The Swimmer (1964). Summary and Description

Cheever included “The Swimmer” in his fifth volume of short stories, The Brigadier and the Golf Widow, which was published in 1964 and remains his only work that has been adapted for the big screen. Many readers have noted how Cheever’s later stories tend toward a darker, more ominous view of human nature and American society in general, and this certainly seems true of “The Swimmer.” This story, as does “The Enormous Radio,” consists of a surrealistic blend of reality and fantasy, which is mainly achieved by juxtaposing Neddy Merrill’s conflicted inner thoughts with the conversations and interactions of Bullet Park’s social elite.

“The Swimmer” takes place among the pools and alcoholic drinks of Bullet Park, an upscale neighborhood in Westchester, New York, on a warm Sunday afternoon. While the afternoon drinkers sit around discussing how they all “drank too much” the night before, Neddy Merrill decides to take on a heroic challenge, swimming through all the pools on his way home, which is eight miles away.

As he goes from pool to pool and after he revels in an afternoon thunderstorm, he notices an autumnal chill in the air, and his heroic spirit begins to dwindle. In order to reach home, he must cross a busy freeway, where he suffers from hurled insults and beer cans. He encounters many old friends and acquaintances; some of these cordially offer him drinks and their condolences concerning his recent tribulations, of which he has no memory, and others, such as his former mistress, treat him with an indifference that masks outright disdain. When he reaches home, he finds the doors locked and the house emptied and in a state of disrepair, as though it has been long abandoned.

The story’s surrealistic nature highlights its concerns with memory, perception, and the way time affects both of these. The limited omniscient third- person narrator, privy only to Neddy’s thoughts, reports only bits of dialogue throughout the story. Much as does Neddy’s memory, which has formerly seemed a “gift for concealing painful facts,” the narrator slices through time and significance, leaving the reader to figure out how this story could plausibly take place in one afternoon. In fact, though we learn that Neddy is bankrupt and his four daughters are in some sort of trouble, we never learn the surrounding circumstances or whether the friends who line the Lucinda River, as he has named the pools leading to his house, are even still his friends or whether they only treat him hospitably out of pity.

Near the end of his journey, finding his swimming trunks looser than before, Neddy himself wonders whether he has lost weight on his journey, implicitly suggesting that the action of the story may not have taken place in one day. Therefore, though we initially see Neddy’s consciousness as coherent and logical, if somewhat childish, we learn that his perceptions do not match the commentary provided by his former neighbors. As with many of Cheever’s surrealistic, episodic tales, objective reality and individual perception uneasily stand side by side, each threatening to overtake the other.

The water imagery that pervades the story—from the title to the use of “drank too much” four times in the first paragraph—resembles Neddy’s memories and perceptions. As a river seeks the path of least resistance through bedrock, Neddy’s memory slips past the events leading up to his bankruptcy and his daughters’ troubles. Instead of focusing on the unpleasant, he focuses instead on the good times he has shared with old friends, on the days when the world seemed full of opportunity, and on the times when his social and economic capital allowed him unfettered access to the pools of his neighbors.

Even as Grace Biswanger, whose pool occupies a place on the Lucinda River, mocks him for not replying to her invitations for dinner, he thinks, “She could not deal him a social blow—there was no question about this and he did not flinch.” Afterward, her bartender, responding to his employer’s remark, serves Neddy rudely. Confronted with this overt hostility, Grace’s rude treatment of him, and the knowledge that his former mistress has taken a new lover and now has no interest in him, Neddy enters a vertiginous, unsettled world.

Neddy’s memories and subsequent perceptions allow him to escape the pain of his recent troubles; however, his elitist friends, with their penchant for gossip, will not fail to mention his plight. Thus, even though the first leg of his journey inspired a youthful determinism and heroism, he finds only questions about his present state, ambivalence, and even thinly veiled aggression after he endures insults while crossing the highway.

As Jim and Irene Westcott in “The Enormous Radio” find their perceptions drastically altered after acquiring their new radio, Neddy’s misadventure forces him to face his own past and present. In keeping with several other critical examinations, Samuel Coale writes that “in Cheever’s darker tales objects often seem to overwhelm the characters’ sense of well-being, as if these people were living in a strange and alien world of obstacles and mysteriously laid traps” (35).

In “The Swimmer,” Neddy’s quest, which is a self-chosen task, reminds him of his repressed past and shows him that he no longer possesses his youthful abilities. Though his journey homeward is intended to fulfill his reputation “as a legendary figure” and to “enlarge and celebrate [the day’s] beauty,” the experience brings him to tears for “the first time in his adult life.” Finally, at the last pool on his journey, he climbs down the ladder and enters the pool, whereas previously he held “an inexplicable contempt for men who did not hurl themselves into pools.”

In this moment Neddy confronts the delusions he has harbored about his marriage and daughters, his social ties and status, his unaffected optimism, and his indefatigable physical ability. Similarly to Jim Westcott’s revelations about his wife’s morally questionable actions (her seeming indifference to having an abortion, taking her sister’s inheritance, etc.), Neddy’s fantastical perception of his life drowns during his quest up the Lucinda River, and his repressed troubles rise to the surface.

For Discussion or Writing
1. Memory and perception are two major themes of “The Swimmer” and “The Enormous Radio.” These themes are connected to the idea that certain types of knowledge can be harmful, even if such knowledge provides some semblance of objective truth. In our contemporary time of competing interpretations of truth (creationism/ evolution, global warming, pro-life/pro-choice), discuss how your own memories and subsequent perceptions of truth and reality serve to provide you with a past record of your experiences. Do your memories of these events perfectly match the memories of others who witnessed the same events? Is your memory only a record-keeping device, or does it influence future behavior? How? Where is the line between objective truth and individual perception(s) of reality?

2. At the outset of “The Swimmer,” the narrator describes Neddy, claiming “he might have been compared to a summer’s day, particularly the last hours of one.” Though seasons are regularly used to describe the phases of the human experience (spring and childhood, winter and death, etc.), Cheever focuses on the final days of summer for this story. How does the comparison between Neddy and the summer’s day help to illuminate the story’s themes? How do summer and Neddy differ; how are they similar? What significance does this comparison have for the overall meaning of the story?