, pick him up, carry him ...
The Old Man and the Sea has been a time old classic by a both beloved and occasionally despised author Mr. Ernest Hemingway. In the Old Man and the Sea Symbolism and references that reflect Hemingway’s own life can be seen in many different lights, he had many ups and downs similar as Santiago’s struggles and as I have chosen to explore the suffering that can be seen in Santiago and in relation to Hemingway’s own life.