Fear can be a big part of ones live. Fear of denial. Fear of failure. But just because one is scared to do something, it doesn’t mean he don’t. Fear and overcoming your fear is a central theme in S. J. Butlers short story “the swimmer”.
The main character in the short story seems to be a regular woman, working a regular job. But she has a passion for swimming, and when she sits at her desk she can see right down to a river. This is very intimidating for her as she has a burning desire to go swimming. “No one’s out there. If she goes now, she’ll have the river to herself. No one will see. Why she minds this, she doesn’t know. Every day she looks out at the river, and longs to swim in it.”, as we can see in the quote she doesn’t quite know why she thinks about the fact that nobody will see her, but between the lines you can smell a little fear. Maybe not fear as such, but without her knowing why it definitely affects her in some way. Step by step she overcomes this fear and eventually becomes quite addicted to swimming in the lake, and even more when she discovers a big swan. Day by day she moves closer and closer to the swan, but she is very intimidated by it. “The swan looks down at her and she looks away, afraid to meet its eye. Her nan used to tell her a swan could break a man’s arm with its wings − what could it do to her, down here, in the water?”, in the quote you can definitely feel her fear towards the unknown. But despite this fear she possesses a burning curiosity that convinces her to move closer and closer to the swan. This is clearly seen is this quote “She sees the angle of its neck, the curve of its wing, its eye watching her, even as she works in her sweltering tiny office.”. At last she comes close enough to the swan to touch it, but discovers that it is caught up in a fishing line. She helps the swan to get free of the line and the swan drifts away.