The story is told from a third-person limited point-of-view, in which the focal character is Neddy Merrill, a resident of suburban Westchester County, New York.
Despite the ever-present afternoon light, it becomes unclear how much time has passed; at the beginning of the story it is clearly midsummer, but eventually all natural signs point to the season being autumn.
He meets with undisguised hostility at the poolside party of the Biswangers, a couple whom Neddy and his wife Lucinda have persistently snubbed socially.
At the pool of Neddy's discarded mistress, Shirley Adams, she informs him she won't lend him any more money or serve him a drink, and dismisses him.
[14] As published, the story is highly praised for its blend of realism and surrealism; the thematic exploration of suburban America, especially the relationship between wealth and happiness; and his use of myth and symbolism.
[21][22][23] Biographer Scott Donaldson writes that "The Swimmer" has received "as much critical attention as anything Cheever wrote, and deservedly so, since it is beautifully crafted and carries a powerful emotional charge.
"[24][25] W. B. Gooderham of The New York Times writes: "Cheever's greatest short story transcends its influences and any autobiographical frisson to emerge as a quietly devastating journey into one man's heart of darkness.
And as a piece of prose it is as near-miraculous as the journey it describes…"[26] Cheever's conception for the story was originally a straightforward and unambiguous invocation of the Greek myth of Narcissus.
We now see that like Chekhovian characters…Neddy Merrill has in fact chosen to lose touch with the truth rather than suffer under its crushing weight.”—Literary critic James E. O’Hara in John Cheever: A Study of the Short Fiction (1989).
[31] Literary critic Lynne Waldeland notes that the significance of Neddy Merrill's "Lucinda River" is no mere juvenile escapade, and Cheever makes this explicit in the story's narrative: "He was not a practical joker nor was he a fool but he was determinedly an original and he had a vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure."
Waldeland concludes that "the real point of the story is the celebratory motive of Neddy's act with the social realities that emerge as the story progresses, realities that have to do with the role wealth and social status play in the world which Neddy wishes to invest with legendary beauty and meaning...Whatever "happened" we have seen a brightly lit, intelligible, comfortable world suddenly become dark and cold.
"[32] Literary critic Samuel Coale observes that "The Swimmer" confronts both his protagonist and the reader with a shocking epiphany: ...the stunning truth of these disasters at the end of the story undercuts totally Neddy's own self-gratifying celebration of the suburban existence…Cheever carefully laid the trail toward the deserted house, so that when the reader arrives there, he is stunned by the transformation that takes place between his first impressions of Neddy Merrill and his final understanding.