Thesis and support

Thesis:

The short story I have chosen to complete my literary analysis on is “The

Swimmer” by John Cheever.  Cheever tells us the story of our protagonist Neddy Merrill, a young and wealthy suburban American who has decided to spend his Sunday afternoon swimming the Lucinda river.  Cheever creatively uses time as a multifunctional tool to demonstrate not only an afternoon, but a lifetime, and takes advantage of times elasticity in the narrative to explore some of suburban America’s folly.  The reader is left with a lack of closure upon completion of Ned’s afternoon with his affairs scattered years apart as a result of his indulgence.

Support:

I have been able to find and use crystal clear evidence from the story to confirm that Cheever is relating time to us in a variety of ways simultaneously.

Because time is traveling at different speeds in the story, we are left with a variety of questions that are left unanswered, constituting a lack of closure and satisfying my Abbott requirement.