“The Swimmer” by John Cheever is the tale of a significant period of life’s misadventures depicted over the course of a day. Neddy Merrill, the main character, begins sited at the edge of the Westerhazys’ pool on a summer day when the idea to swim a path of pools all the way through his home comes to him. He swims through the Wasterhazys’s pool and proceeds to jump to the neighbor’s one. During his trajectory through the first array of pools, he is barely noticed until he reaches the Bunkers, who are hosting a party where he greets a herd of guests indicating he is a well-known figure among the upper-middle-class society. Thereafter that event, the story’s setting and surroundings start turning darker in several ways, and Neddy starts to face complications with people’s way of treating him. In the Halloran estate, the Hallorans show sympathy because of the loss of his wife and daughters, an event he does not remember and prefers to ignore the commentaries. In the following pools after visiting the …show more content…
Initially, as the trip begins, there is peace in the appreciation of the good weather and the environment description, “The day was beautiful and it seemed to him that a long swim might enlarge and celebrate his beauty” (210). Neddy’s enthusiastic intentions, which can be interpreted as adventurous also provide a positive tone, these traits originally create an expectancy of a positive forward development of the story. Nevertheless, the beginning of the unfortunate events marks the appearance of pessimism and confusion, since the abrupt change in weather to cloudy and dark, there is no way back to the original tone, it only keeps going in descent to finally provide a dolefully sentiment once he realizes the emptiness of his house. The tone is the consequence of the central idea, the decay of his life is totally expressed with the decay in tone’s