Tale Of Two Places John Cheever Analysis

Author Joseph Conrad once said, "Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion" (Brainyquote). Many people like to live in denial about negative things at the expense of reality. Hiding away pain and pushing away unwanted feelings seems like the best way to live, but at the end of the day, time doesn't wait when life gets tough. The made-up illusion created by loneliness eats away at people until reality isn't viable. One of the many people who experienced life-changing alienation is John Cheever. He was the ashamed outcast of his family - conceived by accident and regretfully homosexual. Max Zimmer, and acquaintance of Cheever's, says that “‘He was extraordinarily blessed by anyone’s standards… but he liked to say that all he had in life was an old dog. There was his despair. And then there was his …show more content…
In one of the houses in Neddy's journey, "The pool furniture was folded, stacked, and covered..." (Cheever). This visual imagery shows how unwelcome Neddy is and how the doors in his life are not really open. Then when Neddy reaches his ex-mistress' house, the encounter doesn't have much of an effect on him. Cheever writes, "She was there, her hair the color of brass, but her figure, at the edge of the lighted, cerulean water, excited in him no profound memories" (Cheever). The visual imagery here shows how he has no emotional attachment - how he never cared for anyone. In the end, "When Neddy Merrill, showing stages of exuberance then exhaustion, has completed his cross country swim, his triumph was shallow and worthless; he discovered a dark, locked house, a dangling rain gutter and rusty handles on locked garage doors" (Graves). The images created by Cheever amount to the fact that everything in Neddy's life is