SOURCE: Blythe, Hal, and Charlie Sweet. “Cheever's Dark Knight of the Soul: The Failed Quest of Neddy Merrill.” Studies in Short Fiction 29, no. 3 (summer 1992): 347-51.

In the following essay, Blythe and Sweet consider “The Swimmer” to be a representation of the “familiar archetype of the Grail quest.”

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 undergirds the story as well as the ramifications of Cheever's choice...