Analysis of The Swimmer Essay

In John Cheevers short story "The Swimmer" the main character Neddy Merrill goes through a drastic change. He starts off with having a wife and children, and being quite popular. Despite being older, he wants to regain youth by swimming the entire county through all his neighbors swimming pools. While at a party he realizes he can swim home through the chain of pools. At first, he is welcomed into his neighbors pools graciously. At each house he takes a drink and swims a lap in the pool. Though this whole story seems to play out over a few hours, its actually been years. As time passes, people aren't as gracious when he shows up at their house. He starts to drink more and becomes weaker. By the end of the story he finally finished swimming all the pools and made it home to find his wife and children are gone, and the house is empty.

The theme of the story is the downfall of this man, Neddy Merrill, with the assistance of alcohol. He starts off successful and strong but becomes weak and loses everything. This theme reflects the concept of "survival of the fittest" by Charles Darwin from the text. Darwin says that species need to adapt to their environment in order to survive. The ones who are strong enough to adapt will survive and the ones who are too weak to adapt will die off. This way, the stronger genes are passed down to future generations. This relates to the story because Neddy Merrill is weak because of his alcohol addiction. Because of his weakness, he is left with nothing. The only difference in this theme from the text and the story is that Neddy did not die at the end like Darwin's theory suggests should happen.

I think that the connection made between the text and the story is a little drastic, the story doesn't make it that easy to relate Darwin's theory to it. I feel like although it makes sense, it's not an easy concept to grasp, especially the first time reading the story. The short story "The Swimmer" made me feel confused. Also, as soon as it started to make sense and become interesting it ended on a cliffhanger. Overall, it wasn't that bad of a story, just a little confusing.