The Swimmer Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 43 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Swimmer.

The Swimmer Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 43 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Swimmer.
This section contains 1,744 words
(approx. 5 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Swimmer Study Guide

In the following essay, Bell compares Cheever's "The Swimmer" to Shakespeare's A MidsummerNight's Dream and analyzes some of the story's dream imagery.

The opening paragraph of John Cheever's "The Swimmer" establishes the common malady lingering poolside at the Westerhazys' that midsummer Sunday. "We all drank too much," said Lucinda Merrill. While the others talk about their hangovers, Neddy Merrill sits "by the green water, one hand in it, one around a glass of gin." Apparently instead of talking, Neddy "had been swimming and now he was breathing deeply, stertorously as if he could gulp into his lungs the components of that moment, the heat of the sun, the intenseness of his pleasure." Debilitated by his hangover and his swim, warmed by the hot sun and cold gin, his deep breathing resonant with heavy snoring sounds, Neddy slips into the most natural condition given the circumstances: he falls...

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This section contains 1,744 words
(approx. 5 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Swimmer Study Guide
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The Swimmer from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.