Cheever The Swimmer

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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. The Swimmer is a 1968 American surreal drama film starring Burt Lancaster. The film was written and directed by Academy Award-nominated husband-and-wife team of Eleanor Perry (screenplay adaptation) and Frank Perry (director). The story is based on the 1964 short story 'The Swimmer' by John Cheever, which appeared in the July 18, 1964, issue of The New Yorker. 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.

Type of Work and Publication Year

…….“The Swimmer” is a short story centering on a man who swims the length of each private and public pool he encounters on his eight-mile journey home. The story was first published in The New Yorker on July 18, 1964, and republished in the same year in a collection of John Cheever’s short stories, The Brigadier and the Golf Widow.
…….The time is a Sunday afternoon in the early 1960s. The action takes place in suburban New York City—probably in Westchester County, where author John Cheever once lived. Westchester, one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, is north of New York City and west of Connecticut.
Neddy Merrill: The title character. He is a slender, middle-aged man who lives in a posh New York City suburb. He is a heavy drinker who has an affair with a woman in his neighborhood. The reader discovers at the end of the story that his wife and four daughters have left him.
Lucinda Merrill: Wife of Neddy Merrill.
The Four Merrill Daughters
Helen Westerhazy: Friend of Neddy Merrill, who begins his swim at her pool.
Donald Westerhazy: Husband of Helen Westerhazy.
Mrs. Graham: Neighbor who gives Neddy a drink while he swims her pool.
Mrs. Graham’s Guests From Connecticut
Mrs. Hammer: Woman who tends roses while Neddy swims her pool.
The Lears: Husband and wife who sit in their living room as Neddy swims by.
The Howlands, the Crosscups: Residents who are away while Neddy swims their pools.
Enid Bunker: Neighbor who welcomes Neddy to her party. Before he has a drink and swims her pool, she introduces him to many of her guests.
Rusty Towers: Guest at the Bunker party who floats in the pool on a rubber raft.
Bartender at Bunker Pool: Smiling man who gives Neddy a gin and tonic.
The Tomlinsons: Guests at the Bunker party.
The Levys: Neighbors whose pool Neddy swims. He takes shelter in their gazebo during a storm.
The Lindleys: Family that once maintained horses and a riding ring.
The Welchers: Family whose pool has no water.
Elderly Driver: Man who allows Neddy to cross in front of his car.
Lifeguards: Two men who order Neddy out of the public pool in the village of Lancaster.
Mr., Mrs. Halloran: Elderly couple with the oldest pool in the county.
Eric, Helen Sachs: Neddy swims their pool but is disappointed that they no longer keep alcoholic beverages in their home. Helen is Mrs. Halloran’s daughter.
The Biswangers: Neighbors whom Neddy regards as socially inferior. When Neddy enters their property, a party is in progress. Grace Biswanger calls him a gate-crasher. Nevertheless, he swims their pool and gets a drink.
Bartender at Biswanger Pool: Man who treats Neddy with hostility.
Shirley Adams: Onetime mistress of Neddy Merrill. She treats Neddy rudely and says she won’t lend him any more money.
Young Man With Shirley Adams
The Gilmartins, the Clydes: Families with pools that Neddy swims before arriving home.
Cook, Maid: People who once worked in the Merrill household.
…….The author presents the story in third-person point of view with a narrator who reveals the thoughts of the main character, Neddy Merrill.
…………..Source

Cheever, John. “The Swimmer.” Literature and the Writing Process. 5th ed. McMahan, Elizabeth; Susan X Day, and Robert Fund, eds. Upper Saddle River, N.J.:……….Prentice Hall, 1999. Pages 369-376.…….It is a hot Sunday in midsummer. At the pool of Donald and Helen Westerhazy, Lucinda Merrill confirms what all the guests know: that everyone drank too much the previous evening.

…….“It must have been the wine,” says Helen Westerhazy.
…….Neddy Merrill—a thin man with an athletic build—decides to swim home, going from one family pool to the next, until he covers all eight miles to his residence in Bullet Park.
…….“He was not a practical joker nor was he a fool,” the narrator says, “but he was determinedly original and had a vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure.”
…….Neddy removes a sweater draped on his shoulders and swims the Westerhazy pool, then crosses over to the Grahams’ pool in the next yard. When greeting him, Mrs. Graham says she had been trying to contact him all morning. She gets him a drink, and it appears he may have to stay awhile. However, a group of the Grahams’ friends arrives for a visit, and Neddy is able to sneak off.
…….Next, he swims the pools at the Hammers, the Lears, the Howlands, and the Crosscups, then crosses the street to the Bunkers, where more than two dozen people are attending a party. In the pool floating on a raft is Rusty Towers.
…….“Oh, look who’s here!” Enid bunker shouts, noting Neddy’s wife had told him that he wouldn’t be able to attend the Bunkers’ party. They exchange kisses, and she leads him to the bar. Along the way, he greets and kisses many of the women guests and shakes the hands of many of the men. After drinking a gin and tonic, he swims the pool, smiles at the Tomlinsons, and heads over to the Levy’s pool. He sees bottles and glasses around the pool but no people. After swimming the pool, he has a drink—his fourth or fifth that afternoon.
…….Storm clouds gather, and he hears thunder. An airplane is circling. A train whistle sounds, and Neddy thinks of the railroad station and waiting passengers. It begins to rain. He likes storms. He likes the way a storm blows open a door and the wind rushes up the stairs. He takes shelter in the Levys’ gazebo until the storm moves on. After leaving the gazebo, he notices something strange: the storm had blown down leaves with autumn colors—red and yellow—but it was summer.
…….He then goes to the Welchers’ pool. There is no water in it, and there are no signs of life in the house. He walks around to the front and sees a for-sale sign. He wonders, “When had he last heard from the Welchers—when, that is, had he and Lucinda last regretted an invitation to dine with them? It seemed only a week or so ago.”
…….Neddy then hears the sound of people playing tennis and heads off to his next challenge. But he must cross Route 424, busy with lines of traffic. As he stands on the shoulder of the road wearing only his swimming trunks, people mock him. Someone hurls a beer can at him. When an elderly driver slows down for him, he makes it to the grass divider in the middle of the road. There, he suffers more ridicule. After waiting ten or fifteen minutes, he manages to make it to the other side. He then goes to the public pool in the village of Lancaster. Signs indicate that swimmers must take a shower and footbath before entering the pool. They also must display an identification disk. Neddy takes a shower and washes his feet in a solution, then dives into the pool. It is crowded and stinks of chlorine. After he reaches the other end of the pool, two lifeguards cite him for not wearing an identification disk. However, he manages to escape and cross the road to the grounds of a wealthy elderly couple, the Hallorans. A hedge surrounds their pool.
…….“The Hallorans were friends . . . who seemed to bask in the suspicion that they might be Communists,” the narrator says. “They were zealous reformers but they were not Communists.”
…….He calls out to alert them that he is on their property. When they are at the poolside, they never wear bathing suits. So, before entering the pool area through the hedges, Neddy conforms to their practice by removing his trunks.
…….“I’m swimming across the county,” he tells them.
…….He leaves his trunks at one end of the pool, walks to the other end, and swims the length of the pool. While he is getting out, Mrs. Halloran says, “We’ve been terribly sorry to hear about your misfortunes, Neddy.”
…….Neddy, dumbfounded, says, “My misfortunes?”
…….“Why we heard that you’d sold the house and that your poor children . . . “
…….Neddy says he did not sell the house and his four daughters are at home.
…….She simply replies, “Yes, yes . . .”
…….He thanks her for the use of her pool and puts on his trunks. They feel loose. Is it possible, he wonders, whether he could have lost weight in a single afternoon? He also feels cold and weary, and his encounter with the Hallorans has depressed him. He goes a short way to the home of the Hallorans’ daughter, Helen Sachs, and asks for a drink to warm him. But she tells him that she and her husband, Eric Sachs, have not kept any alcoholic beverages in the house since Eric’s operation three years before. Neddy had forgotten about the operation. The narrator says, “Was he losing his memory, had his gift for concealing painful facts let him forget that he had sold his house, that his children were in trouble, and that his friend had been ill?”
…….He swims the Sachs’s pool, barely making it, and crosses over to the Biswangers’ house, where a party is in progress. Numerous times, the Biswangers had invited Neddy and Lucinda Merrill to dinner, but the Merrills always snubbed them. They thought themselves above the Biswangers. When Neddy enters the pool area and heads for the bar, Neddy calls him a gate-crasher. Nevertheless, he asks whether he may pour himself a drink. “Suit yourself,” Grace Biswanger says.
…….While at the bar, he hears her talk about him: “They went for broke overnight—nothing but income—and he showed up drunk one Sunday and asked us to loan him five thousand dollars.” Neddy swims the pool, then goes to the next pool—that of Shirley Adams. He and she had had an affair, but he could not remember when—“last week, last month, last year.”
…….After walking toward her pool, he tells her that he is swimming across the county.
…….She says, “Will you ever grow up?”
…….Expecting him to ask for money, she says she will not give him any. When he asks for a drink, she refuses to provide one. She has company, a young man in the bathhouse. But Neddy still swims the pool. When he leaves, it is nightfall. He looks up at the stars but does not see any midsummer constellations. He cries. He feels cold, confused, downhearted. He needs a drink and dry clothes. But he swims the last two pools anyway, those of the Gilmartins and the Clydes. When he reaches home, the house is dark. He wonders whether Lucinda is still at the Westerhazy place. Perhaps the girls are there or went somewhere else. When he tries the garage doors, “rust came off the handles onto his hands.” The house is locked. He tries to force the door open, then looks inside. The house is empty.
Climax

…….The climax occurs when Neddy finds himself standing on the shoulder of Route 424 amid litter while passersby ridicule him and one throws a beer can at him.
…….“He had no dignity or humor to bring to the situation,” the narrator says.
…….Neddy could have turned back, but he didn’t.
…….“Why was he determined to complete his journey even if it meant putting his life in danger?” the narrator asks. “At what point had this prank, this joke, this piece of horseplay become serious?” When Neddy decides to continue his swimming feat—which, in this surreal story, is a metaphor for the journey through life—he commits himself to his self-destruction.
…….In other words, he will continue to live as he has always lived. After this turning point in his swim—in his allegorical journey through life—everything begins to go wrong. First, he swims in “the murk” of a public pool, where he is not welcome because he does not have an identification disk. Then he becomes unnerved when Mrs. Halloran tells him she is sorry about his misfortunes. Next, he goes to the home of the Helen and Eric Sachs for a drink—and, of course, another swim—but learns that they have not kept alcoholic beverages in the house for three years. He wonders whether he is losing his memory. As the denouement proceeds—and he grows cold and weak—and finally arrives at his house, which is locked and empty.
…….Neddy Merrill is or was in conflict with his wife and daughters, for they have left him. Perhaps his affair with Shirley Adams caused the breakup. And perhaps he was hard to live with because of his apparent alcoholism and his focus on material success. He is also in conflict with the Biswangers, whom he regards as below him, and possibly with other neighbors. Finally, he is in conflict with himself, for he cannot control his urge to drink. Moreover, his inflated opinion of himself—“he . . . had a vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure (paragraph 3)”—and his mental deterioration also indicate he suffers from internal conflicts.

Themes

More Is Less
…….The American dream of material and social success came true for Neddy Merrill. He and his family had a fine home and high standing in the exclusive New York City suburb of Bullet Park. The county in which he lived had golf courses and tennis courts. All of his neighbors were well-to-do, and a swimming pool was de rigueur on every property. The Lindleys even had horses and a riding ring. Neddy and his wife frequently socialized with their neighbors. However, they refused to accept dinner invitations from the Biswangers, “the sort of people who discussed the price of things at cocktails, exchanged market tips during dinner, and after dinner told dirty stories to mixed company. They did not belong to Neddy’s set—they were not even on Lucinda’s Christmas-card list.” Neddy’s preoccupation with material success and social standing leaves him feeling empty. The more he has, the less he has. To fill the void inside him, he immerses himself in liquids (alcohol and swimming pools) during his journey through life. He ends an empty man with an empty house and an empty bank account.
…….Neddy Merrill drinks far too much. His swimming odyssey may be a dream born of a drunken stupor. Or it may be a surreal manifestation of delirium tremens. He has some of the symptoms: disorientation, mental impairment, heightened activity, hallucinations, confusion, fatigue, and trembling. Whatever the case, it is clear that alcohol has abetted his descent into ruination.
…….As he embarks on his swimming journey, Neddy fantasizes that he is “a pilgrim, an explorer, a man with a destiny.” He is a regular Odysseus about to brave the seas and their perils. And he does indeed encounter perils: a thorny hedge, gravel that cuts his feet, a highway where passersby ridicule him, a crowded public pool with stinking chlorine and hostile lifeguards, neighbors (the Biswangers) who ridicule him, a rude bartender, and a former mistress who chastises him.
…….The story can stand as a metaphor for life, delivering this message: Your time on earth is short; use this time in worthy, productive endeavors. Neddy, of course, has spent his time pursuing material and social success, alcohol, and a mistress. His swim through the pools of the county is metaphor for the swiftly passing time he has spent on this earth. He begins his journey on a sunny summer day, feeling youthful, happy, and ready to take on the challenge of “swimming the county.” But as he progresses, storm clouds approach and he hears thunder. When he takes shelter from the storm, he notices that its winds have blown red and yellow leaves from the trees—a sign of autumn. At the Halloran property, he also notices that the beech hedge is yellow, not green. He begins to feel cold, another sign that the seasons are fast-forwarding. When he reaches the Biswanger pool, says the narrator, “No one was swimming and the twilight, reflected on the water of the pool, had a wintry gleam.” When Neddy reaches home, the house is empty. His wife and daughters have left him, his bank account is nil, and his his health is impaired. He has wasted his life.
.

The Journey of Neddy Merrill

Many critics have noted Cheever’s stories to be noted with many minor patterns in his story of the “The Swimmer” such as the color imagery, the Shakespearian parallels, the names, and the autumnal images all of which connect to the pattern that dominates Cheever’s story of “The Swimmer” (Cheever’s dark knight of the soul: The failed of the Neddy Merrill, Ebscohost).

According to the Ebscohost journal article by Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet, Cheever’s stories tended to “create an imaginative and vital myth of time and modern man” that “age-old themes of conquest, journey, initiation and discovery.” An examination of the characters, setting, and events of “The Swimmer” reveals that Cheever has made a pattern of Neddy Merrill to that of the Grail hero. Cheever represents this story as a man’s conquest to become a failure after his problems have overpowered him. Also, Cheever notes that critics didn’t notice Neddy’s journey failed when Neddy was en earthbound ghost. Cheever presents the paradigm that Neddy Merrill is dead through which is the Pluto-Persephone myth (Ebscohost, Article, Cheever’s The Swimmer).

John Cheever’s story, “The Swimmer” tells the story of a man named Neddy Merrill who tries to go home by swimming in the pools, despite some obstacles along the way. As Neddy goes from pool to pool, his journey gets difficult as a result of the weather changes, his urgent need for alcohol, and the treatment of people towards him all of which made him a forgotten and a lonely person. At the end of his journey, Neddy finally reaches a home that is abandoned and empty on the spot. In order to know this story completely, the author offers some insight into the journey of Neddy Merrill as to what led the character’s journey to be a failure.

The author begins the story with a scene of the partiers complaints about drinking in which the reader sees that Neddy and his friends were having a fun time at the Westerhazy’s pool having a party and that Neddy enjoyed a happy life with his wife and friends. In the second paragraph, Cheever introduces the protagonist Neddy Merrill that characterizes him as a Grail hero and as man who had a “vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure” (248, Story and Its Writer). Cheever emphasizes this idea because he believes that Neddy seemed to have an idea of himself as an explorer who searches the route to his home. As compared to other heroes in Grail times, Neddy decides that one day, he will start off his journey by swimming in the water (EBSCOhost, The Failed Quest of Neddy). Cheever declares that Neddy will make his way home by swimming in the water because Cheever remarks that “Neddy was like a pilgrim and an explorer who knew that he would find friends along the way; friends who would line the banks of the Lucinda River” (249, story and Its Writer).

Cheever goes to the next part of the story where he introduces plot as relating to the events in order of representing Neddy Merrill’s journey. First, the author takes the readers to the place where Neddy is at the Graham’s pool where he is greeted by Mrs. Graham who offers him a drink. This shows the readers that Neddy was a very happy person who was treated well by Mrs. Graham who showed him an act of kindness. Cheever insists that Neddy didn’t want to spend too much time in the Grahams’ place so Neddy swims at their pool and then swam at the Graham’s pool, the Howlands’ pool and many others.

Cheever The Swimmer Analysis

Cheever goes on to say that in the next part of the story, Neddy arrives at the Bunkers’ place where a party is held. In the story, Cheever finds that Neddy is seeing people partying such as “men and women gathering by the sapphire-colored waters and the caterer’s men in white coats pass them cold gin” (249). In that place, Neddy meets Mrs. Bunker who takes him to the bar where Neddy is given a drink by the smiling bartender.” Neddy is given that kind of respect because a lot of people know him well as a guest who is welcomed at every party.
After spending time at the Bunker’s place, Cheever brings readers to the part where Neddy must swim to the side of the pool to protect himself from colliding with Rusty’s raft.

Next, Cheever brings the readers to the place where Neddy goes to the Levy’s house where he sees that the Levys’ place was empty. However, Neddy tries to get himself a drink because there was no one at that place to serve him. A few moments later, Neddy experiences a storm coming and hears the dreams of the “pilot laughing with pleasure in the afternoon, a train whistle blowing at an hour, a dwarf with some flowers wrapped in a newspaper, and a woman who had been crying” (250). All of these ideas suggest that Neddy is experiencing a dramatic change in his life. When the storm strikes, Neddy takes shelter in the Levys’ gazebo until the storm is over.

Cheever The Swimmer Analysis

“According to the Ebscohost article on The Failed Quest of Neddy, Weston details how Gawain on his way to the Grail castle, is overtaken by a terrible storm and comes to a chapel standing at a crossways in the middle of the forest enters for shelters. This statement suggests that Grail knights find lighted candles, while Neddy on the other hand, is in a shelter surrounded by the familiar Grail trappings of oak trees and fountains where he discovers Japanese lanterns that Mrs. Levy brought in Kyoto, Japan.”

Cheever brings the readers to the next part of the story that Neddy experiences a change in his journey. The change would be that the season was changing from summer to fall when Neddy saw that the leaves were falling off the trees. As soon as Neddy experienced this, he felt a “peculiar sadness at the sign of autumn” (251). After experiencing these changes, Neddy then heads for the Welchers’ pool which was “overgrown with grass and all the jumps dismantled” (251). Neddy wondered if the Lindleys had sold their horses or had gone away for the summer but Neddy could remember neither of these things because his memory was unclear. This change represented a delay in Neddy’s journey because this part shows readers that Neddy was disappointed that the pool was empty. After experiencing the emptiness of the Welcher’s pool, he continues his journey at a difficult portage.

Cheever gives the readers the insight how Neddy’s character was changed from being a happy guy, to a stranger. Cheever offers an insight on the location where Neddy is at his most difficult journey crossing Route 424 when he was exposed to “all kinds of ridicule such as-beer cans, blowout patches, and rags” (251). Cheever says that Neddy was jeered at, laughed at, and that a beer can was thrown at him. This action meant some lost of dignity for Neddy to confront the situation. As Neddy stands on Route 424, he wondered if he can go back to the Westerhazys’ but he had no urge to do so. A few moments later, an old man who was a worker on the highway, helped Neddy get to the middle of the road because the old man was showing an act of kindness by aiding Neddy in his journey.

Cheever the swimmer summary

John Cheever The Swimmer Sparknotes

Cheever brings readers to the next scene where Neddy arrives at the Recreation Center where there was a public pool. As Neddy was the public pool, he saw a rule saying, “All swimmers must take a shower before using the pool. All swimmers must use the footbath. All swimmers must wear their identification disks” (252). When Neddy saw those rules, he took a shower, washed his feet in a cloudy and a bitter solution and headed straight for the pool which had a weird smell of chlorine and that it looked to Neddy like a sink. While in that pool, Neddy recalled the sapphire water at the Bunkers’ pool with longing and thought that he might be contaminated. After being kicked out of the pool without wearing his identification disk, Neddy runs away from that place and goes to the Hallorans estate.

According to the Ebscohost article written by N. Cervo, Cheever introduces the idea that the Hallorans are Pluto and Persephone figures and that their pool is the Stygian pool. Another idea Cheever introduces in regard to the Hallorans being those figures is that their name represents the Hel of their daughter’s name and also sounds like Neddy’s “hullo, hullo.” In other words, Neddy enters the Hallorans’ estate and sees that they are naked. Neddy takes off his clothes to make himself naked and then he goes in the pool and swims. When Neddy gets out of the pool, the Hallorans tell him of his “misfortunes” but Neddy doesn’t understand those thoughts so he goes to his next destination. In this way, it can be said that Cheever presented the Pluto-Persephone myth to convince the readers that Neddy is swimming in a water of Forgetfulness because he forgot about the misfortunes that cost him his house and his family.

Cheever The Swimmer Full Text

As the story progresses, Cheever tells readers that Neddy’s character has changed when Neddy experienced coldness after the season changed, when he felt tired after excessive swimming, and that he had lost some strength in his body and felt that he could never be energized again. In order to overcome that problem, Cheever brings readers to the scene where Merrill is meeting with Helen Sachs who gives Neddy a drink but tells him about Eric’s operation three years ago. Neddy doesn’t remember much of that information and goes off to continuing his journey.

Cheever offers an insight as concerning the change of Neddy’s character appearance starts to change where he is a stranger and that his journey home is as easy as it used to be. Cheever offers insight on Neddy Merrill when he went to the Biswangers’ place and asked for a drink from Grace Biswanger. Grace said no so Neddy went to the bar to get a drink from the bartender who was rude to him. These actions as suggested by the author meant that Neddy had lost confidence in himself making the journey back home.

Cheever introduces the Grail figure, the temptress, as based on the Ebscohost article concerning the failed quest of Neddy Merrill. Cheever describes her as the hero to whom Neddy was attracted to, and that she criticizes him for his failure. Cheever introduces Shirley Adams as that person, to whom Neddy admires her “hair the color of brass” but she does not focus on his age. Shirley criticizes Neddy saying to him to grow up because he is a crazy guy and that he is a stranger to random people. After being rejected by Grace Biswanger and Shirley Adams, Neddy began to cry.

At the conclusion of the quest, the Grail hero arrives at the Grail castle and is granted a vision of the Grail, known as the “freeing of the waters” (Ebscohost article, The Failed Quest of Neddy Merrill). On the other hand, Cheever ends the story by saying that Neddy arrived at his house only to find it abandoned and dark.