How Does John Cheever Use Alcohol In The Swimmer

By the time the alcohol touches the tongue, the storm has already begun. John Cheever’s relationship with alcohol is presented throughout the short story “The Swimmer”, and used the character, Ned Merrill, to represent the struggles he experienced. Addiction and the need for alcohol drove this character into a storm he couldn't retreat from. In “The Swimmer” Cheever uses a physical storm and the changes in the weather, to show the path of drinking, and becoming an alcoholic. It begins with joy and excitement, then turns to something casual and frequent, but eventually leads to misfortune and a miserable life. Nobody desires to be lead to an unpleasant storm, that comes with drinking alcohol.
Drinking may not seem to be so bad at first, but

the consequences don’t come until later in the journey. John Cheever begins this short story with an initial sign of casual drinking. Ned Merrill and his wife are accompanied by friends who all say they “drank too much last night” as if they had all been drinking together (Cheever 726). Right from the start, Cheever gives readers the hint that characters from this story drink a lot. He makes it a part of the social norm, so it seems to be something done on the regular. Before Ned decides to begin a journey to swim the Lucinda River, he notices the weather. Cheever directs the focus to the fact that “It was a fine day. In the west there was a massive stand of cumulus cloud so like a city seen from a distance”, marking the beginning of the storm (726). Looking into the West, a place of death and misfortune, are where fluffy and cotton-like clouds are on display. A compass of nature shows the West as the season fall. A time where leaves and plants die, and the start of darkness. Those clouds may look peaceful, but they represent the start of a storm coming from the disastrous West.
Eventually, the fun and laughter turns into something normal and boring and drinking more solves those problems.

Unfortunately, those problems are solved for only a little while, and Ned Merrill finds this out the hard way by continuing his journey. Each house he makes his way to seems to either serve him alcohol or at least possess it. Ned has a drink at almost every house he visits and brings it upon himself to have the storm follow his footsteps. As Ned stopped by the Bunkers, they seemed to be having a big party with loads of people and alcohol. The party was towards the beginning to middle of his journey as he began to notice a change in the beautiful weather. Cheever shows this change as “In the distance he heard thunder.” identifying this as the true start to his downfall (728). With no storm near, Cheevers had a goal to foreshadow the emergence of a storm. The next few sentences mention nothing else about the weather or a storm, which indicates that it isn’t too significant at the time. It comes back again in a few paragraphs as “It would storm. The stand of cumulus clouds-that city-had risen and darkened, and while he sat there he heard the percussiveness of thunder again”(729). With the thunder coming back, Ned began to realize his life had started to turn for the worse. The alcohol was taking over as he started to forget how many drinks he had, and what time it had gotten to be. The storm had just caught up with him and would only bring

disaster.
As the thunder struck, new threats of the storm would only arrive as Ned could not stop his habits for drinking.

It was stormy out and Ned started to feel weak, tired, hopeless, and forgetful. Little did he know, the storm would only continue to come as he allowed it to. The thunder was still there as he realized “It was suddenly growing dark” like on a cold fall night (Cheever 730). Not only was there the storm of thunder, but now it became dark as day turned to night. Ned starts to understand and recognize that the storm has already got to him and he doesn’t know if it’s too late to turn back. He even questions his ability to turn back from his journey (being an alcoholic), but he has gone too deep. Before he could even come to his senses “there was an explosion, a smell of cordite, and rain lashed the Japanese lanterns” (730). The storm has come to its climax as lightning struck and hit the gazebo he was protected in. He waited there for the storm to pass and realized it had caused the leaves from the trees to fall off and scatter on the ground. The story took a turn from a pleasant day in summer, to a stormy and eerie day in the dead of

fall.
John Cheever used a story that he and many other people in the world can relate to. The addiction to alcohol ruined his entire life and left him lonely and regretful for his actions. Cheever’s goal was to tell every reader about his struggles and what the poison of alcohol can do to someone even trying it for the first time. He used metaphors like swimming from pool to pool as a message for all of his drinking. The weather and the storm represented the harshness and the consequence of his drinking, and Cheever makes it out to be a path not wanted by anybody. To conclude, John Cheever's “The Swimmer” reminds people what they’re getting into when signing up an for alcohol addiction, and how much of a disaster your life will become if you make that one wrong decision.