Man Vs Swimmer

For this essay, I am going to be discussing the short story “Swimming” found on the New Yorker, and written by T. Cooper. I have chosen this story for many reasons, and among those reasons is the personal sadness I felt when I first read the story, almost as if the universe was placing a certain theme in my life, that only the main character could possibly understand. I am talking about running, the god given instinct felt by all men, inherent in the nature of fear, and brought out in all who feel sadness in its full intensity. Though in my short life I can not compare the sadness I have felt with that of losing a child at my own hand, but if I had been placed in that situation, if fate had tempted my soul with such a sequence of events, I would like to think I could find the strength to endure and the courage to not abandon all I had previously known. Yet I am able to reconcile the themes of grief, the mode of recovery, and the longing to escape such a terrible tale. I think in this piece, as I will discuss in later parts, the author was able to put into words a transformation we rarely get to observe in closeness, the kind of transformation that turns a kind man into a “just man” the kind of death that turns this world from a beautiful and happy place into a world that is closing in on our main character, that is forcing him to surface temporarily and gasp for air, much like he does when he finds peace in the water, wading breath after air, after sea. I firmly believe that

John Cheever’s short story, “The Swimmer,” describes the epic journey of Neddy Merrill as he attempts to swim his way back home. Throughout the story, readers continually question reality and fantasy while wondering whether Merrill is really experiencing what Cheever portrays or if he is simply stuck in the past. Merrill goes from house to house as he freestyles across each swimming pool along the way. As the story draws to the end, Cheever points out that Merrill’s world is not what it seems and he has really lost everything he loved. An analysis of “The Swimmer” by John Cheever through the liberal humanist and Marxist lenses suggests that the story

Cheever’s usage of symbolism with the swimming pools and the round character greatly demonstrate the main theme of “The Swimmer” that indicates how life does change and will continue to inevitable do so no matter how much one may try to ignore it. Cheever also uses the consumption of alcohol throughout the story to symbolize Neddy’s unhappiness. Neddy’s desire for a drink grows stronger throughout the story especially when he is feeling weak and miserable which shows the true emotional state that he is in. According to Dr. Mark Jacob, “30 percent to 50 percent of people with alcoholism, at any given time, also are suffering from major depression… while alcohol often causes a good mood at first, it is a depression-causing drug.” The signs of alcohol abuse and the descriptions of the weather changing from summer to fall as well as the storm that passes thru are all symbolic examples representing the various circumstances in Neddy’s life. Neddy once felt full of life and was only concerned about his own happiness. Once the storm appeared in the story the character suddenly felt lonely and was never the same for he only felt coldness from that moment on. Time is passing much more quickly as Neddy’s journey progresses. Cheever finishes the story by having the round character realize that his life is coming to an end when he

Cheever uses metaphors throughout “The Swimmer” to cleverly explain to the audience without actually saying how Neddy’s life really turned out. The most profound metaphor throughout this short story is the swimming pool. The pools that Neddy swims through represent the periods of time that occurred in his life and how each was different than the other. During the first

The story and the song used in this comparison are “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway and “Stronger” by Kelly Clarkson. Both of them deal with hope and strong urge of motivation. However, they deal with it in a distinctive yet a very similar way. This essay will convey the main settings, plots, and themes differences between the two pieces.

and it was in this book that I stumbled into this piece of criticism which gives more

The “Hero’s Journey” as founded by Joseph Campbell, can be detected in numerous works of literature including Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, and even in lives of the authors themselves. Ultimately, everyone’s lives are hero’s journeys, including Hemingway himself. Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” is a way to categorize similar concepts in literature to help classify parts of the story. There are six main phases of the “Hero’s Journey”: the call to action, the answering of the call, the threshold guardians, the crossing of the threshold, the dragon battle and the master of two worlds. The call to action is the invitation the protagonist receives from someone or something to venture into the unknown. The protagonist likely

In Frank Perry’s 1986 film adaptation of “The Swimmer”, Cheever, Neddy, an upper middle class man who decides to swim across his neighbors’ pools home only to discover that his house no longer belongs to him and he is no longer a part of his family, is characterized as a very suave and robust man. The first scene of The Swimmer emphasizes Neddy’s vitality by the ways in which the camera encompasses Neddy’s body and that of his friends, the addition of two characters as well as additional interactions between Neddy and the women in this text. This contrasts the characterization of Neddy in the short story in the sense that Cheever’s Neddy is not presented as this sexual and aggressively masculine figure.

Throughout history it becomes apparent that all the great stories: The Odyssey, Great Expectations, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are all founded on a similar theme. The same plot line, a hero, most often the protagonist, faces danger and adversity to the highest extreme but always comes out on top. He is depicted as the pinnacle of human triumph and in essence, demonstrates a fundamental strength that all men should strive to achieve. These stories were, “ full of darkness and danger. And sometimes one did not want to know the end; How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? In the end, it is only a passing thing. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out even clearer. Those

John Cheever and F. Scott Fitzgerald are both 20th century writers whose story’s thematically reflected the despair and the emptiness of life. In both story’s “The Swimmer” and “Babylon Revisited” the main characters undergo similar problems, although they are presented differently in each story. The subject matter of both stories, pertain to the ultimate downfall of a man. “The Swimmer”, conveys the story of a man who swims his way into reality. He at first is very ignorant to his situation; however with the passing of time he becomes cognizant to the idea that he has lost everything. In “Babylon Revisited” the key character is a “recovering alcoholic”, who return to his homeland in hope to get his daughter back. However, problems from

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the short story “The Swimmer” by Jon Cheever and it’s film adaptation. Overall, the film and the short story use different dialogue, different characterization, and different visual effects and imagery to provide the reader and the viewer with the allegory of Ned Merrill’s life. While both works focus on the fanciful nature of moving across an entire neighborhood using swimming pools, there are more differences between the film and short story than similarities. Firstly, I will begin by describing the usage of visual effects in the film and imagery in the short story. Secondly, I will describe the differences in dialogue. Finally, I will conclude by describing the ways in which both pieces leverage their characters.

     "The Swimmer" by John Cheever describes Neddy Merril's "swim" home. Neddy is a husband and a father, he is also a drunk. The story encompasses about twenty years of his life of alcohol which ruined not only him but also his relationship with his family. One day after waking up with a hangover he drinks a little and decides to swim home. It is obvious he is a drunk because he is constantly searching for a drink on his swim home.

“But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated. (Hemingway 103).” This quote, written by Ernest Hemingway in the short story The Old Man and the Sea, captures the theme perseverance in numerous ways. This quote describes when the old man Santiago was struck down physically, with the injuries of his hands and the pain of staying awake for a number of days. However, he mentally kept pushing forward, leading to his ultimate survival and his arrival home. Ernest Hemingway wanted the readers of this story to learn about the rewards of perseverance because of the hardship Santiago and the marlin had to endure, rather than themes such as luck, pride, and suffering.

     In the timeless novel The Old Man and the Sea, the hero is undoubtedly the old man, Santiago, whom us as readers become very acquainted with. Santiago is a hard-worker and perseveres through every problem nature brings to him. He is in the midst of a horrendous fishing drought, during which the townspeople laugh and ridicule him. Santiago just lets the criticism pass him by because he is confident that the fish of his lifetime is coming soon. In a sense, Santiago represents the ideas of honor and pride. He is also a hero to a young boy named Manolin who conveys the image that the old man is whom he would rather live

“Hemingway’s greatness is in his short stories, which rival any other master of the form”(Bloom 1). The Old Man and the Sea is the most popular of his later works (1). The themes represented in this book are religion (Gurko 13-14), heroism (Brenner 31-32), and character symbolism (28). These themes combine to create a book that won Hemingway a Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and contributed to his Nobel Prize for literature in 1954 (3).