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John Cheever The Swimmer

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A “Dive” Into Literary Criticism John Cheever’s short story “ The Swimmer” sets in the midsummer season with the main character, Neil Merrill, Merrill is described as a man with an authentic young soul, but nevertheless “far from young” (1). After recalling a pleasant summer memory, Merrill decides to go back home in a particular way by swimming across everyone of his friends’ pools inside the county. On his journey, he meets with old friends and neighbors after a very long time. Through his conversations with them, Merrill notices a change in their attitude towards him and begins wondering what has happened. What Marril came to find out was due to his problems with alcoholism and other reasons he was unable to remember and almost through …show more content…

For example, since the first scene, we see the main character having flashbacks of his past, when visiting his friends. Even though it was a while after seeing his friends he seems not to have much of a special attachment to them. But he would always make sure to ask for a drink after each dive into the pool to recover. Most of his friends share a variety of characteristics, they have abundant wealth, are kind of distant, throw parties and a few of them are not at always at home. In each encounter, he briefly chats with his friends, mostly he just dives into their pools without asking, as if the situation often happened they did not seem to mind at all. When Merrill had a conversation with them, they brought up subjects that Merrill remembered vaguely or did not seem to remember at all. Merrill ignores this at first, but starts to have reality shocks towards the end. All these flashbacks and situations makes the audience come back to Kozikowski interpretation when comparing “The swimmer” with “The Inferno”. All the situations and certain circumstances that the main character has to go through makes the audience question what really happened or if Cheever’s is purely

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On July 18, 1964, The New Yorker published a short story entitled “The Swimmer” (Wilhite 215). Edited thoroughly and heavily compacted from its original form, “The Swimmer” represents John Cheever 's most acclaimed and recognized work. The protagonist of the famous and momentous short story, Neddy Merrill, undergoes a watery journey of self-exploration, acceptance, and tragedy while swimming in various pools as he makes his way home from a party. Slyly and allegorically, the short story dramatically demonstrates the possible density of the literary technique called characterization. Containing many cliffhangers open to the reader 's individual self-interpretation, the short story effectively uses the strong power of language to illuminate

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