Duality In The Swimmer

John Cheever’s use of the journey motif conveys meaning in “The Swimmer.” Neddy Merrill thinks of himself as an “explorer” who is traveling through unknown territory. He drinks very often and tries to forget the reality of his loneliness. At first, Neddy’s only focus is swimming “the Lucinda River,” but he faces temptation at the Bunkers’ party where everyone is drinking. Neddy gets out of the pool, interacts with the party, and has a “gin and tonic.”

. Out of his depth In the short allegory, ‘The Swimmer’ (1968), John Cheever explores the grandeur of the title character, Ned Merrill, a posh middle-aged man on the brink of alcoholism who lives in a world devoid of spiritual meaning and filled with materialism. Throughout the story, Ned’s path or more aptly put, his seemingly journey of self, pool by pool, is one that is indubitably complex – it resonates with the concept of uprooting himself from a semblance of idealized ‘reality’ that he created, into an epoch of incredulity whereby he begins to realize that with every stroke comes disillusionment. This paradigm shift, due to Neddy’s spontaneous and irrational idea of swimming home, leads to an existential crisis whereby the course of his trajectory in life and social identity are questioned extensively.

Authors use characters and genres to develop theme. Sometimes different genres can be used to build the same theme. In the poem, “The Lesson of the Moth,” poet Don Marquis uses the protagonist, a moth, to teach the narrator, Archy, a cockroach, what it is like to have a dream worth dying for. Similarly, Daniel Keyes, author of “Flowers for Algernon,” a short story, uses the main character, Charlie Gordon, a mentally disabled man who longs to be smart, to develop the idea that it is better to risk to achieve happiness rather than to live wondering what life could have been like. Both the poet and the author use the main character in their literary work to contribute to the idea that risking something is worth even momentary happiness.

Ulysses has a restless spirit and, while he has traveled much, he has left a part of himself everywhere he has traveled, “I am a part of all that I have met” (line 18). While he is old, he still has much to offer, and he will rust with no use, “To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!” (line 23). Quite simply, he suffers from wanderlust and cannot live without adventure. He recognizes that the time he has left is short, and admirably wants to make the most of it.

I would definitely agree with the majority of people when they call To Kill A Mockingbird a “timeless classic”. This novel brings many lessons and morals to my life. One lesson it has taught me is to put myself in another's place before I judge them. Several times throughout the book, the author mentions the idea of putting yourself in another’s shoes before you come to a conclusion about them. Near the very beginning of the book, Atticus gives Scout and the readers valuable advice when he says, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from their point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it”.

The Swimmer Nature. “The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.” That defi-nition sets up two contrasts that are central in The Swimmer by S.J. Butler: man vs. nature. In order to explain how the two perform side by side in this short story, I will analyze setting and the devel-opment in the protagonist of the story as well as symbolism of a few somethings.

The end scene of Fences and Keepers of the House both represent the possibility of redemption in the face of the sins of the fathers. In his play Fences, August Wilson shows to the reader how a person can redeem himself if he is able to embrace both the evil and good of the man and find forgiveness of the father’s sins. However, Shirley Ann Grau presents that a person cannot redeem itself once the sins happen and the characters are stuck in the cycle of vengeance due to their unyielding characteristics. Throughout his play Fences, August Wilson presents characters who are stuck in the cycle of the bitter relationship between father and son due to the past sins of the fathers.

Has your mind ever played tricks on you? In the story “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the main character, Goodman Brown, seems to experience just that. He’s travelling through the forest with another man who can only be described as the devil himself, and at the end of the story the reader is left to wonder if anything that took place even truly happened. Hawthorne uses many literary devices to convey that deception comes in many shapes and forms, the worst of which can be your own mind.

Benjamin Franklin once said “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” Authors write something worth reading when they use figurative language to create images of the characters in the reader’s minds. In the stories “Stop The Sun” by Gary Paulsen and “The Pigman” by Paul Zindel, the authors use figurative language to develop the characters. Paul Zindel, the author of “The Pigman”, used figurative language to develop the characters. In the story, the author described one of the characters by saying, “Lorraine is panting to get at the typewriter now, so I’m going to let her before she has a heart attack.”

Everyone has a fright for something, but not everyone tries to overcome the fear of whatever it must be. In 2011 S.J Butler thematised what it would say to be frightened, and not just evade the fact of fear, through her short story, The Swimmer. Many people have a way of letting everything go to one’s head, and not liberate themselves. That is simply the message and symbol the reader has to look for, while they are reading The Swimmer. As early as the first sentence the reader is introduced to the environment, and what environment you can expect at this time of the year: “The alders at the river’s edge stand motionless in the midsummer heat”

World War I is a gloomy and cruel place; it obliterates the beliefs of fighting for one’s country and transforms the minds of the soldiers. This realization is found in Erich Maria Remarque’s book All Quiet on the Western Front. In the book, a young teen named Paul Baumer and his friends join in the war believing it’s going to make them become important and that fighting for their country is such a great privilege, but once they are in the war, they all realize it’s not the same as what they were told. The young soldiers witness what war is truly about and they reflect on what they were told, knowing the truth makes them see they were told lies, so they are the same which obliterates their trust in the adult world. Remarque employs symbolism,

The Swimmer: Why pools and their implications on 1960’s culture The use of a swimming pool in the summertime can be seen as a mundane and everyday task, but John Cheever’s The Swimmer portrays, in a very brilliant way, the way on how a swimming pool can mean so much more than meets the eyes. In the story, Neddy Marill is a man depicted with vigor and youth with every stride, and one day, Neddy decides that he wants to make his way to his house through the existing pool system of the local resident that he was very good friends with everybody and believes this journey to be of the upmost importance. The day seems to be in peak of summer when the journey begins, but as Neddy makes his way through the neighborhood, the neighbors begin to be more hostile toward him, where they use to be nice and even offer him drinks, and Neddy begins to question his