John Cheever's Failures

Success, Failure, and Insecurity in John Cheever’s Works Many of John Cheever’s works represents what he experienced in his life, from success, to the many tragic events that occurred in his lifetime, and to the many insecurities that he faced. In these works, the many absurdities of life are presented, some with a comic twist, in the three novels and collections of short stories that Cheever published from 1953 to the early 1970’s, when Cheever experienced many of his tragedies: a massive heart attack in 1972, acute alcoholism that forced Cheever to admit himself to Smithers Rehabilitation Center in New York, many financial difficulties, and most tragically, the death of his brother, whom he looked up to his whole life, in 1972 (Morace). …show more content…
Ned had this idea that he was going to travel home by swimming through all the swimming pools in the county. Ned seemed to see, “with a cartographer’s eye, that string of swimming pools, that quasi-subterranean stream that curved across the county” (Cheever, “Swimmer” 1316). He wanted to name that stream of swimming pools after his wife, Lucinda. At first, Ned felt that he was an explorer when he planned to swim through all of these swimming pools in the county. Many of the swimming pools Ned visited were owned by people who had meaningless lifestyles, and people have treated Ned horribly. For example, when Ned asked for a drink, he was refused to be given a drink by the many characters he encountered in the story, or was served rudely, while he visited the Biswangers’ swimming pool, in which they called him a “gate crasher” (Cheever, “Swimmer” 1332). Towards the end of the story, Ned starts to lose his purpose of life, his family, and his home. As he arrived at his house, he was locked out but did not know why he was locked out. “He shouted, pounded on the door, tried to force it with his shoulder, and then, looking in at the windows, saw that the place was empty (Cheever, “Swimmer” 1336).” Literary criticism of The Swimmer by Laurie Champion states that “The story demonstrates Ned’s digression from a prominent member of society to a person who is alone and has no home…[and] most of the characters lived [that Ned encountered in the story]…live similar meaningless lifestyles” and “Frequently, he shows characters who cannot grasp a significant meaning in life and those who experience a mid-life crisis” (Champion). In short, Ned started off as a successful character that has a vision of swimming a stream of pools in the county to return home, but throughout his journey, his successes started to become failures, and