Coming Home: An Intertextual Reading of “The Swimmer” and “The Room of Another”

This paper is an intertextual study of two modern short stories based on the archetypal leitmotif of a man’s return home: American writer John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” published in 1964, and Korean writer Choi In-ho’s “The Room of Another,” from 1971. The study was carried out through a close reading of the two stories’ narrative structures and thematic units, focusing on their shared elements and the similar or different effects and meanings these elements create in the respective works. It also took into consideration the social backdrop of the two stories: the post-World War II affluence and ennui in America of the 1960s and the economical and cultural changes brought about by industrialization in the post-Korean War years. The examination found that the two stories, both third-person narratives based on the motif of coming home, were written in a similar modernist free indirect style, with added elements of surrealism, but differed in plot and structure—“The Swimmer” centering on the journey and “The Room of Another” on what awaited after the return. Among the various thematic units found in both stories, the image of water was the most prominent, while references to religion and mythology also contributed to the thematic development of both narratives. These elements, in connection to the two stories’ shared homecoming motif, suggest that “The Swimmer” and “The Room of Another” aim at delivering the same theme, both arriving at tragic conclusions that spiral into abysmal emptiness or lifelessness in a world of material wealth, but told in vastly different mood and tone. In effect, the former reads as a satirical mock-epic while the latter as a dark psychological fantasy.