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Deliverance

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James Dickey's "Deliverance" is a study of how a civilized, peaceful, law-abiding man chooses a "kill or be killed" mentality when he is trapped in a life-or-death situation by an unforeseeable danger. The novel opens with four middle-aged white-collar men from Atlanta planning a weekend canoe trip down a river in northeastern Georgia. Lewis Medlock is the experienced outdoorsman and adventurer of the group; he seeks to conquer the wilderness and boasts of the injuries he's received and hardships he's overcome in his fishing and hunting excursions. Ed Gentry, the narrator, a graphic design consultant by profession, is an avid archer but does not quite share Lewis's love of the outdoors. Accompanying them are the sensible Drew, a sales executive for a soft drink company, and Bobby, indecisive, emasculated, and almost completely out of his element.

The river flows through rocky, mountainous terrain, one of those areas in which all the human inhabitants are presumably related to each other. Some of the locals try to discourage the men from tackling the river with canoes, but Lewis is resolute, and they set off down the river as planned. The trip goes smoothly the first day, but the next day, Ed and Bobby run into trouble -- a terrifying encounter with two murderous, animalistic backwoods goons. Lewis and Drew arrive in time to save Ed's and Bobby's lives, but not without a price. When the four men try to escape down the river, Lewis, the strongest and best hunter among them, breaks his leg in a passage through some vicious rapids. Trapped in a gorge and stalked by a vengeful assailant, the men must rely on Ed to save their lives.

"Deliverance" could be a simple tale of revenge and bravado, but what separates it from generic adventure stories is the sheer descriptive power of Dickey's writing. He evokes the refreshing water spray and stunning scenery of the ride down the river, the violence of crashing against rocks through rapids, the feel of a tense bowstring in the hand of a man who is fighting for his life, and the struggle of Ed's desperate white-knuckled climb up the treacherous cliff face to escape the gorge. "Deliverance" shows that great literature and harrowing adventure are not mutually exclusive.

No doubt you've seen, and likely enjoyed, "Deliverance", the movie. And in many ways, that terrific film was a faithful rendering of James Dickey's classic. Yet, as with most successful films based on successful novels, the written form allows much more interest, more depth, more nuance. "Deliverance" the novel is so well written that a single sentence can conjure 1,000 frames of film, a paragraph an entire scene. James Dickey is better known for poetry than fiction, and the lyrical quality of his prose is well evident in this journey of four Atlanta businessman down a raging north Georgia river. Told in the first person by Ed Gentry (Jon Voight in the film), "Deliverance" is a gripping adventure story, but also of one humiliation, murder, tragedy, and ultimately a soul searching study of one man's struggle with courage, morality, and ethics. Dickey offers an unapologetic and unflattering portrait of the hill people of northern Georgia, yet without malice or prejudice - simply the necessary backdrop to serve as the physical manifestation from which there can be "deliverance". Fiercely told and every bit as suspenseful as the excellent film, this great classic should be read by all lovers of American fiction.

Shocking when it was published in 1970, James Dickey's DELIVERANCE has become a classic on par with J.D. Salinger's THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, or Kurt Vonnegut's SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5. It is the full, unflinchingly honest story of one man's observations, experiences, travails and---yes---horrors of going out into the natural world for a taste of the wild life. An odyssey for which he had never been even remotely prepared in his life.

It is the story of Ed Gentry, his born-to-be-wild, alpha-male best friend Lewis (we never do find out his last name), and two acquaintances, soft-bodied insurance salesman Bobby Trippe and banjo-playing sales manager Drew Ballinger, as they set out on a three-day whitewater canoe journey. A canoe journey that would bring them much, much more than any of them---including Lewis---had bargained for. One that would bring them face-to-face with the wild side of human nature. One which they might not survive.

Told from Ed's viewpoint, DELIVERANCE is a powerful study in what happens when two extremes meet each other; when one has to play the other's game in order to hope for any chance of survival. When raw masculinity is freely expressed in one moment, then cruelly stripped away in the next. When one's biggest fear was making it through the daily grind, and who now must rely on his own long-atrophied natural instincts to achieve his own needed deliverance. This is a study in suburban routine and complacency meeting the ugly rural face of chaos. This is the story of the weekend these men had when they didn't play golf.

This is a story that is unsuspectingly brutal, not for the squeamish and certainly not for children. Everyone else should experience it. Whether it turns you off or intrigues your senses, one thing's for sure: DELIVERANCE is a novel that will stay with you long after you finish the journey.

MOST RECOMMENDED; AGES 17 & UP

This remarkable book was James Dickey's first novel. The story is familiar to everyone who has seen the John Boorman-directed movie for which Dickey wrote the screenplay. I reread this recently after reading it over a decade ago and was stuck by how little action there actually is this the quintessential adventure story. Much of the novel is Ed Gentry's inner monologue. He thinks about his life and his dissatisfaction with his job. The canoe trip of this story is taken at the instigation of Lewis Medlock, the character played in the movie by Burt Reynolds. Ed regards it almost as a chore to be endured in order to please his friend. He goes through the motions without any passion until placed in a kill or be killed life threatening situation. You could say that Ed's ordeal is a rite of manhood. Despite being a man in his late thirties, he has not yet proved his own worth to himself. Like a manchild of a primitive tribe, he is sent out into the wilderness and must survive by his owns wits and courage or die trying.

When four "typical" suburban businessmen decide to canoe down a river in the wilderness of northern Georgia, they are unprepared for any of the disasters which await them. Inexperienced as canoeists, overloaded with beer and supplies, and ignorant of both the river and the mountains, they all have romantic visions of meeting some self-imposed test of manhood, of shooting a deer with bow and arrow and feeding themselves, of becoming one with the pristine environment, and of emerging from the experience "fulfilled" as men. Instead, they discover hostile country men, whom they refer to as "rednecks," who prove to be even more treacherous than the sheer faces of the cliffs along the river, the river's rocks and currents, and the dense, almost impenetrable, woods.

Poet James Dickey combines his ability to create vibrant descriptions of the natural world with his equally sensitive awareness of the need for city people to get closer to their roots. While sympathetic and understanding toward these suburbanites and their "mission," he is also careful to show their ignorance and their casual arrogance, both toward the natural elements and toward the mountain dwellers for whom this wilderness represents the whole world. As the journey on the river begins, Dickey's romantic descriptions parallel the buoyant spirits of the canoeists, and as disasters begin to strike, his descriptions become darker, reflecting ominous events ahead.

When two mountain dwellers attack the four suburbanites in scenes which are by now infamous from the film, Dickey's minute descriptions of the most devastating aspects of these events add power to the story--one cannot simply close one's eyes to the worst of the horrors which destroy one canoeist's innocence forever. As main character/narrator Ed Gentry recreates this and succeeding events, the fact that he is a very "ordinary" man, who also reflects the responses of his readers, creates an additional bond of sympathy between the reader and the characters.

The practical and ethical dilemmas the men face at the end of the novel put the conflict between the "civilized" life of the city and the "natural" life of the wild into new perspective, reflecting the long-term effects of this test of "manhood." Appealing for its action, the intensity of its themes, the reality of its descriptions of nature, and the questions raised by its ending, Dickey's novel has become a standard of the man-against-nature genre. n Mary Whipple

Incredible book, written with such poetic language that any reader could fall into the novel and miss most of the content. Must read more than once to get everything worth while. I think the one of the most important ideas of Deliverance is that of the American Dream. Lewis' dream was to battle the wilderness. What happens, though, when you have an opportunity to accomplish that dream? What is reality, and how does one react when their dream turns into a nightmare? My favorite picture in the novel, though, is on the theme of man vs. nature. The incredible sight of the river holding Drew up against the rocks, eyes and mouth open, as if displaying him like we display our deer on the den wall. Nature had won, their dream was most certainly flawed, and reality was that they were just men, and even with the advancement of technology, we cannot totally overcome nature.

Most of us are very familiar with the movie of the same title, which rightly stands as an early 1970's classic. Both the screenplay of the film and this powerful novel were written by James Dickey, which promised for me that the novel and film would not deviate too far from one another. That is true, but the book carries some treasure and power that the film, by its very nature, cannot convey. Much of this is in the evolution of the main characters as described in the first person by one of the characters, and in his descriptions of the vast and unforgiving woods that surround the four main characters, businessmen set out for a weekend of canoeing, hunting and wrestling with nature. They anticipate campfires, guitar playing, steaks, beer and deer. Instead they are set upon by both the river and its primal people - or at least two of its animalistic inhabitants.

What follows reads like a fable; a struggle between man and beast (in the form of the mountain men who meddle with them), and man and his instincts for survival and self-preservation, mostly in the person of Ed Gentry, who becomes the man he always wanted to be, supplanting even his hero and best friend, Lewis Medlock, in the game of survival. The two other men of the foursome fade into obscurity - one at the bottom of the river (later turned into a dam in a sweeping symbol of man's conquering of the harsh environment); the other, the one who suffered much at the hands of the mountain men, beset by a kind of lesser species degeneration, his usefulness having expired about halfway into the story, and now seen with disdain, even hatred, by his former friend, Ed.

This is a book not for the squeamish or sensitive. It gets at the heart of man's visions about himself, and how one deals with the joint feelings of overcoming and survival while wrestling with a guilty conscience and a kind of closing up within himself. It is a powerful story and terrifying at its core.

No need to repeat a plot summary of Dickey's modern classic. The story is well-known due to the popular 1972 film adaptation. What truly makes this book a powerful and shattering read is Dickey's command of the language - a poetic narrative concerning four naive city dwellers confronted with the harsh realities of unforgiving wilderness and the sadism of evil men.

Dickey, using simple yet evocative prose, finds meaning, beauty, and emotional resonance in some of the most banal details of the journey. His protagonist, Ed Gentry, provides us with the thoughts and feelings of a man way over his head in a dire situation: chaotic, confused, but often transcendent. It is said that having a life-threatening experience can bring forth clarity, heightened awareness, and a greater appreciation of the beauty in the world. Ed's ordeal brings out much of this as well as the cold unforgiving side of his survival instinct.

The scene where Ed methodically prepares to kill their assailant with a hunting bow is one of the most harrowing and emotionally conflicted passages that I have read in recent memory. What would it be like to plan the death of another human - not out of rage or malice, but out of necessity because one's own survival depended on it. I have to imagine that Dickey got fairly close to reality.

As one who has hiked and paddled the area that was the novel's inspiration, I do have one bone to pick with Mr. Dickey. His portrayal of the people who live in the Appalachian foothills, amplified in John Boorman's film, is a hurtful slander. To this day, mentioning the book or the film while in the company of those who live in and around the Chattooga River will provoke looks of scorn and ill will. I have no doubt that ignorant and violent people have lived there. But anyone residing in a major metropolitan area need not drive very far from their home to find the same. In general, the people residing in the Southern Appalachians are, like those residing in most places, good, decent folk. Dickey would have done better not playing into, or even creating, negative stereotypes.

I had no clue as to what the movie was about until I rented it three months ago. From poet to novelist to screenwriter must not have been a difficult transition for Dickey, who sharpened and intensified the events of his book into razor-edged sledgehammer blows on the screen.

The book, which I read in a single breathless afternoon, is mixed differently, to use a music-studio term. Dickey leaves more to the imagination, especially in the classic scene of Bobby and Ed's encounter with the "natives." The violence lasts for only half a page, while on screen it seems to last forever. Neither rendering is better than the other; I was stuck (equally and brutally) by Dickey's ability to force the image upon reader and viewer alike in print and live action.

As for the quality of the writing, no one can touch Dickey in this genre. I found myself reading paragraphs repeatedly, not to understand them, but to mine them for all their emotional significance, to make sure I was getting the full effect. With few exceptions, this was a rewarding task.

Above all, Dickey's gift as I see it was his descriptive technique. Ironically, and at the risk of offending people, his writing reminds me of the savagery of the mountain men and the impersonal, deadly, heavily nuanced beauty of the river. He grabs the reader, has his way, and we are not the same after. If you don't mind being treated that way in the abstract, you'll love the book. If not, you won't miss anything. I think I'll go read it again.

a spell-binding book, much better than the movie. I was particularly enthralled by the character development. The description of Ed as he visually tracked the killer from his treetop perch, with fully drawn bow, the target framed within a frame, waiting for the right release moment is particularly memorable with its detail. The other main character Lewis is similarly developed by a wealth of descriptive detail that is a joy to read. These are ordinary people you can identify with from your own life, yet they are tempered by the extraordinary events they experienced on this canoe adventure. It left me with a desire to read more of Dickey's works. Unfortunately there is only one other novel that I know about.