Literature

The Importance of Literary Elements “The Swimmer” is a short story written by the author John Cheever. This interesting and erratic short story is about the main character Neddy Merrill. Neddy Merrill is an ostensibly light hearted, vigorous, happy and youthful man in an affluent community, who decides one summer afternoon that he will swim his way home from a cocktail party through the array of public and private swimming pools scattered throughout his neighborhood. As the story evolves, it becomes clear that Neddy’s journey may represent more than taking a swim on a warm summer day. Through increasingly strange encounters with his neighbors and resurfacing ideas of some serious life problems, the once energetic Neddy begins to transform into an exhausted and disordered older man. John Cheever accomplished this phenomenal short story using a diversity of literary elements and strategies. The proper use of literary elements enables Cheever to keep readers interested while reading the story. Literary elements are very relevant to short stories, establishing their plot, mood, and theme. Through the use of a variety of literary elements such as point of view, imagery, symbolism, and tone, John Cheever magnificently enhances his superb short story “The Swimmer”.
The short story “The Swimmer”, by John Cheever is written in a limited, third-person, omniscient, and objective point of view. A. John Cheever chose this literary element because this point of view forces the reader’s to form their own opinion of the main character Neddy, because they cannot see his actual thought processes. This point of view gives a tremendous impact to the story. It is one of the most important literary elements Cheever uses to accomplish an outstanding piece of literature. Cheever successfully focuses reader’s attention on exactly the detail, opinion, and emotion the he wants to emphasize by manipulating third person point of view of in his short story. For example “Had you gone for a