The Swimmer Themes

As Neddy Merrill swims across the county, he tries to make a wilderness out of the well-kept pools of suburbia, reimagining them as a unified body of water. His progress across the county shows him tapping into a more elemental, less civilized part of himself as he soaks in the physical sensations of the day and removes his clothing, but the effort falters badly as he’s diverted across a highway and through a public pool…

At the beginning of the story, Neddy’s life seems wonderful: he and his wife, Lucinda, are sitting around his neighbor’s pool on a glorious summer day, and he’s so happy that he wants to “gulp into his lungs the components of that moment.” However, over the course of Neddy’s swim across the county, this wonderful life unravels without clear cause: the weather sours and then turns autumnal while Cheever gives clues that Neddy…

“The Swimmer” depicts the passage of time at three superimposed levels. One is the course of a single Sunday—the “real” timeline on which the story plays out. Another is the accelerated passage of seasons, as the story begins in high summer and then descends into fall and winter. The third (and most important) timeline is the course of Neddy’s adult life. Cheever uses these superimposed timelines to emphasize how subjective the feeling of time…