The Swimmer Case

"The Swimmer"

Is perception really everything? Neddy Merrill, like many Americans, begins the story sitting poolside while the conversations surrounding him involve everyone's regret for amount of alcohol consumed the night before. Neddy fabricates this radical idea of pool hopping, following a path of swimming pools to swimming home. "[Neddy's] life was not confining"; He could be described as "a slender man" with the "especial slenderness of youth" yet he was far from young. Still "he had slid down his banister that morning and given the bronze backside of Aphrodite... a smack" (495). Analyzing this journey and other symbols in short story "The Swimmer", by John Cheever reveals that all men journey through life and struggle with denial only to find themselves sad alone before death.

Neddy Merrill's expedition along the "Lucinda River" (496) represents Neddy's own journey through life, with the real life events embodied in the events that take place along his swimming journey. The long afternoon at the Westerhazys' pool seems timeless, no different from many other afternoons spent exactly the same way. Neddy's idea to swim home seems like just one more idea in a series of ideas that have popped up on many similar occasions. As Neddy's journey progresses, time is actually passing much more quickly than Neddy realizes. "The beech hedge was yellow" and "leaves were falling around him and he smelled wood smoke on the wind" (499-500). The constellations in the sky change, and the air gets colder. Neddy's once friends are not at home when he expects them to be, he faces from the people he'd once rejected, his mistress wants nothing to do with him, asking him, '"Will you ever grow up?"" (502). All of these changes in the weather, familiar faces disappearing or not feeling as friendly, have happened without Neddy's knowledge, that is he chooses to not have a perception of through denial.

The changes in weather and seasons that occur throughout "The Swimmer" personify Neddy's changing life circumstances, particularly the deterioration of his comfort and security. At the beginning of the story, Neddy is warm in the sunshine, conscious of nothing but his own happiness and the pleasures of the day. As he begins his swim, the water and air are the perfect temperature, and he can walk easily from pool to pool in his swim trunks, he has not a care in the word. Shortly into his journey, a storm passes, shifting Neddy's plans. He finds himself alone for the first time, waiting out the storm in a deserted gazebo; and when the storm ends, the warmth, his comfort, is gone. He is chilly, and environment around him suggests fall. Neddy, for the first time feels a "peculiar sadness," the first anything other feeling than happiness.