Neddy Merrill, is the father of four daughters, described in the beginning as sitting by a neighbor’s pool drinking gin when the idea comes to him that he might reach home by doing a lap of all of his neighbors’ pools on the way. However, the prevalent expenditure of alcohol throughout the story hones the alteration of time and Neddy’s sagacity of discontent. The ingestion, quota, and yearning for alcohol convert to substantial stimuluses for Neddy as well as a mode to measure his communal standing. Cheever uses a spiritual allegory, in lieu of a world utterly given over to surfeit: “everyone” is referred to as, the parishioners leaving church, the priest himself, the leader of the Audubon group, are all afflicted with superfluous, symbolized …show more content…
Neddy’s senses are consoled and contented when he is given a drink at the Bunkers’ party, which his impressions are affronted by the way his drink is served at the Biswangers’ party. Although, the explicit referral of “everyone” is assumed to be related towards all those he tends to hang out with and party with in the neighborhood and who share the same lost feelings he has. At the beginning of the story, “everyone” is petulant of having inebriated himself too much the night before, but they have assembled companionably at the Westerhazys’ pool to overindulge in drinking again. “It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying: “I drank too much last night” (Cheever …show more content…
Although Neddy seems to have a occupied, euphoric life, he nevertheless remnants secluded from others. He creates a tendency of rejecting invitations and has been out of touch with countless people whom he considered friends of which he doesn’t even remember particular facets anymore. He distinguishes the policies of the social world he inhabits, but this is a world constructed primarily on facades. Also ubiquitously he seems to go, people are drinking heavily, which advocates that there is something from which they are trying to escape or conceal much like he is. The desolation of conurbation also pertains to Neddy’s love life. Nevertheless, Neddy titles his pool path after his wife, Lucinda, he is expurgated off from her as well by feature of his affair with Shirley Adams. The affair also paucities unpretentious love. At the culmination of the story, when Neddy is essentially alone and facing his vacant house, the true manifestations of his life is, for the first time,