In a story by John Cheever, a man decides to go from his friend’s house and swim across the county to his own home. Since there is a lack of a large body of water such as a lake or river, Neddy Merrill decides to make his path go through his neighbors’ pools. The narrator only takes a couple of hours to complete Ned’s journey, but the seasons change and time passes as though several years have gone by. In these changing years, Ned descends from youthful ecstasy into loss and suffering. The main character of “The Swimmer” can be classified as a gambler and alcoholic because of the choices he makes, the thoughts narrated for him throughout his expedition, and the way his life ends up falling apart.
The choices Ned make play a huge part in how
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he came to ruin, and how he can be diagnosed as a gambler. When he starts the swim across the county, he has only a mental picture of the path he should take. “The only maps and charts he had to go by were remembered or imaginary but these were clear enough.” (Cheever, 5.) Ned is taking a gamble in that he could very well discover his route to be lacking or incorrect altogether. When convinced the ends justify the means, gamblers have a tendency to be incredibly stubborn. “He had signed nothing, vowed nothing, pledged nothing, not even to himself…Why was he determined to complete his journey even if it meant putting his life in danger?” (11.) When in a casino, a gambling addict will continuously play, ignoring any monetary loss, in the hopes of winning big eventually. Ned may not be in a casino, but he is gambling endlessly by traveling from one pool to the next instead of turning back to sure safety. All addicts will accrue debts in the search for more of their vice. “‘Why, we heard that you’d sold the house…’” (21.) To cover his gambling debts, Ned sold his house. The money he received from the sale of the property would not go towards buying a new home, but to paying off any loan sharks on his tail. According to the old saying “actions speak louder than words”, Ned’s words would not define him, but his thoughts definitely do. Throughout the tale, Neddy Merrill expresses his thoughts via a third-person narrator.
An addict will always be thinking about their next “fix”. “[H]e stood by the bar for a moment, anxious not to get stuck in any conversation that would delay his voyage.” (7.) Ned is anxious to continue his journey because at the next pool awaits another drink. Oftentimes when addicts are denied a fix, they become violent and angry. Lashing out due to a lack of alcohol would cause problems or, symbolically, a storm. “Why did he love storms…why did the first watery notes of a storm wind have for him the unmistakable sound of good news, cheer, glad tidings?” (9.) The storm of Ned’s lack of alcohol would make him fly into distress. The storm brought “glad tidings” because it was a sign that another drink was soon to come. In one point of the story, the narrator states plainly that Ned needs an intoxicant. “He needed a drink. Whiskey would warm him, pick him up, carry him through the last of his journey, refresh his feeling that it was original and valorous to swim across the county…He needed a stimulant” (26.) In an addiction, a fix makes a person feel whole again, which is what Neddy means when he says the whiskey will refresh him. Addiction, like what Ned is dealing with, tears lives …show more content…
apart. The way Ned’s life goes to pieces as time marches on is more evidence to the truth of his gambling problems and alcoholism.
“‘We’ve been terribly sorry to hear about all your misfortunes…Why, we heard that you’d sold the house and that your poor children…” (19.) It is possible that Neddy’s alcoholism was triggered by the misfortune involving his children. This is not his only calamity. “‘They went for broke overnight−nothing but income−and he showed up drunk one Sunday and asked us to loan him five thousand dollars…’” (37.) The most likely explanation for Ned going broke overnight would be that he made a big bet on something, feeling assured he would win, but in a turn of events he lost everything. After losing his children, his fortune, his home, and settling into addiction, there wasn’t anything left for him. “The house was locked… He shouted, pounded on the door, tried to force it with his shoulder, and then, looking in at the windows, saw that the place was empty.” (49.) Despite trying to force himself back into his life and his home, Ned would come to find out that while he was wasting his life and money on alcohol and gambling, the world was moving on and there would be no relief at
home. In “The Swimmer” by John Cheever, Neddy Merrill, the main character, starts a fun journey across his country via pools and ends up as a gambler and alcoholic because of what choices he makes, the thoughts he lets rule his mind, and the way his lets his life fall apart. Ned proves he is a gambler by taking a chance on not having a mapped course of action, being too stubborn to know when to quit, and selling his house to cover debts. He shows his alcoholism by being anxious to have another drink, loving the storms of anger from not having a fix, and admitting that he needed a drink to keep him going. The last pieces of evidence to prove his addictions is his accumulated misfortunes of losing his children, going bankrupt, and being locked out of his empty home. John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” exemplifies what happens when one is allowed to sink into addiction.
All humans have their sufferings and Jack is no expectation, he has problems with drinking depression and denial. Once Ian realized this, he reassured him and tried to ease away the pain. This is shown in the book when Ian stated to Jack “It’s just that I think you should stop drinking.”(Walters 166) Ian likewise said that if Jack could stop drinkin...
Water is a powerful medium for introspection. This truth is evident in the short story, 'Greasy Lake,' by T. Coraghessan Boyle. In this story, water serves as a catalyst for self-reflection, as it propels the protagonist into a certain degree of conflict, and ultimately works to reveal and confront the character?s inner struggle.
The story describes the protagonist who is coming of age as torn between the two worlds which he loves equally, represented by his mother and his father. He is now mature and is reflecting on his life and the difficulty of his childhood as a fisherman. Despite becoming a university professor and achieving his father’s dream, he feels lonely and regretful since, “No one waits at the base of the stairs and no boat rides restlessly in the waters of the pier” (MacLeod 261). Like his father, the narrator thinks about what his life could have been like if he had chosen another path. Now, with the wisdom and experience that comes from aging and the passing of time, he is trying to make sense of his own life and accept that he could not please everyone. The turmoil in his mind makes the narrator say, “I wished that the two things I loved so dearly did not exclude each other in a manner that was so blunt and too clear” (MacLeod 273). Once a decision is made, it is sometimes better to leave the past and focus on the present and future. The memories of the narrator’s family, the boat and the rural community in which he spent the beginning of his life made the narrator the person who he is today, but it is just a part of him, and should not consume his present.
Finding home boarded up; a sensation of coldness and unwelcoming takes over. Sudden misfortunes arise from what was once a perfect life, and the world appears upside-down. Attempts to remember what went wrong fail. Memories are unclear and time seems blurry. At one time, John Cheever found himself in this position, using alcohol to ignore his problems. John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1912. In 1941, he moved to suburban Westchester and eventually became addicted to alcohol, which is a recurrent motif in many of his short stories. He died in 1982 from cancer. In his short story, "The Swimmer," an affluent man named Neddy Merrill decides to swim through all of the pools in his county to reach his own house. The neighbors welcome him at first, until a storm passes and everyone begins to regard him negatively. When he finally reaches home from his journey, he finds his house empty and boarded up. Just like the author, Ned suffered after he put aside his issues. John Cheever develops his theme that changes will inevitably come as time passes by in his short story "The Swimmer" through his use of symbolism, tone, and irony.
In the short story The Swimmer by John Cheever, one of the dominant themes is the passage of time. In this short story time seems to pass as reality does with us unaware of its passing. The main character is the protagonist hero, Neddy Merrill who embarks on a traditional theme of a homeward journey. The scene opens on a warm mid-summer day at an ongoing pool party with Neddy and his wife Lucinda. The pool is “fed by an artesian well with a high iron content, was a pale shade of green.
Blythe, Hal, and Charlie Sweet. “An Historical Allusion In Cheever's 'The Swimmer'.” Studies In Short
Cheever, John. “The Swimmer”. Short Fiction: Classic and Contemporary. 6th ed. Ed. Charles Bohner and Lyman Grant. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
Cheever, John. "The Swimmer." The Northon Anthology American Literature. 8th ed. Vol. E. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.
The swim is presented to the reader as an enormous challenge that only the brave and desperate would face, such as a player in a challenging computer game. Diction such as ‘dangerous’ and ‘trouble’ used throughout the swim maintains the risk the swimmer must face. The line“whirled pearl smoke,'; signifies confusion which heightens the unsureness of the situation. Vulnerability becomes evident as the swimmer suffers “cunning furtive spasms.'; The challenge heightens and the swimmer is represented as an “angry isolate.'; Like a computer game special affects are added in to increase the danger such as the lightning and the darkness.
The first, most noticeable theme, is alcohol. In “The Swimmer”, alcohol represents Neddy’s longing for a high-spirited life and an admirable social status. The drinking, serving, and craving for alcohol became a major influence for Neddy, as well as a way to maintain his social status. The story starts off talking about alcohol. They are all sitting around the Westerhazy’s pool complaining “I drank too much last night”, but as expected they are at the pool the next morning drinking again. Before Neddy decides to leave to swim from pool to pool, he drinks gin and continues to drink on his whole journey home. Almost every pool that Neddy stops at, he asks the pool owner for a drink. Neddy has already had plenty of drinks by the time he gets himself
In “The Swimmer” by John Cheever, Neddy’s view of reality is drastically different from his neighbors. Neddy thinks that the entire story takes place in the time of an afternoon, when in reality many months have passed. Even though Neddy is stuck in the past, his neighbors and the rest of society move on, and at first it causes slightly awkward sympathy, but later he finds himself completely alone, his family, friends and neighbors having left him behind. Neddy’s situation illustrates that the passage of time is inevitable, and even if one chooses to ignore time, it will move on without them.
For example, the character Timber experienced a tragic event which left his beloved wife, Sylvan, with brain damage, causing her to forget who he was. Her love and support was the driving force in his. Timber says “she’d come home at night and find me there and we’d walk into the house which was our home” (Wagamese, 2009, p. 205). His choice of words convey that the house was only a home when Sylvan was there. When she was taken away from him, he was emotionally homeless. With his wife needing care in an expensive special facility, Timber resorted to selling their belongings and eventually their house, making him physically homeless as well. This, in association with the loss of his wife, caused him to leave his former life. This response is similar to the “fight or flight” response animals and humans have with the presence of stress (Davidson, 2015). Timber chose to flee from his problems as apposed to fight to rebuild his life. With this behaviour, it is not surprizing that he also took up a drinking problem. Similar to the aforementioned Digger, Timber used alcohol as a means to self-medicate. He says about drinking, “it’s all [he] could do because [he] didn’t want to surface to the blackness, the emptiness of [his] life” (Wagamese, 2009, p. 208). Timber’s poor mental health and substance abuse only further contributed to his
What does it mean to be in a state of drunkenness? A person who is inebriated views his surroundings in a surreal fashion; reality exists on the periphery. The drunk is by default interacting with the world on an inferior level as opposed to those who are sober. Alcoholism is also a chronic debilitating disease. It resonates outward from the individual to all those that he has contact within his life. Joyce utilizes the character of the drunk in many of the stories in Dubliners, hardly a story skips a mention of drink. Among despair, isolation and dependence, alcoholism is a theme that runs through all the stories. Alcoholism is the focus in "Grace" where Joyce takes the symbolic alcoholic and shows us what Joyce believes is a part of the problem plaguing Dublin.
This part of the story is used by Carver to display the physical problems that result from withdrawal from alcohol. It is clear that these problems are significant, but overcoming them doesn't compare to the task of repairing the bonds with family members and friends that have been destroyed. In this story, the healing process is quite unique for the characters in that it involves a large group of men, all suffering from the same illness, pulling together and supporting each other through the pain- almost like a modern day leper colony. They are separated from their family and friends, and are forced to keep their focus on recovering from the disease.... ...
Cheever, John. "The Swimmer." The Northon Anthology American Literature. 8th ed. Vol. E. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 156-65. Print.