John Cheever

Every story is composed of a theme, tone, mood, or any other literary device. That's what makes them remarkable, and at the same time, gives them a sense of uniqueness. However, within the pages of every story, there is always a hidden message. Most often, these messages usually intertwine between a mixture of different literary elements and generalized concepts or ideas that make the story more appealing and relatable to the readers. In most stories theme is a prominent element that helps…

You Are the Heroes of My Eyes Heroes have been conceptualized by American comics as someone has the supernatural power and wears some sophisticated costumes when they are saving the world. However, in reality, a hero can be a person who is able to do the little things for their beloved one in daily life. Doing a little thing is in the sense that we can show our love and kindness towards other in this cruel and cold world. Hence, Bob from ‘’After Twenty Years’’ and the father of ‘’Reunion’’ can…

The Swimmer - two presentations, two experiences The movie The Swimmer is based on a short-story by John Cheever. In it, a man named Neddy Merrill decides he is going to swim through a series of his neighbors swimming pools in an effort to get home. Along the way, he finds out that things that he thought about his life and himself are not what they seem. Both the movie and the short story follow a similar plot line, but by comparing the two closely, it is easy to see that there are many…

In The Swimmer written by John Cheever, Neddy Merrill, a father and husband, suffers from a self-destructing memory that makes him believe that different things are occurring or that specific events may of not even happened. Ned is a described as a slender, childish man that drinks heavily. He got the idea that he was going to swim “cross county” threw a trail of the neighbors’ swimming pools. He began to think he was an explorer, and took his new voyage very seriously. Ned decided to name his…

The film swimming upstream by Russell Mulcahey can be examined from several different levels. It is the story about a young man who loves to swim and strives to be an Australian champion and go to the Olympics. The film follows Tony’s journey from childhood to young adult. His journey is focused in gaining his father’s attention and love. By the end of the film he realised his is never going to be recognised by his father so his energy goes into doing things for himself such as university and…

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…

In John Cheever’s short story, “The Swimmer”, the author presents several minor themes– each linked to one another. Some of these themes: social status, money, and love, pave the way for the development of the major themes. During Neddy’s journey along the Lucinda River, his encounters with his neighbours coupled with his repressed memories develop the major themes of the short story. Towards the end, as Neddy’s blocked memories progressively become a reality, the central themes – repression and…

society we focus a lot on authenticity and being authentic. We go to great lengths to make sure we are and everything we have is genuine. Unfortunately, in order to achieve this, we sometimes lose the very essence of what we were trying to achieve. John Cheever’s famous work, “The Enormous Radio” demonstrates just that. In this essay I will be focusing on the inauthenticity of society as illustrated in “The Enormous Radio”. I will argue that that the inauthenticity in society illustrated in the…

it feels/ Some people wanna kill their sorrows/ Some people wanna fit in with the popular/ That was my problem”(Lamar), we see a very similar description of alcoholism in The Swimmer, by John Cheever, who also uses swimming pools as a metaphor for the hardships of being an alcoholic. Throughout The Swimmer, Cheever, writes using many motifs to show the narrator, Neddy Merrill’s, decline into becoming an alcoholic, such as the sources of the water in the various pools he swims in. The changes in…

In the short story written by John Updike “Outage” one can see through the eyes of a few strategy texneks. Such as the Readers-Response, which looks at how a reader reacts to a written work throughout a reading. Another exilant strategy would be the Biographical strategy; in this strategy a reader doesn’t merely look at the written work but also takes into consideration the person who wrote the given work. Someone choosing to use the readers-response on the work “Outage” (or any work)…