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Transcript

John Cheever

- Born in 1912 in Quincy, Massachusetts, USA.

- His father went bankrupt and abandoned the family.

- He grew up with his mother and his older brother, Fred.

- After being expelled from school at 17, he moved with his brother to Boston where he began writing.

- He then moved to NYC, continued writing, and began being published in the New Yorker Magazine.

- Fought in WWII while he kept on writing stories.

- In 1941 he married Mary Winternitz with whom he had three children. After their third child was born, the family moved to the suburb of Westchester County. This life would inspire great part of his fiction. He also started struggling with excessive drinking, a problem that he would have for the rest of his life.

- In 1943 he published his first collection of short stories, The Way Some People Live.

He continued to write short stories and novels throughout his life, focusing on life in the suburbs.

- In 1953 he published The Enormous Radio and Other Stories, which won him acclaim of critics and readers.

- The Swimmer was published in 1964 in the short story collection, The Brigadier and the Golf Widow. It inspired a movie with Burt Lancaster that brought Cheever even greater fame.

- He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize In 1978 for his collection of short stories, The Stories of John Cheever.

- His alcoholism began to take over his life. He destroyed many professional and personal relationships, made public scenes being drunk, and it became impossible to live with him.

- In 1975 he signed into a rehab clinic and carried on the rest of his life with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous.

- He died of cancer in 1982.

Life and Works

Style

- Cheever depicts the world of the privileged and wealthy.

- His fiction is usually set in the suburbs of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut.

- His characters are wealthy, white, elitist. Yet, all this does not protect them from despair, heartbreak and disaster.

- In spite of all their privilege, happiness appears to be out of reach for most of his characters.

- Common themes: family conflicts, upper middle class = behind external symbols of power and privilege (golf, pools, Church, tennis, drinks, gardens, finance, etc.) lie weak relationships, a strict social hierarchy, unhappiness, and other social impositions that are necessary in order to belong.

- Alcohol as an habitual component

- The Swimmer = typical Cheever world. The story of a man that suffers social disgrace, that loses track of family and friends, and ends up alone.

The Swimmer

- “The Swimmer” appeared in 1964 in the collection The Brigadier and the Golf Widow.

- It is considered one of Cheever's best short stories.

- In 1968, director Frank Perry adapted the story for a film starring Burt Lancaster.

-Cheever wrote and published the story when alcohol had begun to take over his life.

- Perfect family: Lucinda and his daughters

- Beautiful home: tennis court, banister, coffee, Aphrodite bronze statue.

- High standing in social hierarchy: he refuses invitations and feels he can swim in anybody's pool without permission.

- Friends: lots of parties, invitations, etc.

- Not young, but he looks and feels young. Like a sportsperson

Neddy Merrill

- As he swims he becomes more tired.

- He loses his social position = bartender disrespects him, Grace (lower in social hierarchy) talks ill of him, his ex-mistress ignores him...

- He loses his friends: they begin greeting him with more contempt, he has refused too many invitations...

- He loses his house: it is rusty, broken, he doesn't have servants anymore.

- He loses his family: the house is empty

Structure

Exposition: Neddy decides to get back home swimming.

Rising Action: swimming from house to house. Each time he becomes more tired.

Climax: Neddy cries.

Falling Action: Neddy barely manages to swim through the last two pools.

Resolution: he finds his house is empty.

Structure

The Lucinda River

Lancaster Recreational Center

The Grahams

The Levys'

The Lears'

The Clydes'

The Biswangers'

The Howlands'

Shirley Adams

The Sachses

The Gilmartins'

Route 424

The Lindleys'

Lucinda River

The Hollorans

The Westerhazys'

The Welchers'

The Bunkers'

The Crosscups'

The Hammers'

Then it occurred to him that by taking a dogleg to the southwest he could reach his home by water (...) First there were the Grahams, the Hammers, the Lears, the Howlands, and the Crosscups. He would cross Ditmar Street to the Bunkers and come, after a short portage, to the Levys, the Welchers, and the public pool in Lancaster. Then there were the Hallorans, the Sachses, the Biswangers, Shirley Adams, the Gilmartins, and the Clydes.

Neddy's Swim

The Westerhazys' Cocktail Party

The Grahams and Bunkers

The Levys and Welchers

Route 424 and the Lancaster Recreational Center

The Hallorans and the Sachses

The Biswangers and Shirley Adams

Climax

It was probably the first time in his adult life that he had ever cried, certainly the first time in his life that he had ever felt so miserable, cold, tired, and bewildered. He could not understand the rudeness of the caterer's barkeep or the rudeness of a mistress who had come to him on her knees and showered his trousers with tears. He had swum too long, he had been immersed too long, and his nose and his throat were sore from the water. What he needed then was a drink, some company, and some clean, dry clothes, and while he could have cut directly across the road to his home he went on to the Gilmartins' pool. Here, for the first time in his life, he did not dive but went down the steps into the icy water and swam a bobbled sidestroke that he might have learned as a youth. He staggered with fatigue on his way to the Clydes' and paddled the length of their pool, stopping again and again with his hand on the curb to rest. He climbed up the ladder and wondered if he had the strength to get home. He had done what he wanted, he had swum the county, but he was so stupefied with exhaustion that his triumph seemed vague. Stooped, holding on to the gateposts for support, he turned up the driveway of his own house.

Arriving Home

SYMBOLS

- Change in weather: mirror the changes in Neddy's life. His loss of control and security. He himself is described as a "summer day" at the beginning.

- Swimming Pools: as periods of time, as he swims further, he becomes weaker, colder, is despised by people he once despised, finds himself alone without even realizing it. "Lucinda River" (love, family) turns out to be ironic as it leads to an empty house. What he though would always be there, is gone.

THEMES = stereotyped elements that sustain the text in its totality (or almost)

- Aging / The Inevitable Passage of Time: even though we know Neddy is not young, he acts as though he were. Yet, even though he denies the passing of time, even though he blames his memory, time moves forward all the same. His status changed, his family and friends have changed. He does not realize all that has happened around him while he's been under water.

- Suburban Shallowness: despair and emptiness also lies behind the shallow façade of suburbian life, with its drinks, gardens, pools and parties. Even though Neddy thinks he has a full, happy life, in the end he is alone, after rejecting invitations and being out of touch with his friends and, we might assume, family. He knows the rules of his world, but it is a world built entirely on appearances. Along the way he finds people of his class and society, but no real friends. As for his family, he had an affair, betraying his wife, and that affair was not even built on love (but on "sexual roughness")

Themes Symbols

Motifs

MOTIFS = minor narrative unities that constitute the themes in a specific way.

- Alcohol: builds ambivalence and generates distortion in Neddy's and the reader's perception of what is going on. His relationship with alcohol and the way he obtains it become a measurement of Neddy's position in society.

- Maps and directions: at the beginning Neddy's map is clear, he knows where he is going. But as he journeys on he seems to be tied to that map, not being able to get out, disoriented, confused. Somewhere he loses track, of time and of space. He starts as a pilgrim, an explorer, but ends up lost, in an unfamiliar place: his empty house.

Deep

Dive

Blending of everyday realism with time-shifting surrealism: at the beginning Cheever presents us with a realistic style. Upper middle class gathering, a summer day, people around the pool complaining about their hangovers. Yet, we assume that even though they complain, they actually enjoy their fun lives, their parties and cocktails. It is part of their high-social lifestyle and standards.

Realism and Surrealism

When Neddy decides to swim to his house across their friends' gardens, Cheever starts, very subtly, incorporating surrealistic elements. Nature becomes illogical and mirrors Neddy's inner feelings. This builds up the story's impact. The pools become stages in his life, at first, pleasant and easy. But each time more difficult to swim, more tiresome, more hostile, more lonely... He is so eager to move on to the next pool that he forgets to enjoy each one. Nature shifts too fast, from a summer day into autumn. Yet he dismisses these changes in a mechanism of self-delusion. He relies on alcohol to surpass social discomfort and physical and spiritual weariness.

Odysseus = just as Odysseus has to face many obstacles to reach his home, so does Neddy. Symbolic elements point towards the Odyssey (Lisbon, the storm that delays both Neddy and Odysseus). Storm also reflects Neddy's turbulent financial and social situation, as well as his marriage's dissolution.

Allusion

Narcissus = Neddy's self-regard (physically and socially) guides the story. As Narcissus stays next to the pool of water in order to see and catch his own reflection, Neddy swims from pool to pool to show his youthful fitness. But the more he swims the more he loses himself, ending up weak and alone.

Rip Van Winkle (Washington Irving) = is Neddy's repression of reality the reason for his confusions? Is he drunk? Is he losing his memory, his mind? This dream-like state reminds us of Rip Van Winkle's 20 year sleep.

The Swimmer is an allegory of the inevitability of aging and the passing of time. Cheever's shift from a realistic aesthetic to a surreal one comes from his use of "pace", from bright and brisk to dark and despairing, mirroring Neddy's interior journey and external changes.

Allegory

Figure of speech through which a term (denotation) refers to a hidden, deeper meaning (connotation). Its a story or text with a symbolic or allusive meaning (Metalogismo). A group of abstract symbols (Eg: World of Animals and World of Men). Interpretation: depends on level of codification (is it a universal allegory, tied to a literary tradition, to a period of time like Middle Ages, or to a specific author?). A way of reading. At least two levels of reading. Different types (metaphysics - Plato's Cavern, theological - Bible).

What is an Allegory?

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