John Cheever The Swimmer Analysis

The Swimmer by John Cheever is a short story about a man who decides to swim the county, and by this I do not mean a river through the county, I mean he dove into every swimming pool in the county and swam the distance of it then ventured on to the next until he arrived back home, or what he thought was home. Neddy Merrill is a man who plays out his life as problem free. He has a perfect family; he lives in a higher class neighborhood, and has high social standings. Throughout the story Ned explains how he accepts and rejects invitations to other people’s gatherings based on a social hierarchy. He is well known around the community and has many friends as well as acquaintances. Since he is so well known he thinks he is able to go from home to home and pool to pool uninvited, and he does this because he knows that he will be accepted wherever he goes. Ned begins to realize though that all of his

It states “Confronting our own death is the last major crisis we face in life…. Kübler-Ross agrees that not all people go through the same stages in the same way and regrets that anyone would use her theory as a model for a “good” death.” (Carpenter&Huffman) In the story Ned’s mind seemed to almost be in a tunnel vision type state. He wanted to achieve his goal of swimming across the county but didn’t realize what was going on in everyday life. He almost seemed as if he didn’t want to deal with it, and he lived like that for so long that by the time reality confronted him he was confused and didn’t know what was going on. A famous psychologist once said “Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.” (Freud) This explains how Ned’s illusion of happiness and wealth collided with reality when he returned to his old