In John Cheever's story The Swimmer, Neddy Merrill is a successful man. His success is measured by the prestigious neighborhood he lives in with tennis, golf and swimming pools. Neddy has made it socially and financially. He is never without an invitation to social events, which always include drinking. He is at the top of his game. While attending the party at the Westerhazy's house with his wife, he has the desire to swim home. He sees the line of swimming pools that stretch eight miles to his home, he calls them the “Lucinda River” (297) . He is a confident man and thought "of himself as a legendary figure" (250-251). He dives in and when he gets out on the other side, he informs his wife he is swimming home. Cheever uses each pool that Neddy visits to show the passage of time in Neddy's life, and reveals how his alcoholism, infidelity and continual denial of his actions led to the destruction of his American dream.
Undoubtedly, Neddy Merrill is a social drinker in the beginning of his swim home. Cheever reveals how everyone at the Westerhazy's pool agrees they drink a lot. Even Neddy's wife Lucinda agrees when she says "we all drank too much" (250). This represents a social acceptance of alcohol. After all, this is a way of life in Neddy's social circle, and his success is also measured in alcohol. Everyone is aware they drank a lot the night before, but that does not stop them from drinking again. Neddy is drinking gin before he starts his swim from the Westerhazy's pool. "Here, let me get you a drink" is how Mrs. Graham greets Neddy at her pool. Cheever revealing the early stages in Neddy's life when he had control of his drinking. The ease of the pool visits show how Neddy was accepted socially. Neddy is...
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...or granted. Neddy's desire to swim home does not end the way he would like it to. He is at the end of his journey, and is now faced with reality. He is all alone, and has lost everything he thought made him successful. He started out as a social drinker just like everyone else. He started to need alcohol, and became an embarrassment to his family and friends. He drank more to avoid his problems. His alcoholism led to his affair, and the end of his marriage to Lucinda. His denial led to his desperate pleas for money and alcohol from his friends. He ruined his social and financial standing. In the end, Neddy Merrill destroyed his American dream.
Works Cited
Cheever, John. "The Swimmer." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 12th ed. Vol. 1. Eds. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2013. 249-57. Print.
While some stories are more relevant in today 's society I think they are all equally important, despite the amount of attention each topic gets in American society’s media. In “The Swimmer” the clever metaphor using Neddy’s slowly digressing swim journey on the “Lucinda River” compares to how his real life and his relationship with his wife Lucinda and his children goes downhill. It is clear that Neddy is living a la...
Neddy pays no attention to these symbols and becomes "isolated, beaten and finally unaided" (Nydam 15). It is a depressing expedition, but like plunging into a river, Neddy was swept away.
He portrays this theme through the setting, the people and Neddy’s journey home. Several families in wealthy suburbs spend their days drinking alcohol, relaxing and throwing parties. This type of lifestyle is even shown through to the priest, “You might have heard it whispered by the parishioners leaving church, heard it from the lips of the priest himself, struggling with his cassock in the vestiarium.” Even the local priest, who is supposed to show a more significant way of living, has become part of this lonely suburban way of living. Neddy also has a seeming, empty life with his friends. His friends are welcoming towards him, when he has a lot of money but it’s not the same when he becomes financially unstable. Neddy’s close friends seemed to fade away when he was going through rough times. Grace Biswanger and Shirley Adams, were both very unpleasant to him. Grace Biswanger knew that Neddy had gone broke, “They went for broke overnight—nothing but income—and he showed up drunk one Sunday and asked us to loan him five thousand dollars....” When Neddy was successful he had friends, but he later finds out he does not have and friends that are close enough to him that will stick with him through hard times. During his success, he made friends built only on social status, for example the rich Hallorans. Neddy’s desire to swim home also shows his emptiness. He sees this idea into something honorable, that he imagines will
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
“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
I think the message that John Cheever is trying to make in this short story is that if a person is in total concentration of a single goal, then it may result in ignoring or losing treasures that enrich our everyday lives. Some of these lost treasures are friendships, respect, family, and possessions. “The Swimmer” is written in third person omniscient, but focuses more on the main character Neddy. “Was he losing his memory, had his gift for concealing painful facts let him forget that he had sold his house, that his children were in trouble, and that his friend had been ill? His eyes slipped from Eric’s face to his abdomen, where he saw three pale, sutured scars, two of them at least a foot long.” With Neddy as the main character, the reader has the ability to form his or her own opinion of Neddy, due to the fact that we as readers do not know his actual thought process. Cheever mostly likely wrote “The Swimmer” in third person omniscient to allow the reader to create their own ideas as to what is going on in the character’s mind. Cheever already put ideas in our heads to describe Neddy as being selfish, cold-hearted, self-centered, and rich. I
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
Summary—the story focuses on Neddy Merrill, a man who is happy and content with his life. After a long day, he chooses to make the journey back to his house by swimming along the Lucinda River. This river is made up of a collection pf pools at his friends' houses. He begins the trip strong and powerful but ends feeling weak and sickly. As he makes his way home the people he once called friends begin to become cold and distant. As time goes on, it becomes apparent that this journey is not happening in a
When the story begins, they are gathered around the pool talking about how they drank too much last night and had possibly forgotten the day before. Neddy is doomed to make his trip every day in an endless loop, but often has no recollection of it, because his journey always ends with him swimming in the River Lethe (the Halloran’s pool). On the other hand, this journey of his may only be happening this one time and serves as his punishment to relive his unfortunate memories, such as the affair and obvious financial instability. The reader can interpret Neddy as a penniless beggar based on what his neighbors say to him. His former lover, Shirley Adams, coldheartedly says, “‘If you’ve come here for money, I won’t give you another cent.’” (Cheever 2369).
The list goes on for a few more names but this list is enough to realize that being in the know of who people are and the houses they occupy is of importance in order to make sure he conforms within his social circle. Neddy’s drinking habits at each of his stops along his journey is another noteworthy example. At each stop, he makes sure and partakes in some sort of alcoholic beverage. It is as if he is socially drinking at each stop to not draw attention to himself and thus conform to the rest of the party. As the story progresses and readers start to see a turn in the story, there is another example of Neddy’s conformity. The narrator of the story explains, “His was a world in which the caterer’s men kept social score, and to be rebuffed by a part-time barkeep meant that he had suffered some loss of social esteem” (1185). The story lays it out very clearly that in Neddy’s culture or his “world” that social esteem and score are very important to people. This is revealed later in the story when Neddy is reflecting on his journey, “He could not understand the rudeness of the caterer’s
The American Dream The American Dream summarizes a belief in opportunity for success in America and much of it was reached in the 1950s. It was the belief that everybody was equal, and everybody had an equal opportunity to have a career, raise a family, and live successful and comfortable lives. It was a dream of equality and free enterprise above all else. The American Dream originated in 1931, during the early days of American settlement, with mostly poor immigrants searching for opportunities. It was manifested in the Declaration of Independence, which describes an attitude for hope.
Neddy doesn’t believe that he has an alcohol problem, but the events that take place on his “ swim” claim differently. When he meets people along his journey, the things they speak to him shock him. The fact that he is oblivious shows the affects of alcohol on his life. His first encounter was when he arriv...
The term “The American Dream” sounds appealing but it is really not what others make it seem to be. The meaning of the American Dream is the idea that every single US citizen should have the same equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. What is the true definition of hard work? Is hard work the same amount of effort for different type of people? For some people, the journey to success will be smooth, but for others it will be more difficult. It will be difficult for others because of for an example, the color of someone 's skin. Is the Dream harder to achieve from a burden we cannot change like skin color? In the book Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
Each character in the story seems to have a fulfilling, happy life, but each of them, nevertheless, remain isolated from one another and formulate a society solely based on appearances. Throughout “The Swimmer”, Ned attempts to suppress this despair, until finally his suppression enfeebles and his agony arises. Cheever makes his failure of suppression evident through the behavior of the weather which is a pathetic fallacy. The “midsummer Sundays” turn to “strom[s]” and the storms subside when Ned realizes his fate (69,71). His despair could not longer be ignored. Thus, Cheever urges us act upon our emotions and not to suppress them because suppression will only lead to more anguish. Through swimming and ignoring his misfortunes, Ned becomes “cold and [...] tired and [...] depressed”,and his life of silent despair transforms to unredeeming
Neddy Merrill is a self-identified legendary figure, decides to swim across the Lucinda River, another Neddy Merrill identification. This river: a suburban mass tickled with swimming pools, becomes the determining aspect of John Cheever’s “The Swimmer.” Every page is filled with water and questionable “drinks” to keep Neddy steady and social. The character’s social behavior is a consistent reaction to the consistent addition of drinks into his hand for a period of time. Neddy’s voyage first across town, then across the county are nothing promised, and nothing gained, even to himself. The surrealism of the pools and the small conversations with seemingly unimportant characters are what gives Neddy an identifiable problem. Neddy’s issues that