Quest motif in John Cheever’s short story ‘The Swimmer’ Essay

The destination of any journey is a profound realization of some kind literally, the realization of ones goal, metaphorically often a consciousness of ones reality. For an mortal on a mission, a spare-time activity the arrival at the uprightness is the final destination. The motif of by- account has been used diversely in literary works from the search for the Holy Grail to the legend of the Golden Fleece. John Cheever uses the quest motif in his short story The Swimmer to symbolize the laughable travails of his narcissistic mill, Neddy through the different pools of society till he arrives at the emptiness of his own life, the shut-down panels of his home.The transition from the fall to experience is paralleled through the quest motif. At the beginning of the short story, Neddy is the apparently youthful, imaginative quester desktop forth on his own adventure to swim the county, across a stretch of personal and public pools to reach his home in sluggard Park, eight mile s to the south, where his four beautiful daughters would have had their lunch and might be playing tennis. (Cheever, The Swimmer) As the quest continues, there are inevitable signs of walk time (not paralleled by the physical time of Neddys eight-miles swimming journey), problematical indications of the fraying of the self-deception Neddy indulges in, the slow unmasking of the unpleasant truths of his life and the final epiphanic orgasm at the sight of his empty locked house in the enfolding shadow of the wintry evening. Cheever ironically stands the traditional quest on its head. The legendary hero leaves his home and hearth, setting forth on a road of trials, overcoming hurdles, and ultimately achieves success in the form of a treasure.As defined by Neela Mookerjee in her essay, The Long Winding Road, the hero begins his quest and starts to encounter difficulties that deception along the way. One such meeting is with the Other. The Other, often described as the heros alter-e go or the heros dark side, reflects the constitution traits which the hero does not want to acknowledge as being present in himself. Because he finds this figure so repugnant, the hero often tries to decline any commonality between himself and the Other.Neddy Merrill, the legendary figure (Cheever, The Swimmer) is the wealthy selected socialite who starts the sunny day breathing deeply, stertorously as if he could slug into his lungs the components of that moment, the heat of the sun, the intenseness of his pleasure. (Cheever, The Swimmer) In his own mind, he prints his own trail of pools, the bather in his own world till the self-pretense is stripped away from the look of the protagonist as well as the readers swimming along with the archives as he confronts his Other reality.Often described as an anglophil , John Cheever depicts the social milieu of Merrill in its suburbanite languid pace the Grahams, the Hammers, the Lears, the Howlands, and the Crosscups, consequently t he Bunkers, 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 is portrayed as the pilgrim seeking an unexplored route to the known end with the belief that friends would line the banks of the Lucinda River.(Cheever) The upper class suburbanite society depicted is a world of pampering a world where one could lounge about in peeled pleasure, an everlasting party with the same faces, rounds of drinks and ensuing hangovers, and even the same military service bartenders. From the surfeit of drinks/hangovers in the opening paragraph to the Communist label as a marker of reformist zeal, even the contrast between the private haven of ones own pool vis-a-vis the revolting commonness of the public pool Merrills class is painted visually for the reader.The social behavior towards Neddy subtly changes from the courteous welcome of Mrs. Grahams to the patronizing gener osity of Mrs. Halloran, to the rude reaction of the Biswangers at his intrusive presence in their thundering party. Neddy tries to integrates himself into the texture of the social class he once belonged to, but as the text develops, he is portrayed as an invasive element, an opportunist for dispatch drinks and begging loans. The color of the quest thickens, darkens as the slow realization of the at one time insider being the unwelcome outsider hits home.