ENGL-2883 Final.pdf - Cantrell 1 Gavin Cantrell Dr. Ryan...

Cantrell 1
Gavin Cantrell
Dr. Ryan Slesinger
ENGL-2883-20867
5 May 2022
Final Exam
Prompt 5: An interesting development in the landscape of literature is the concept of memory
and how it fails sometimes. Memory itself is never permanent or reliable, the details are all
eventually lost or changed. But this process of slowly forgetting is subject to psychological
biases and factors. An author who explores a facet of this is John Cheever. In Cheever’s The
Swimmer , the concept of memory is pushed to the limit as reality itself becomes untrustworthy
and foreign. Neddy our speaker, is a rich suburbanite, and while his life at the start of the story
appears to be all together, he begins to see him spiral into an alcohol-fueled haze. This is what
begins to deteriorate Neddy’s memory and the way Cheever shows the deterioration is through
his imagery. Specifically the imagery and symbolism of the pools that Neddy dives into. “After
swimming the pool he got himself a glass and poured a drink. It was his fourth or fifth drink and
he had swum nearly half the length of the Lucinda River”(Cheever 143). As Neddy enters each
pool, he always ends his swim with a drink, and it's this event that is the catalyst for the wearing
down of his memory. The pools themselves represent binge drinking and falling into his
addiction, and it's this habit that we see leads to his memory deterioration. “He could not go
back, he could not even recall with any clearness the green water at the Westerhazys’, the sense
of inhaling the day’s components, the friendly and relaxed voices saying that they had drunk too
much.” Each of these dives results in a blurring of memory, a disconnect from reality, and it's
from the pools where we see this dissociation occur. Another Author who portrays the

Cantrell 2
malleability of memory is Toni Morrison, but where Morrison differs is how he shows memory
through differing perspectives. Roberta and Twyla who both grow up in an orphanage at later
points in their life have differing memories of an event in their childhood. This event is the fate
of Maggie. Maggie is a mute worker in the kitchen at the orphanage who is abused by the older
bullies who stay at the orphanage. Where things become very confusing is about what happened
with Maggie, it all starts when Roberta states, “Maggie didn’t fall”(Morrison 614). This leaves
Twyla uneasy and uncertain like something about this memory is uncomfortable to her. “My ears
were itching and I wanted to go home suddenly”(Morrison 615). Twyla reacts in a way that
indicates that she feels something is amiss or strange, it's like she is subconsciously avoiding
what happened, and this casts doubt on her story and her as a narrator. The two’s next encounter
reinforces this when Roberta states her memory of the story. “Maybe I am different now, Twyla.