The Swimmer John Cheever Analysis

“The Swimmer:” A Suburban Story
It seems as though wherever one goes, an appearance never quite matches the reality. In one of John Cheever's most famous short stories, “The Swimmer,” that idea seems to be the central theme of the work. John Cheever was a celebrated American author, known for his realistic fiction works, “The Housebreaker of Shady Hill,” “The Brigadier and the Golf Widow,” and “The Fourth Alarm.” Literary critic Scott Donaldson noted, "[Cheever] has written about suburbia with precision and acuteness, at the same time always realizing that it is people, and not places, that make the difference” (Donaldson, 204). The focus on the suburbs and the people who live there became the central way Cheever wrote his stories. In "The Swimmer," John Cheever establishes a mysterious and surprising mood by the usage of irony, symbolism, and imagery, in order to convey the main theme; there is a great difference between appearance and reality.
In setting the mysterious mood …show more content…
An important example is the changing of seasons. Cheever writes, “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?” (Cheever, 733). The scene provides an image of a rapidly changing sequence of events and creates the mysterious mood, in turn establishing the theme. Kathleen Wilson analyzes this imagery, writing, “when Neddy begins his swim, it is a beautiful and warm summer day. By the end of the story, he has encountered a terrible storm and the temperature has dropped drastically. Furthermore, the leaves have started to turn and are beginning to fall in preparation for winter” (Wilson). This imagery creates important plot development, and the build up to that moment creates a mysterious mood, and reaffirms how an image can obscure a

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