Analysis Of The Swimmer By John Cheever

John Cheever's "The Swimmer" tells the story of one mans 'afternoon' as he swims through various pools in order to get home from his friends house who lives just eight miles away. Neddy Merrill experiences increasingly strange occurrences with his neighbors at each pool he swims through and realizes many of life's problems.
Cheever beings his story with Neddy Merrill's innocent idea that he can swim his way home from a Sunday afternoon cocktail at the Westerhazy's where his drinking lifestyle is accepted by those around him. The pools themselves represent the different stages of Merrill's alcohol abuse. Each pool brought him a different sense of himself and the world around him. Neddy's journey gets worse and worse as he progresses to each pool. In the beginning he is feeling young and strong and content about swimming in all of these pools. He feels his strength isn't only something he is proud of, but also something people look up to him for. As the story goes on he beings to feel weak and by the end completely unraveled. Neddy goes from …show more content…
This relates to Neddy because in the beginning he was hanging out with his friends one warm summer afternoon and now he has become cold and lonely. His life is perfectly paralleled with the changing and passing weather, just as his marriage is changing and passing. He believed his wife would always be there for him, but she ends up leaving him in the end. Neddy never was monogamous. He had an affair and seemed to be confident and casual about it. During his journey his visits his ex-lover. Previously, she accepted his faults, being married, but does not accept his alcoholism. In this moment, he realizes some of his truth combined with rejection and is truly more damaged. He beings to cry, acknowledging that he "has swam too long... immersed too long." It was becoming difficult for him to continue on with his