The Swimmer: Genre 1 key example

This story can also be considered a work of Surrealism, given the ways that Cheever plays with time in the story. While it seems, at first, like Neddy is swimming from pool to pool in his suburban community over the course of one afternoon, Cheever drops hints that time may be going by more quickly than readers—and Neddy himself—suspect. Take the following passage, for example, which comes about two-thirds of the way through the story:

The swim was too much for [Neddy’s] strength but how could he have guessed this, sliding down the banister that morning and sitting in the Westerhazys’ sun? His arms were lame. His legs felt rubbery and ached at the joints. The worst of it was the cold in his bones and the feeling that he might never be warm again. Leaves were falling down around him and he smelled wood smoke on the wind. Who would be burning wood at this time of year?

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Here, the narrator describes how Neddy’s “arms were lame” and his “legs felt rubbery,” suggesting that he has been swimming for longer than a few hours. Neddy also feels “cold in his bones” and notices leaves “falling down around him,” along with a scent of “wood smoke on the wind,” details that all suggest that the seasons have shifted from summer to fall.

The Surrealism increases in the final third of the story as characters make statements to Neddy that suggest several years have gone by since he started his quest to swim across the county. The way in which the story seems to take place on three different timelines at once—the course of a single afternoon, a calendar year, and several years—definitively marks it as a work of Surrealism.