John Cheever's Short Story 'The Swimmer'
7 April 2014
In John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer,” a swimming pool represents much more than a fun summer afternoon. When Cheever’s main character, Ned Merrill, decides to take the long way home by swimming through every pool on his way home, he journeys through much more than swimming pools. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that a large amount of time has lapsed since the swimmer began his journey back home, and that his swims are interconnected with his life as an alcoholic. This is a story about a man’s journey through life and not just through one afternoon. The use of swimming pools in Cheever’s story clearly represents the different phases of Merrill’s life as an alcoholic, and each swim that he takes affects his outcome in life and the person he becomes by the end of the story. …show more content…
The opening of this short story begins by emphasizing alcohol.
Right off the bat Cheever shows how the Merrill and the people he surrounds himself with drink a lot. “It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying: “I drank too much last night’” (Cheever 157). This establishes the tone for this story by showing the reader what Merrill has surrounded himself with in life. His life revolves around alcohol, and as the story begins to unfold, it is more obvious how Merrill is addicted to alcohol and cannot go anywhere without having a drink. Almost every pool that Merrill swims in he asks the owner of that pool for a drink. By the end of the story though, Merrill’s addiction to alcohol has caused more damage to the people around him than he every intended. Alcohol is Merrill’s comfort throughout the story when he feels abandoned by everyone in his life. It is clear that when Merrill begins his journey to swim home he is beginning his journey through life as an
alcoholic. When Merrill decides that he wants to swim home on the ”Lucinda River,” which is his name for the string of pools that he will swim through, he is at the Westerzays’ pool drinking. His first swim takes place in the Westerhazys’ pool where he “swam a choppy crawl” (Cheever 158). This stroke that Merrill was using “was not a serviceable stroke for long distances …(but) in his part of the world a crawl was customary” (Cheever 158). This represents the beginning of Merrill’s life as an alcoholic because drinking alcohol is not something that is that makes life easier, just like the crawl he was doing did not make swimming easier. Though abusing alcohol is going to make Merrill’s life harder over a long period of time, it is common, just like the crawl stroke, to drink large amounts of alcohol in Merrill’s world. Merrill continues his journey at the Grahams’ house where he is welcomed and greeted with a drink. Merrill feels comfortable here and is enjoying drinking and being with friends, but Merrill’s does not have time for enjoyable occasions like this. “He did not want to seem rude to the Grahams nor did he have time to linger there” (Cheever 159). This is representative of Merrill not making time in his life for other people. He is becoming consumed in alcohol and his life choices have kept him form enjoying moments like this. After Merrill swim this pool he “stepped over a thorny hedge and crossed a vacant lot to the Hammers” (Cheever 159). These two images of a thorny hedge and a vacant lot represent pain and loneliness. Merrill is slipping into a time in his life where he is not just alone but he is in a van cant lot, a place where there is not even a sign of life. While Merrill is on his way to his next swim, he can hear sounds of a party. With the sound of life Merrill now hears, he is able to pull himself out of this place in his life. “The Bunkers’ pool was on a rise and he climbed some stairs to a terrace where twenty-five to thirty men and women were drinking” (Cheever 159). Since Merrill had to climb up to this pool it means that he was at a lower point before. This represents Merrill’s life that was at a low point with his loneliness prior to escaping that and finding a place of familiarity. Especially comforting to Merrill was the presence of alcohol at this party. His surroundings make him feel young and when Enid Bunker leads Merrill to the bar he is given a drink by a bartender he has seen at more than a hundred parties. Though while he is at the bar drinking, Merrill doesn’t want to get “stuck in any conversation that would delay his voyage” (Cheever 159). Merrill still has no time for the life that is going on around him and the people in this life because all he cares about is getting a drink and swimming through the pools. Once Merrill dives in the pool he makes sure to avoid colliding with the one person in the pool, which is another example of how he has cut people out of his life. At the next house that Merrill arrives, all the doors and windows are open to him which represent being welcomed into the house. Merrill swims the pool and then immediately pours himself a drink. Even though the house is completely open to Merrill, he chooses to go towards the gazebo where the alcohol is. This is representative of Merrill’s life in that he has ignored the openness of the house and has chosen to go to the gazebo where the alcohol is. Merrill has closed himself off to life and the people in his life because of the allure of alcohol. A storm comes and Merrill stays in the gazebo protecting himself from the storm. There is an excitement that Merrill experiences during the storm, yet at the same time he is afraid at the sounds of thunder and the dark sky. This storms is like an inner struggle that Merrill is experiencing. He has cut himself off from people, closed himself off to the world and is going through storm inside of himself. This is a time where Merrill is alone and only has alcohol to comfort him. The storm in Merrill’s life is followed by a time of sadness and a sort of death of himself and who he is. After the storm, Merrill notices a tree that was damaged by the storm. “The wind had stripped a maple of its red and yellow leaves and scattered them over the grass and the water. Since it was midsummer the tree must be blighted” (Cheever 160). The blighted tree is significant of a death of something in Merrill’s life because of his alcohol abuse. This absence of life continues when Merrill moves on to his next pool. The path to this pool has overgrown grass and he notices that all the jumps were dismantled at the house. “The pool furniture was folded, stacked and covered with a tarpaulin. The bathhouse was locked. All the windows of the house were shut, and when he went around to the driveway in front he saw a for-sale sign nailed to a tree” (Cheever 160). This swimming pool is representative of a time of death in Merrill’s life, whether that be a death of someone he knows or of a part of himself. Once he reaches the pool, the pool is drained. Merrill is surprised at the emptiness of the pool, and seeing the empty pool he becomes aware of the emptiness of his own life. “Was his memory failing or had he so disciplined it in the repression of unpleasant facts that he had damaged his sense of the truth?” (Cheever 161). Merrill is at a point in his life where he is beginning to realize his emptiness and how alcohol has made him lose is identity. On his way to his next pool, Merrill goes through a time where he is mocked and ridiculed on the side of the road. “He was laughed at, jeered at, a beer can was thrown at him, and he had no dignity or humor to bring to the situation” (Cheever 161). His last experience at the storm and then the empty pool caused him to succumb so low and continue to abuse alcohol that he has lost his dignity, and this scene at the road verifies his loss. It verifies is confusion in life and him becoming aware of the damage that alcohol has done to his life and reputation. The next pool he goes to is a city pool that is filled with chlorine, something that Merrill has not experienced yet in his journey. The absence of alcohol in this part of his journey represents a feeling of being out of place and lost. “He dove, scowling with distaste, into the chlorine and had to swim with his head above water to avoid collision, but even so he was bumped into, splashed and jostled” (Cheever 162). This scene gives a vivid image of a man who feels so unnatural in his environment that he cannot even swim through the pool normally. He is called out by lifeguards for not having an identification disk on, which shows that Merrill is still trying to find his identity in this unnatural and out of place time in his life. After this swim in the chlorinated pool, Merrill experiences a sort of rebirth in life. The next pool he goes to has “no filter or pump and its waters were the opaque gold of the stream” (Cheever 162). The owners of this pool also require swimmers to be naked when they swim. The absence of alcohol in this swim and the image of him swimming naked in a natural, unfiltered pool is representative of a change in Merrill’s life. This is a moment of vulnerability in Merrill’s life because he is naked and without alcohol, which is a main source of comfort for him. After this swim, Merrill has lost strength and is feeling depressed. He continues his journey because “he needed a drink. Whiskey would warm him, pick him up, carry him through the last of his journey” (Cheever 163). Merrill only relies on alcohol to get him through his swims. Without alcohol, as seen in his last swim, leaves him feeling depressed and unable to continue. At his next stop at the Sachses’ pool, his first thing he asks of Helen Sachses is for a drink. As an alcoholic, Merrill, unable to find alcohol for himself, is now begging other people for it. The Sachses are without alcohol, which requires Merrill to do this swim without alcohol. This is representative of a time when Merrill had to face a time in his life without alcohol, without his security and strength. His swim was terrible and the water was cold. “Gasping, close to drowning, (Merrill) made his way from one end of the pool to the other” (Cheever163). This swim without alcohol almost left Merrill drowning, drowning in the thought of having to swim without a drink. The thought of having to go through a time of life without alcohol was deprived Merrill of his strength almost to the point of death. Continuing his journey, Merrill comes to the home of someone he used to consider so socially below him that he would always avoid them. But Merrill needs a drink so badly that he is wiling to go against what he previously believed about these people and be with them just to get alcohol. “They would be honored to give him a drink, they would be happy to give him a drink, they would in fact be lucky to give him a drink” (Cheever 163). This time in life is a time of desperation, a time when Merrill will do anything, even stoop to a lower social class, to get the alcohol he needs. This swim at the Biswangers’ was short and sweet. “He dove into the pool, swam its length and went away” (Cheever 164). The short swim at the house of people he would have never visited until now when he needs alcohol is representative of an uncomfortable point in Merrill’s life. Though Merrill is willing to give up his reputation for his addiction to alcohol, this is a very brief part in Merrill’s life, just like his swim at the Biswangers’. Merrill’s last two swims are at the end of his journey home, and it is obvious that his life as an alcoholic has taken and extreme toll on his body. At Shirley Adam’s pool “he dove in and swam the pool, but when he tried to haul himself up onto the curb he found that the strength in his arms and his shoulders had gone and he paddled to the ladder and climbed out” (Cheever 164). Merrill has become weak to the point where he needs help from the ladder to get out of the swimming pool. Just like in life, Merrill became so weak from his alcohol abuse that he needed something or someone to help him get out of his alcohol addiction. The last swim that Merrill takes at the Gilmartins’ pool was where “for the first time in his life, he did not dive but went down the steps into the icy water” (Cheever 165). This is an extreme contrast to how Merrill acted in the beginning of his journey when he said that “he had an inexplicable contempt for men who did not hurl themselves into pools” (Cheever 158). The man that Merrill is by the end of the story is the same kind of man who Merrill had contempt for in the beginning. The “swims” that Merrill takes throughout his journey home and his strong addiction to alcohol changes Merrill. He is no longer diving headfirst into life and the things that life has to offer but, like this swim, he is using the steps and getting into situations much slower. The “icy water” of the last pool represents being uncomfortable, and it was certainly uncomfortable for Merrill to get into the pool slowly because this was not the kind of man Merrill ever wanted to be. A journey home through swimming in backyard pool turns into a lifetime struggle with alcohol for Ned Merrill. Each swim in Merrill’s journey home is representative of a time in Merrill’s life. Some swims were happy and pleasant whereas others were plagued with misery and loneliness. As the story progress and Merrill takes more swims, he is no longer on a journey home but he is more on a journey to find his next drink. Through his constant search for alcohol, Merrill ends up at home in the end of the story not the man he wanted to be and his life is wrecked because of his motives for the swims that he has taken. The last image that the reader is left with his Merrill staring into his home that is completely abandoned and empty (Cheever 165). This is as if Merrill is staring into his life. A life that used to be filled with family and joy is now left completely empty because of the path the Merrill decides to take, a path that left him just as empty as his home.
Work Cited
Cheever, John. "The Swimmer." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym and Robert S. Levine. 8th ed. Vol. E. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2012. 157-65. Print
In John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer,” a swimming pool represents much more than a fun summer afternoon. When Cheever’s main character, Ned Merrill, decides to take the long way home by swimming through every pool on his way home, he journeys through much more than swimming pools. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that a large amount of time has lapsed since the swimmer began his journey back home, and that his swims are interconnected with his life as an alcoholic. This is a story about a man’s journey through life and not just through one afternoon. The use of swimming pools in Cheever’s story clearly represents the different phases of Merrill’s life as an alcoholic, and each swim that he takes affects his outcome in life and the person he becomes by the end of the story. …show more content…
The opening of this short story begins by emphasizing alcohol.
Right off the bat Cheever shows how the Merrill and the people he surrounds himself with drink a lot. “It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying: “I drank too much last night’” (Cheever 157). This establishes the tone for this story by showing the reader what Merrill has surrounded himself with in life. His life revolves around alcohol, and as the story begins to unfold, it is more obvious how Merrill is addicted to alcohol and cannot go anywhere without having a drink. Almost every pool that Merrill swims in he asks the owner of that pool for a drink. By the end of the story though, Merrill’s addiction to alcohol has caused more damage to the people around him than he every intended. Alcohol is Merrill’s comfort throughout the story when he feels abandoned by everyone in his life. It is clear that when Merrill begins his journey to swim home he is beginning his journey through life as an
alcoholic. When Merrill decides that he wants to swim home on the ”Lucinda River,” which is his name for the string of pools that he will swim through, he is at the Westerzays’ pool drinking. His first swim takes place in the Westerhazys’ pool where he “swam a choppy crawl” (Cheever 158). This stroke that Merrill was using “was not a serviceable stroke for long distances …(but) in his part of the world a crawl was customary” (Cheever 158). This represents the beginning of Merrill’s life as an alcoholic because drinking alcohol is not something that is that makes life easier, just like the crawl he was doing did not make swimming easier. Though abusing alcohol is going to make Merrill’s life harder over a long period of time, it is common, just like the crawl stroke, to drink large amounts of alcohol in Merrill’s world. Merrill continues his journey at the Grahams’ house where he is welcomed and greeted with a drink. Merrill feels comfortable here and is enjoying drinking and being with friends, but Merrill’s does not have time for enjoyable occasions like this. “He did not want to seem rude to the Grahams nor did he have time to linger there” (Cheever 159). This is representative of Merrill not making time in his life for other people. He is becoming consumed in alcohol and his life choices have kept him form enjoying moments like this. After Merrill swim this pool he “stepped over a thorny hedge and crossed a vacant lot to the Hammers” (Cheever 159). These two images of a thorny hedge and a vacant lot represent pain and loneliness. Merrill is slipping into a time in his life where he is not just alone but he is in a van cant lot, a place where there is not even a sign of life. While Merrill is on his way to his next swim, he can hear sounds of a party. With the sound of life Merrill now hears, he is able to pull himself out of this place in his life. “The Bunkers’ pool was on a rise and he climbed some stairs to a terrace where twenty-five to thirty men and women were drinking” (Cheever 159). Since Merrill had to climb up to this pool it means that he was at a lower point before. This represents Merrill’s life that was at a low point with his loneliness prior to escaping that and finding a place of familiarity. Especially comforting to Merrill was the presence of alcohol at this party. His surroundings make him feel young and when Enid Bunker leads Merrill to the bar he is given a drink by a bartender he has seen at more than a hundred parties. Though while he is at the bar drinking, Merrill doesn’t want to get “stuck in any conversation that would delay his voyage” (Cheever 159). Merrill still has no time for the life that is going on around him and the people in this life because all he cares about is getting a drink and swimming through the pools. Once Merrill dives in the pool he makes sure to avoid colliding with the one person in the pool, which is another example of how he has cut people out of his life. At the next house that Merrill arrives, all the doors and windows are open to him which represent being welcomed into the house. Merrill swims the pool and then immediately pours himself a drink. Even though the house is completely open to Merrill, he chooses to go towards the gazebo where the alcohol is. This is representative of Merrill’s life in that he has ignored the openness of the house and has chosen to go to the gazebo where the alcohol is. Merrill has closed himself off to life and the people in his life because of the allure of alcohol. A storm comes and Merrill stays in the gazebo protecting himself from the storm. There is an excitement that Merrill experiences during the storm, yet at the same time he is afraid at the sounds of thunder and the dark sky. This storms is like an inner struggle that Merrill is experiencing. He has cut himself off from people, closed himself off to the world and is going through storm inside of himself. This is a time where Merrill is alone and only has alcohol to comfort him. The storm in Merrill’s life is followed by a time of sadness and a sort of death of himself and who he is. After the storm, Merrill notices a tree that was damaged by the storm. “The wind had stripped a maple of its red and yellow leaves and scattered them over the grass and the water. Since it was midsummer the tree must be blighted” (Cheever 160). The blighted tree is significant of a death of something in Merrill’s life because of his alcohol abuse. This absence of life continues when Merrill moves on to his next pool. The path to this pool has overgrown grass and he notices that all the jumps were dismantled at the house. “The pool furniture was folded, stacked and covered with a tarpaulin. The bathhouse was locked. All the windows of the house were shut, and when he went around to the driveway in front he saw a for-sale sign nailed to a tree” (Cheever 160). This swimming pool is representative of a time of death in Merrill’s life, whether that be a death of someone he knows or of a part of himself. Once he reaches the pool, the pool is drained. Merrill is surprised at the emptiness of the pool, and seeing the empty pool he becomes aware of the emptiness of his own life. “Was his memory failing or had he so disciplined it in the repression of unpleasant facts that he had damaged his sense of the truth?” (Cheever 161). Merrill is at a point in his life where he is beginning to realize his emptiness and how alcohol has made him lose is identity. On his way to his next pool, Merrill goes through a time where he is mocked and ridiculed on the side of the road. “He was laughed at, jeered at, a beer can was thrown at him, and he had no dignity or humor to bring to the situation” (Cheever 161). His last experience at the storm and then the empty pool caused him to succumb so low and continue to abuse alcohol that he has lost his dignity, and this scene at the road verifies his loss. It verifies is confusion in life and him becoming aware of the damage that alcohol has done to his life and reputation. The next pool he goes to is a city pool that is filled with chlorine, something that Merrill has not experienced yet in his journey. The absence of alcohol in this part of his journey represents a feeling of being out of place and lost. “He dove, scowling with distaste, into the chlorine and had to swim with his head above water to avoid collision, but even so he was bumped into, splashed and jostled” (Cheever 162). This scene gives a vivid image of a man who feels so unnatural in his environment that he cannot even swim through the pool normally. He is called out by lifeguards for not having an identification disk on, which shows that Merrill is still trying to find his identity in this unnatural and out of place time in his life. After this swim in the chlorinated pool, Merrill experiences a sort of rebirth in life. The next pool he goes to has “no filter or pump and its waters were the opaque gold of the stream” (Cheever 162). The owners of this pool also require swimmers to be naked when they swim. The absence of alcohol in this swim and the image of him swimming naked in a natural, unfiltered pool is representative of a change in Merrill’s life. This is a moment of vulnerability in Merrill’s life because he is naked and without alcohol, which is a main source of comfort for him. After this swim, Merrill has lost strength and is feeling depressed. He continues his journey because “he needed a drink. Whiskey would warm him, pick him up, carry him through the last of his journey” (Cheever 163). Merrill only relies on alcohol to get him through his swims. Without alcohol, as seen in his last swim, leaves him feeling depressed and unable to continue. At his next stop at the Sachses’ pool, his first thing he asks of Helen Sachses is for a drink. As an alcoholic, Merrill, unable to find alcohol for himself, is now begging other people for it. The Sachses are without alcohol, which requires Merrill to do this swim without alcohol. This is representative of a time when Merrill had to face a time in his life without alcohol, without his security and strength. His swim was terrible and the water was cold. “Gasping, close to drowning, (Merrill) made his way from one end of the pool to the other” (Cheever163). This swim without alcohol almost left Merrill drowning, drowning in the thought of having to swim without a drink. The thought of having to go through a time of life without alcohol was deprived Merrill of his strength almost to the point of death. Continuing his journey, Merrill comes to the home of someone he used to consider so socially below him that he would always avoid them. But Merrill needs a drink so badly that he is wiling to go against what he previously believed about these people and be with them just to get alcohol. “They would be honored to give him a drink, they would be happy to give him a drink, they would in fact be lucky to give him a drink” (Cheever 163). This time in life is a time of desperation, a time when Merrill will do anything, even stoop to a lower social class, to get the alcohol he needs. This swim at the Biswangers’ was short and sweet. “He dove into the pool, swam its length and went away” (Cheever 164). The short swim at the house of people he would have never visited until now when he needs alcohol is representative of an uncomfortable point in Merrill’s life. Though Merrill is willing to give up his reputation for his addiction to alcohol, this is a very brief part in Merrill’s life, just like his swim at the Biswangers’. Merrill’s last two swims are at the end of his journey home, and it is obvious that his life as an alcoholic has taken and extreme toll on his body. At Shirley Adam’s pool “he dove in and swam the pool, but when he tried to haul himself up onto the curb he found that the strength in his arms and his shoulders had gone and he paddled to the ladder and climbed out” (Cheever 164). Merrill has become weak to the point where he needs help from the ladder to get out of the swimming pool. Just like in life, Merrill became so weak from his alcohol abuse that he needed something or someone to help him get out of his alcohol addiction. The last swim that Merrill takes at the Gilmartins’ pool was where “for the first time in his life, he did not dive but went down the steps into the icy water” (Cheever 165). This is an extreme contrast to how Merrill acted in the beginning of his journey when he said that “he had an inexplicable contempt for men who did not hurl themselves into pools” (Cheever 158). The man that Merrill is by the end of the story is the same kind of man who Merrill had contempt for in the beginning. The “swims” that Merrill takes throughout his journey home and his strong addiction to alcohol changes Merrill. He is no longer diving headfirst into life and the things that life has to offer but, like this swim, he is using the steps and getting into situations much slower. The “icy water” of the last pool represents being uncomfortable, and it was certainly uncomfortable for Merrill to get into the pool slowly because this was not the kind of man Merrill ever wanted to be. A journey home through swimming in backyard pool turns into a lifetime struggle with alcohol for Ned Merrill. Each swim in Merrill’s journey home is representative of a time in Merrill’s life. Some swims were happy and pleasant whereas others were plagued with misery and loneliness. As the story progress and Merrill takes more swims, he is no longer on a journey home but he is more on a journey to find his next drink. Through his constant search for alcohol, Merrill ends up at home in the end of the story not the man he wanted to be and his life is wrecked because of his motives for the swims that he has taken. The last image that the reader is left with his Merrill staring into his home that is completely abandoned and empty (Cheever 165). This is as if Merrill is staring into his life. A life that used to be filled with family and joy is now left completely empty because of the path the Merrill decides to take, a path that left him just as empty as his home.
Work Cited
Cheever, John. "The Swimmer." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym and Robert S. Levine. 8th ed. Vol. E. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2012. 157-65. Print