In John Cheever, "The Swimmer", on a hot summer Sunday, as he sat by the pool with his wife and neighbors, while While they were all complaining about their hangovers, a man of higher status, named Needy Merrill, decides to return home by swimming in his county's pools. When Needy begins his journey, he feels young and enthusiastic; he is then happily welcomed by his neighborhood friends. Apparently, Needy is a well-known and respected man. As his journey progresses, he begins to see red and orange leaves; he then realizes that it was autumn. In the middle of his journey, he begins to endure some troubles, but that doesn't stop him. At the end of her journey, Needy begins to meet people who constantly bring up her unhappiness and her difficulties with her family. Needy doesn't remember any of the turmoil in her life and begins to wonder if her memory is failing her. Towards the end, many people he met treated him rudely. Needy realizes that something must have gone wrong in her life. When Needy arrives home, he finds that his house is empty and his family is gone. In "The Swimmer", John Cheever uses the setting to symbolize the meaning of the story. Cheever uses the setting symbolically by creating a change of season and time in the story. Cheever writes that when Needy realizes that the leaves are changing color, he becomes sad. “The force of the wind had stripped a maple tree of its red and yellow leaves and scattered them across the grass and water. As it was midsummer, the tree must have been withered, and yet it felt a special sadness at this sign of autumn. of paper ...... for supper... He screamed, knocked on the door, tried to force it with his shoulder, then, looking through the windows, he saw that the place was empty . »(257) Needy's journey has come to an end. in a dark and lonely place; that's when he realized he had no one left. Needy's empty house symbolized the emptiness he now had in his heart. The whole story was a symbol of Needy's life. The setting of the story was symbolic of what Needy was feeling. Needy's life was diminishing before his eyes, and he didn't realize it. The different changes in the story represented how Needy's life had gradually changed over time. While reading the story, the reader can tell that Needy was in a state of denial. Works Cited Cheever, John, “The Swimmer,” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. XJ Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 12th ed. San Francisco: Longman, 2013.250-257