John Cheever's The Swimmer

A detailed Summary of John Cheever's The Swimmer

Element of Fiction Essay, Character Use

In every story, plot and character go hand in hand, both playing equal roles in creating good fiction. But as fiction moves from escape to interpretive, the character end is likely to become more elaborate. Thus, making reading for character more difficult than reading for plot, and also making it one of the most complex and important elements of fiction.

Any one can repeat what a person has done in a story, but it is much harder to describe what a person is. This is where the difficulty in interpreting a main character comes from. You have to not only, take into account the character's actions, but their inner feelings as well, in order to distinguish what kind of person they really are. Those who indulge in escape literature almost always prefer the character to be an attractive one. If the character is male, he doesn't necessarily have to be perfect, but he must be decent, honest, virtuous, and preferably good looking. He may also defy law, but only if his intentions are good and if he is really good at heart. These type of readers look for qualities like these in order to escape from reality and loose themselves in a dream charac

The author showed the nature of Neddy through indirect presentation. The reader interprets his disposition through his actions and how you infer them. Neddy could be described as a round character. He is complex and many sided, and could not be summed up in only one sentence. Neddy has several sides to him and characterizes the vitality that good interpretive fiction demands. He also satisfies the three principles of characterization. First, Consistency, Neddy is consistent with his behavior throughout the story, his mood does not change and neither did his personality. Second, Motivation, he is especially motivated with his goal; he doesn't stray from his focus of swimming his way home. Finally, Plausible, in addition to his other characteristics Neddy is also very plausible. Aside from his obvious eccentricities, he does not display any real qualities that could be deemed unbelievable. He clearly has his problems and faults which make him and easier character to comprehend, but a harder character to like.

ter, unfortunately the world isn't like that. One example of a main character that in many aspects is not of the perfect nature is Neddy from John Cheever's "The Swimmer".

Neddy possesses several characteristics that you have to look deeper into and interpret them at more than face value. Neddy's whole journey of "pool hopping" his way home is just his way of avoiding reality. Its his way of escaping the things that are really bothering him, and instead of dealing wi

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Approximate Word count = 1011
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English