Reader Reaction to John Cheevers The Swimmer Essay -- Cheever Swimmer

Reader Reaction to John Cheevers The bather   One of the main ideas that is conveyed in John Cheevers The Swimmer is the way in which life consists of variant mental stages and how they each affect the consciousness of the mind. In The Swimmer, Neddy goes through different swimming pools and this represents the different journeys in his life. He progresses from boundless optimism to endless despair as the seasons go by.  The times when Neddy is in or out of the water to a fault represents the emotions he is passage through and perhaps can correlate to the emotions felt throughout the duration of geniuss life. For example, when Neddy is not swimming, he tends to feel down or aggravated. During this sad period, he is commonly in search of alcohol.  Even after he has had a drink or two, he is always ready to go back into the pools, which shows a galvanic pile about Neddys ambitious character. Neddys journey through the pools is longer than an afternoon.&nb sp In fact, we see this when he mentions the storm passing and the season change is shown through the phrase rubor and yellow leaves. When Neddy finally reaches home, he is tired and weak. This displays aging through life and how one becomes fatigued easily as life goes on. When he sees that no one is home, it is obvious that Neddys journey has come to an end and it seems as though Neddy has died, because his home can symbolize the heart and the soul, and since no one is home, Neddys heart and soul is dead.         Although The Swimmer and the recent American film A Beautiful Mind both have differing plots, their main characters have some commonalities. Russell Crowe, the young mathematician who becomes a natural codification ... ...xpected of him with his wife and kids having left him.  It was clear that Neddy was also annoyed at this point in time, however before he blew up at Mrs. Biswanger, she suddenly became beautiful to him once again. This part in the story goes to show how cruel society can be, and instead of helping out Neddy in his poor state, he is disrespected and furthermore, abandoned.  It is also evident that friends can be betraying and deceiving and that one can never be too sure about their status. I feel that the society in which Neddy is nutrition is quite shallow and irrational. Neddy is an unfortunate character and his treatment from Mrs. Biswanger shows her nature of thinking that friends are expendable which in my opinion is quite irrational.  It also shows that the status in ones culture weighs heavily on their association with certain people.