The Swimmer free essay sample

Something might change everything in blink of an eye and that change can be huge. You might lose your respect or lose everything you had during that change, not even realizing that. In â€Å"The Swimmer† by John Cheever, shows that how the main character loses everything he had when he drinks too much. According to author, main character Neddy Merrill feels like an explorer and decides to get home by swimming all the pools in his neighborhood. He was famous and knew everyone in the town. This is why he was so confident that he would be welcomed whenever he went. Even though he was in a mid aged, he was very energetic. While he explores, he encounter many different problems and denies them all. He doesn’t even seem to know his own problems when people which were used to be his friends, felt sorry about him. He had no idea what was going on and the people whom he ignored, started to ignore him. He realizes how he distanced himself from his friends and close ones. As a result he misunderstands when people tell him about his friends and he thinks he loses his mind. It seems that the time pasted so slow but actually it pasted so fast that Neddy himself couldn’t notice it. He thought that life was only about happiness. This is why, everything he had have disappeared and he became lonely. One of the themes in the â€Å"The Swimmer† by John Cheever focuses on how Neddy denied the situations and problems when he encountered. There were so many signs showed Neddy that there were some problems in his life but he kind of rejected it. For example, when he went to swim in Halloran’s pool, they told him that they were sorry about things that he lost, things he sold and some things about his children. However, instead of questioning them about his family and his house, his main focus was on swimming and continuing on his journey. It wasn’t only them who was sorry about his family but others whom he saw on his way too. Even there were some people despised him and threw things at him but he just kept going instead of questioning them. When he visited Welcher’s empty pool, he realized that the doors and windows were closed, and there was â€Å"for sale† sign nailed in front of the house. It seemed that was a week ago he saw Welchers, but they already gone away. But it wasn’t a week ago, it was long time ago that he couldn’t remember. He denied the time and he spent his time only on drinking. As a consequence, he couldn’t really remember about everything. Then he decides to swim on public pool where he was bumped into, splashed, jostled and got shouting by lifeguards. After swimming a few pools, he whom considered himself as a young and vigorous man, started to lose his strength and became tired. He denied his age, he thought he had a power of a young man to swim all the pools to get home. He felt cold at that time, he saw and felt the falling leaves and burning woods, that meant his life was changing. Later, he decided to stop by Biswangers’. Neddy and his wife used to ignore all the invitation Biswangers sent and they were people whom weren’t Neddy’s type. Still Neddy wanted to come in, have a drink and swim. He realized how people were treating him and after encountering a few more problems with the people he knew, he cried for the first time in his life. Because, it was the first time he felt isolated, tired, cold which couldn’t be avoidable in his life. He denied his own life and this deniable brought unexpected situations in Neddy’s life. The other theme of the passage was how the alcohol changed Neddy’s life and how it made him isolated from others. The author explains that alcohol was one of the reason he became lonely. First the passage itself explains how people complained about drinking too much without thinking the consequences and Neddy, main character was one of them. The alcohol was main thing that he cared most, because he thought that would make him happy and happiness was only thing he wanted to have in his life. The passage doesn’t really state about gambling and obsession for alcohol but as I read the passage I could understand the main character had some obsessions about the alcohol. For example, when he was cold, he wanted to drink a whiskey. Then he decides to have a drink in friend’s house. However as he finds out that his friend had operation three years ago and there was nothing to drink since then, his friend’s wife tells him to go to the Biswangers’house. It was a place where Neddy didn’t want to go but had no choice, because he was obsessed with alcohol and really wanted to drink. Moreover, as I kept reading a passage I also realized that Neddy used to gamble too. Because when he left Biswanger’s house, he decides to go to Shirley Adam’s house. She was a women in whom he thought he could trust and might help him for a drink. However, as he approached to her, she thought that Neddy was there for money. That made me think that he didn’t only go there for sexual affairs but Neddy used to go to Adams’ house for money too. Adams knew many things about him and she really wanted to give him a drink but she couldn’t. At the end it shows how Neddy loses his house, friends and even family because of alcohol and gambling. According to passage, many people were rude against him and alcoholism might be one of the reason for that. When he tried to cross the street, people in the car yelled at him and they didn’t let him to cross the street. Because everyone knew he chose alcoholism over everything and his family had left him. Even the alcohol effected to his brain that he couldn’t remember some situations and left him lonely in his life. Overall, people like Neddy exist in our life and its rare to stop them from what they are doing. Because most of them deny or obsess with something and its hard to teach them unless the life teaches them itself like it did to Neddy. It is true that our mistakes are our teachers, but sometimes we can not make such a big mistakes in life like Neddy did, because passage of our life is inevitable. It can be fixable but it also can be late for our problems to be solved.