America Has the Bends: How Cheever Used “The Swimmer” to Critique the American Dream
America Has the Bends: How Cheever Used “The Swimmer” to Critique the American Dream
In modern American literature, one of the most recurring locations used is that of suburbia. It’s only fitting considering suburbia’s importance to how America was shaped in the 20th century. In many ways, suburbia acted like an achievement in the American Dream. Of course, suburbia was also sold as a dream. The connotation attached to the word conjures up images of the nuclear family: a two-story house, white picket fence, and supposed safety from the dangers of the urban world. While the connotation of suburbia typically involves a white, middle-class family, there were actually varieties of suburbia throughout the country. As Philip C. Dolce writes in his collection Suburbia, there were “working-class suburbs, elite suburbs, black suburbs, ethnic suburbs, industrial suburbs, and planned suburbs among others” (viii). However, it was the connotation of suburbia that has run rampant throughout American literature. John Cheever used the suburbs to locate many of his stories, even going so far as to create his own suburb in his writing. In one of his most well-known short stories, “The Swimmer,” Cheever used the suburban archetype to craft a critique on the falseness of the American Dream.
While the archetype applies to a specific race and class, Cheever was aware that suburbia, in reality, was comprised of variables. However, by using the archetype, he was able to tell a tale that could be read as universal. This is because the struggles of the American Dream are as equally universal. As Lawrence R. Samuel writes in his book The American Dream: A Cultural History, “for many in both the working class and the middle class, upward mobility has served as the heart and soul of the American Dream” (7). It’s the fight to rise above others through hard work and perseverance. However, as Samuel points out, “upward mobility [is] to be even a greater myth than the Dream itself, [yet] most Americans refuse to believe such a thing, [because] the concept of class fluidity [is] so ingrained in our national ethos” (7). Thus Americans still fight for it, even if the American Dream is less of a truth and more of a bullet point on a travel brochure.
Cheever picks up here with the supposed truths of the American Dream. He begins his critique immediately by starting the story off on “one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying: ‘I drank too much last night.’” (157). He continues to discuss that everyone from the “parishioners leaving church” to the “priest himself” to those on “the golf links and the tennis courts” are able to lounge about and discuss the prior night’s drinking activities. It creates a scene in which it is implied that these are people with the luxury of lounging around. These are people that have supposedly achieved the American Dream. This is where Cheever introduces the protagonist, Neddy Merrill, who at first seems like one of the many around him. Cheever writes that he “was a slender man — he seemed to have the especial slenderness of youth” (158). He continues to tell that Neddy “might have been compared to a summer’s day, particularly the last hours of one…[and] the impression was definitely one of youth, sport, and clement weather” (158). Neddy begins the story with such a fine description because he is ultimately a stand-in for someone fresh off of the boat to America, sold on the American Dream, hoping to better himself and his family’s living. As Robert M. Slabey writes in his essay “John Cheever: The ‘Swimming’ of America,” “The Swimmer” [is about how] the American Dream becomes the creation of one’s own reality — the dream of living out one’s imagination” (186). When Neddy decides he’s going to swim home eight miles through suburbia and the pools of his neighbors, it’s as if this is the start of his journey for upward mobility via the materialistic nature of American society.
By having Neddy go specifically through suburbia, Cheever is able to explore the sense of emptiness that is generally associated with said location. No matter how one defines the American Dream — which has only existed throughout history in a connotative sense — it has always involved, in some fashion, a sense of materialism, which stems from the nature of America. America, as a capitalistic society, places value on materialism in an extreme fashion — at least certainly more so than any other society in the world. This idea of materialism often arises in discussions of suburbia, which is because they’re both connected to the American Dream. Cheever uses this concept of materialism to exhibit its hollow nature. There are few, if any, close relationships in “The Swimmer,” thus there seems to be a strong disconnect between the wealth Neddy encounters in his journey home and the people he meets along the way. Robert M. Slabey discusses this when he writes about how Neddy “has material abundance, but that, he finds, is not enough” (182). At the end of the story, when Neddy finally arrives at his home, there’s once more a hollow feeling, but this time it is within Neddy himself. In his struggles to get home — or rather his struggle to make his way through the American Dream — he’s lost himself and his original intent. In discussion of the story’s final moments, Slabey writes, “Neddy’s arrival home is an example of Cheever’s suburbanite, here falling through the surface into the abyss over which his life has been precariously structured” (182). His neglect of what was originally important to him, which is implied to be his family, was lost throughout his journey as the rough years passed by.
Part of that roughness is the grind that Neddy goes through. He goes from pool to pool as if on a day to day grind of work. In fact, Neddy, at one point, goes through a pool in the local recreation center, which has the ambiance like that of an old factory — one specifically before regulations and unions were put into place. Before arriving at this specific pool, Neddy had gone through the Bunkers’ residence where a party had been occurring. There’s an important dichotomy between the two locations, because while “the effect of the water on voices [and] the illusion of brilliance and suspense…was the same here as it had been at the Bunkers’…the sounds here were louder, harsher, and more shrill” (161). Neddy finds that the recreation center is led with regimentation; he finds a sign that reads, “ALL SWIMMERS MUST TAKE A SHOWER BEFORE USING THE POOL. ALL SWIMMERS MUST USE THE FOOTBATH. ALL SWIMMERS MUST WEAR THEIR IDENTIFICATION DISKS” (161). The cold, dark industrial like nature of the recreation center draws comparisons to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which was itself a critique of America’s capitalistic society and subsequent false American Dream. The protagonist of The Jungle fought for something bigger than him — a place in American society — but ended up falling into an abyss of despair, not unlike Neddy at the end of “The Swimmer.”
The Neddy at the end of the story is a weaker character on both a physical and mental level. What once was a man that gave an impression of “youth, sport, and clement weather” becomes a man that, in the last pool of the story, “for the first time in his life,” didn’t “dive but went down the steps into the ice water and swam a hobbled side stroke” (165). Upon arriving at his house, he finds that nothing remains. In his attempt to make it home on a westward trajectory — conjuring memories of America’s Manifest Destiny, which served as a dangerous journey to a new home westward similar to Neddy’s — he’d only managed to fall into the aforementioned abyss like others before him. Furthermore, the Neddy that the reader was introduced too was a man that was sure of his life and decisions. However, the Neddy that closes the story is a man that is full of confusion; he’s asking questions and generally unsure of what has happened to his life and family. Robert M. Slabey points out that Neddy is in many ways a physical manifestation of the supposed American Dream when he writes, “Neddy is the depthless dreamer and organization man, but he also acts out the frontier myth of exploration, independence, endurance, and self-reliance” (184). However, in his fight for upward mobility, as Slabey writes, Neddy “makes the one-in-a-lifetime discovery that he has won the race but lost his ‘life’” (182). Thus it’s here where Cheever makes his last swipe toward the American Dream.
It wouldn’t be fair to say Cheever was entirely against the American Dream or American society in general. As mentioned before, the idea of suburbia is something that was important to his writing career. However, it is fair to say he saw the reality of the situation. John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” represents a dark, realistic look at American life, even if he employs a tactic of magical realism throughout the story. His tragic, gloomy, and all around realistic look at life through the lens of suburbia is something that exists in popular fiction even to today. It’s seen in lesser quality material, such as American Beauty, and in much better quality, such as Mad Men. Both of those members of media hold in their cores an aspect of critiquing America and its so-called dream. Furthermore, both can be traced back to the fiction of John Cheever, particularly to a cynical, important story such as “The Swimmer.” It’s easy to assume that his critique of American society will continue to influence for years to come, just as much as the American dream itself.
Works Cited
Cheever, John. “The Swimmer.” Volume E: Literature Since 1945. Ed. Julia Reidhead. Eighth ed. E Vol. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. 157–165. Print. the Norton Anthology of American Literature .
Dolce, Philip C. “Preface.” Suburbia: The American Dream and Dilemma. Ed. Philip C. Dolce. First ed. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1976. vi-ix. Print.
M. Slabey, Robert. “John Cheever: The ‘Swimming’ of America.” Critical Essays on John Cheever. Ed. R. G. Collins. Boston, Massachusetts: G. K. Hall & Co., 1982. 180–191. Print.
Samuel, Lawrence R. the American Dream: A Cultural History. First ed. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2012. Print.
Originally published at http://www.tumblr.com on December 5, 2014.
