Deliverance

After reading Deliverance, I now have a clear understanding as to why Chudzie wanted to read something light and funny first. Deliverance was written in 1970 by James Dickey, who is more known for his poetry than his novels. The novel appeared on all of the various "top 100" lists that we had compared, so the five us quickly realized it was going to be inevitable that we were going to have to read it.

I actually had no clue that Deliverance was made into a movie in 1972, which stared Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty. Deliverance is also the movie with the infamous line "I bet you can squeal like a pig. Weeeeee!"


The story takes place in the wilderness, when four men (Bobby, Ed, Drew, and Lewis) go on a canoe trip down a river in the middle of a town filled with stereotypical hillbillies and mountain men. The entire story takes place over the course of three days, during which their canoes flip over, one of the men is ass raped by a local, another breaks his leg, and another is shot in the head. The men have to cover up several murders during their journey, as their weekend getaway turns into a battle for survival.

Though it seems like a simple tale of revenge and bravado, the sheer descriptive power of Dickey's writing separates it from generic adventure stories. He evokes a sense of adventure in the reading through his descriptions of the refreshing water spray of the river to the violence of the canoe crashing against rocks through the rapids. There is a downfall to Dickey's intense descriptions, as they are quite lengthy, such as four page description of Ed's analysis of the rocks pressed against his legs. Deliverance shows that great literature and harrowing adventure are not mutually exclusive.