A. Short Story:

1. The Swimmer by John Cheever: 1964

The swimmer is a short story written by John Cheever about the self deception of a wealthy suburban man that finds his social and household failure in the wealthy suburbs of Westchester County, New York.

Cheever The Swimmer Pdf

The protagonist of the story is Neddy Merril, who wants to retain his youth and believes that he is a vibrant individual and something of a hero. In an atempt to blaze new trails, he decides to find a new way home by swimming, although he is no longer a young man. He experiences dreamlike and nightmarish aspects in his exploration and the life cycle of American suburban. There is affluence, hypocrisy, and the relationship between wealth and happiness in Neddy Merrill.

A short summary of John Cheever's The Swimmer This free synopsis covers all the crucial plot points of The Swimmer. Search all of SparkNotes Search. Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. Much Ado About Nothing The Catcher in the Rye The Kite Runner. By John Cheeve r. Save this story for later. Photograph by H. Armstrong Roberts / Getty. Save this story for later. It was one of those midsummer. A short summary of John Cheever's The Swimmer This free synopsis covers all the crucial plot points of The Swimmer. Essays for The Swimmer. The Swimmer essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Swimmer by John Cheever. Parallels in John Cheever's 'The Swimmer' The Inevitable Passage of Time in 'The Swimmer' Intersection of Truth and Lies in 'The Swimmer'. The swimmer is a short story written by John Cheever about the self deception of a wealthy suburban man that finds his social and household failure in the wealthy suburbs of Westchester County, New York. The protagonist of the story is Neddy Merril, who wants to retain his youth and believes that he is a vibrant individual and something of a hero.

The antagonist in the play is Neddy Merrill’s blindness to his own weakness and self deception with the hipocrisy and egoism in himself. This finally leads him to his own destruction and misery. He initially thinks he is a man who has made a success of himself. He feels like a winner. He appears to be a man who has achieved material success, a house in wealthy Bullet Park, a social life with wealthy people and personal happiness, for his wife Lucinda is sharing his Sunday and they have four beautiful daughters, but he isnt as good as he appears to be, he is essentially self-centered. He regards himself as a superior being by being able to swim eight pools of his friends which actually symbolizes his exploration and life cycle as a suburban. He has repeatedly rejected the invitations of the Biswangers and yet he thinks he is doing them a favor when he crashes their party and invades their pool, feeling only ‘indifference’ and ‘charity’. When he visits his ex-mistress, Shirley Adams, Neddy’s memories of the affair reveal his cruelty. “It had been a light hearted affair, although she had wept when he broke it off.. would she, God forbid, weep again?” He doesn’t seem to feel any guilt about his unfaithfulness to his wife. The affair pleased him, as he mentions that “such love is the pain killer, the brightly colored pill that would put the spring back into his step.” Disloyalty to his wife makes him fee good about himself and self is all that matters to him. Neddy is unaware of his egotism and its effects.

The conflict began when there are hints not right in Neddy’s world. When Mrs. Halloran says “We’ve been terrible sorry to hear about all your misfortunes, Neddy,” he doesn’t understand and overhears Grace Biswanger talking about a family that “went for broke overnight”. Neddy doesn’t recognize the family as his and Shirley Adam, his mistress, refused to give Neddy “another cent.”

The climax in the short story occurs when Neddy forgot about the time. The events of years seemed to be condensed in one afternoon of a slow descent into emptiness. From summer afternoon to autumn when he didn’t realize this season change, hesmelled autumn flowers at the end of a summer day. Beside that, that same night, he could see andromeda, Cepheus, and Cassiopeia instead of summer constellations in the sky. He has used the passing of days, months and years to hide from the reality of himself. Even his blindness gives way to a moment of insight halfway through his swim, when he asks himself, “was his memory failing or had he so disciplined it in the repression of unpleasant facts that he had damaged his sense of truth?” Time, like truth, has slipped from Neddy’s grasp. He can’t seem to comprehend either anymore and he finally sees himself long after others have seen through him.

The story ends after confronting his aging weakness; he found his house empty, locked and sees the emptiness of his life.

The swimmer contains details about wealthy suburbia life, their values and life in the 1960’s; it shows their lifestyle, their view towards social status and their view towards life.

The 1960’s was a time of great prosperity for middle- and upper-class Americans. Having survived World War II, which ended in 1945, many Americans – at least white Americans – were enjoying the wealth and affluence of the postwar era. It was during this time that the American suburbs grew at a rapid pace. This world of the upper classes is the worl of Neddy Merrill as he appears at the beginning of “The Swimmer.”

In that period, among the massive suburban growth of post-World War II America, most suburbs retained a very high stability of relative ranking in social status (Stahura, 1987). The suburban consumer of the 1950’s clearly had more money to spend on goods, and more goods from which to choose, than ever before, and consumption responded less and less to basic utilitarian needs and more and more to the exigencies of status and comfort. Household goods played, increasingly, the most important role in establishing social status. In this orgy of consumption, objects became intricately linked with the concept of lifestyle. Their strictly utilitarian value was far outstripped by the way in which they provided a means of making the suburban family part of the community. As the home became, increasingly, the focus for a way of living and consuming, the objects consumed became “marks of belonging”. Wealthy Americans have more money than ever before. The gross national product, the value of goods produced by the national workforce, increases almost 36 percent during the first half of the decade. Salaries increase about 20 percent during this same period.

The wealth of the upper class is reflected in Neddy’s and his friends’ hobbies for – and ability to afford – parties. Still, in the 1960’s liberalism turned away from social justice to embrace the cause of individual freedom. Little by little, the moral clarity of the civil rights movement came to be replaced by unpleasantly dark matters of personal choice. Narrow self-interests are blinding prosperous Americans to the growing erosion of their civil rights.

The residents of Cheever’s wealthy suburbia enjoy having parties which further emphasize their natural tendency towards shocking and offensive, especially sexually, spending habits – multiple parties seem to occur every night, they are all provided food and services, and there is too much to drink. At the story’s beginning, Neddys wife and friends are complaining about the previous night’s party at which they had too much to drink. Furthermore, on his journey home, Neddy attends other parties, all of which are provided with food or entertainment. Their parties represent the emptiness of contemporary American society and the meaningless and hypocrisy of the middle and upper classes. Thus, Neddy tries to gain a sense of accomplishment and to recapture his youth by swimming home – an act that he considers meaningful, but one that is bizarre and of no real importance.

Swimming pools, normally considered a luxury, are so numerous in the community in which the story is set at the central character, Neddy. In fact, pools are so prevalent in his neighborhood that one of them even has a riding range that Neddy must cross on his journey home.

Because self-interests are blinding prosperous Americans, the citizens are not generous and dishonest, unfaithful to their families and judgmental of those not included in their social classes. In 1960’s, some 400,000 marriages are dissolved by the courts. It was reported exposing the adulteration and a sexual habit of both men and women in the mainstream newspapers and magazines. By 1953, Playboy was given a green light for acceptability. This pressure was also evident in divorce rates. The happiness supposedly associated with wealth is also hard to describe. Neddy’s friends continue to offer their sympathies about Neddy’s recent financial misfortunes, and the domesticity associated with suburbia is shattered when it is revealed that despite his happy marriage to Lucinda, Neddy has had an affair with one of his neighbors, Shirley Adams.

Many suburbs remain racially as well as economically exclusive; efforts at integration often result in racially segregated neighborhoods within the larger suburban municipality. In the United States suburban municipalities have often exercised their powers to exclude those whom they view as socially undesirable. Suburban subdivisions became notorious for continuing and solidifying a trend of ethnic and class segregation across the entire nation. It is revealed that Neddy and his wifer are something of snobs; they only associate with the “right” kind of people reflected in his relationship with the Biswangers. Although repeatedly invited, Neddy and his wife refused to attend the Biswangers’ parties because they are associated with the wrong sort of people. These people include real estate agents, veterinarians, and eye doctors; although all these individuals are trained and respected members of the community, they do not fit into the Merrills’ social group.

Tension was great enough in 1955, not just the suburbs, to lead to the consumption of 216 million gallons of hard liquor (more than one gallon per person, including kids, and not including beer or wine). This leads to deterioration physically, emotionally, socially and financially. The illuison of Neddy’s wealth and happy domestic life is shown to be fleeting and illusory as he was an alcoholic himself. There were many cocktail parties and hangovers. He always drinks in every stop of his journey. By the tale’s end, it is revealed that Neddy is in financial trouble. Even Neddy’s surroundings reflect this deterioration. Of the homes he encounters on his journey, several are locked up, and one house is even vacant for sale. He, himself, is financially broke, and that he has lost his home and children. Neddy is so wrapped up in his own life, heroism, and desire to keep up with that he cannot even admit to himself and to others that he is having a string of bad luck. The closer that Neddy gets to home, the more alienated and troubled he becomes.

John Cheever The Swimmer Sparknotes

John Cheever conveys that the trivialness of Neddy’s quest is often interpreted as further commentary on the meaningless lives of the American upper-class. The suburbs has been recognized as providing yet more insight into the upper strata of American society, proving that money and power can’t buy you happiness. Cheever indicates that the appearance of extreme wealth and well-being presentend in the community is actually a facade.

John Cheever The Swimmer New Yorker

References

Cheever The Swimmer Full Text

Stahura, M. 1987. Suburban Socioeconomic Status Change: A Comparison of Models, 1950-1980. American Sociological Review, Vol 52. Retrieved on November 20, 2008 from http://www.JSTORAmericanSociologicalReviewVol_52No_2(Apr_1987),Opp_68-77.htm.