Changing: A Short Study on John Cheever’s “Swimmer”

Abstract

American writer John Cheever’s “Swimmer” adopts  a surreal or symbolic style that breaks away from the previous ideas and approaches of realism. The story’s hero Neddy Merrill embarks on an adventurous journey to swim home: an eight-mile journey that connects suburban swimming pools in his mind’s eye to form the magnificent Lucinda River, named for his wife. This paper examines the ever-changing natural scenes to explore the role of such scenes in portraying the characters and revealing the theme of the story. It also discusses the changing fates of the hero in two aspects-people’s changing attitudes towards Neddy and his own changing physical condition.  The study considers the hero’s tragedy as a true portrayal of the loss and spiritual plight of the American middle class, which strengthens the sense of crisis and disillusionment in modern society, and expresses the author’s deep doubts about the lifestyle and thinking mode of the middle class, and his infinite worries about the future of the American middle class.