Things really Shift from one extreme to another when you look at Neddy’s life in The Swimmer. This truly shows how Cheever can make a simple afternoon by the pool with your friends turn into a harsh reality that you never would hope to happen to anyone. Neddy’s life truly goes downhill quick once he begins his journey of pool hopping. One can determine that a lot more is going on in someone’s life than what meets the eye and you can’t even begin to scratch the surface of someone living a life like this. In The Swimmer, the different pools and stages of his journey have a direct coloration and depict what is actually going on in Neddy’s life at the moment and explain how and why his life ended up the way it is.  

 It’s at the start of the story when Neddy realizes that he wants to begin his journey of transportation by pool. I am not sure if its all the drinks that’s fueling this but he decides to go through with his plan to make his way home by swimming through various pools around the county. So he parts ways with his friends at the pool and begins his journey towards what he thought would be an easy swim home.

As he is traveling from pool to pool, he notices many different things as he moves from one pool to another. Just like in life you will see and experience different places in deferent settings. Neddy seems to get many different vibes from the different pools as he minuvours and slowly but surely makes the long journey home.

It is understandable to tell why it is easier when he first begins the story. When he first begins it is like the early stages in life and Neddy is innocent and young, and probably a good deal liquored up. Everything is easy and not complicated as he movies from pool to pool talking briefly to neighbors and being friendly. But as he pushes on the pools are seemingly harder and harder to swim through representing how his life first starts to be harder and more stressful like how any young adult might experience. As the rest of the story indicates, Neddy does not seem to cope with this all too well.

The story reaches one point when a storm hits as he makes his way to another pool. Neddy must hide to take shelter so he can be out of the storm and try to let it pass so he can continue on his journey. This storm really seems to side track him and keep him from reaching his goal. This storm represents a really rough patch in his life weather that is a death of someone who is close to him or anything that might off set his normal behavior. He really doesn’t seem to be able to cope with this storm and it holds on to him a lot longer when it is brought back up at the end of the story.

A little bit later Neddy comes across the Welcher’s pool. The interesting thing about this pool is that it happens to be empty, therefore Neddy cannot swim across it. Aside from the thunderstorm this is the first hard obstacle that he needs to overcome in order to reach his destination of home.  This is a metaphor for something really hard in his life that he has to overcome, but the fact of the matter is that he cannot overcome it because you cannot swim through a pool that doesn’t have any water. This is a bet that you can’t win or something bad in his life that he also could not help or do anything about. This most definitely adds to the deterioration of Neddy’s early and happy life to what he fears to be a failure in life. So he Decides to push on with his journey because although he has had a lot of hardships lately he is actually a strong willed man and know he must push on.

But things only seem to get worse just like his life slowly got worse.  Neddy is now beginning to lose touch with reality and because all of the sudden things are coming back to bite him and he didn’t even know that he had done these things.  For example when he comes up to another pool and the lady accuses him of having an affaire with her and she tells him that she cannot give him any more money.  This is a kick to the face for Neddy because he acts like he never knew these things were going on in his life. The major setbacks that happened earlier in his life (thunderstorm, empty pool) made him completely loose touch with reality. He has been so corrupt by this that he is cheating on his family and wife.  

The climax of the story happens once he reaches his house after the long and hard journey home.  He notices that the house is dark and weathered and it seems as though no one has lived there for years. The first thunderstorm that he experienced seemed to have the most impact of his later life due to massive weathering that has deteriorated most of the house and made his house (his life) a mess like explained here “Going toward the house, he saw the the force of the thunderstorm had knocked one of the rain gutters loose. It hung down over the front door like an umbrella rib,” (Cheever 737). Whatever the thunderstorm represented in the earlier part of the story has obviously taken a lead in causing most of the unhappiness that is going on in his life.

His wife and kids have clearly left him because of all the negative decisions that he has made. For example, he was drinking alcohol at the begging of the story which could represent heavy drinking at a young age. He continuously drinks the whole time when could only lead one to believe that his alcohol problem has only gotten worse and that could be a reason why everything went bad. 

The once happy young man is now not the same as he once was. He in a way has aged a lot and became something and now has a life that no man wants. Ever since he began his journey things only ever went down hill. This journey he went on really did represent his life and the things that he experienced and why he has a unhappy life now.   
