LITERATURE: John Cheever’s The Swimmer (continued)

…A storm comes up, and there are many ways that this could be interpreted. In my view, as Neddy wonders why he loves storms, how it sweeps into a home and up the stairs, and how it always means good news to him, I understand it to be the changing of the guard at corporate executive levels where new blood is brought in offering a leap up the corporate ladder, while the old members at the helm are retired or pushed out, cleaning house so to speak: “why had the simple task of shutting the windows of an old house seemed fitting and urgent.”

As the storm passes, more indications of Neddy’s Sunday afternoon swim not being real come with subtle references to autumn leaves, closed up pools, and his lone stand along a highway he must cross, one that is littered with beer cans and debris. He crosses this border, probably one of the most dangerous of this trip and the most crucial in his life choice. But it opens up a new world for him at the Hallorans, an extremely wealthy couple who sunbathe naked by a pool with gold water. I took this, and the emphasized difference in their political and social views as people who were monied by family fortune (the gold vs. the green money of another pool), with no need to offer false visions of themselves behind clothing as so many of the overly ambitious are forced to do. The Hallorans mark another step in Neddy’s life journey. He is told that he has suffered misfortunes when Mrs. Halloran offers kind sympathy. He also notices that physically, he seems to have lost weight and his body is starting to let him down from the exertion of both the swim, and his lifestyle.

The last two stops are also indicative of how he has treated people in his past, and he overhears that he has been trying to borrow money from people who he had spurned as not being part of his social circle in the past. The final stop at a former mistress’s house reveals how she has moved on beyond their affair, and Neddy is depressed, bewildered and miserable as the truth finally closes in on him when he reaches his own front door to find the house empty and abandoned, and this is where the two stories meet and crash into bitter reality.

Cheever’s execution of the telling of an all-too-common tale of the achievement of the American dream and its possible consequences dependent upon the path taken to achieve it, is brilliant use of metaphor and words.