SOURCE: “Cheever's Dark Knight of the Soul: The Failed Quest of Neddy Merrill,” in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 29, No. 3, Summer, 1992, pp. 347-52.

In the following essay, Blythe and Sweet explore Cheever's use of Grail mythology in the characters, events, and settings of “The Swimmer,” and contrast Neddy Merrill, the selfish hero, with the traditional selfless Grail hero.

Although critics, including ourselves, have noted many minor patterns throughout “The Swimmer” such as the color imagery (Graves 4-5), the Shakespearian parallels (Bell 433-36), the names (Byrne 326-27), an historical allusion (Blythe and Sweet 557-59), and the autumnal images (Reilly 12), all have overlooked the major pattern that dominates and hence illuminates Cheever's story. In 1967 Cortland Auser suggested that Cheever “created an imaginative and vital myth of time and modern man” that “uses the age-old themes of quest, journey, initiation, and discovery” (18). Auser, however, failed to note the specific myth that...