s eye in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; how can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surface beauty of life . . . ? (Cheever 23).
In "The Swimmer," Cheever highlights the superficiality of suburbia through the character of his protagonist, a formerly champion athlete seeking to recover his glory days by swimming eight miles across Bullet Park. We do not know until the end of the story that his apparently perfect marriage has crashed in disaster, so that his near-psychotic quest is also a means for him to imagine that his dream life and dream marriage are still a reality.
Even more than in the first story, "The Swimmer" is full of characters who are apparently alcoholic, drinking all day in order to numb themselves to the superficiality of their lives. The dream of suburbia is a shallow one, and Neddy, the protagonist, has seen his own personal dream fall into pieces, but his denial allows him to imagine it still exists. His wife and family have left him, but he maintains his fantasy based o
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