Neddy Merrill, Cheever's major character in "The Swimmer," illustrates the ironic or "anti-hero" in twentieth-century literature. Unlike Bartleby in Melville's tale, or Prufrock, in Eliot's modernist "Love Song," Neddy is a foolish character with pretension to the heroic; not so, his literary counterparts.

To learn more about this and other key concepts, please consult the Glossary of Key Concepts.