Title: James Dickey's Deliverance: The Ritual of Art
Abstract: James Dickey once said: For all readers ... almost all poetry contains elements that are suspect, having no relation to what readers believe in as `reality,' and even degrading it by offering experience as series of unbelievable contrivances none of which has power of bringing forth genuine response. (1) Perhaps this is why first novel is an adventure story, sort of contrivance we most readily accept and to which we most readily respond. He has chosen to deal with tradition which goes back at least as far as J. F. Cooper in American literature. It is tradition whose subject is hunt, but whose real theme is killing; perhaps, as D. H. Lawrence saw it, ritual murder. Lawrence wrote: essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and killer. (2) Dickey explores subject without proving him wrong. Cooper's Deerslayer turns naturally from prey which gave him name to human game, as does Ed, hero of Deliverance. Both are men of integrity; neither kills without reason, yet both must kill to live. Dickey's novel is more than an initiation into art of killing, however. It is also an exploration of process of creation. This is suggested throughout book by references to harmony, relation, and perspective of artist. The reader is not only engaged in struggle for survival presented, he is also involved in an exploration of genesis of art; novel itself is both treatise on and an example of act of creation. We may therefore examine fashion in which Dickey approaches this important element of book. The plot is simple. Four amateur adventurers pit themselves against elemental forces and primitive men in bow hunting trip down an uncharted river in northern Georgia. They leave behind security of suburbs to be brutally assaulted by two mountain men, one of whom is killed after he subjects member of party to humiliating sexual attack. The survivor stalks four and succeeds in murdering one man before he himself is hunted and killed. The action takes place on river which is to be dammed; all evidence of events recorded by novel will be eradicated; they will be further concealed by participants out of fear of legal entanglements. They will exist ultimately in mind of narrator, who learns river's lesson in delayed passage to manhood. The experience is finally private, personal, and intellectual. The rite of passage traditionally involves an immersion into death, from which one emerges to face life in new way. At times ritual involves killing of man. (3) Out of chaos come order and harmony through pattern prescribed by ritual. The ritual of Deliverance, however, is communally shared only through medium of novel itself; it must, in fact, be hidden. This is not unusual to American literature. Indeed, Huck Finn's passage sent him to hell according to lights and could have sent him to jail according to lights of community. Billy Budd's ritual murder is disguised in public press. In Deliverance too we deal with secret ceremony; ceremony which takes place in dream state, state unrelated to ordinary life, but not without significance. Its vision fashions what waking life will be. Though it is wilderness which presents final insight into art, even in town, in what is called the sleep of mild people, there are elements of creativity. (4) These are largely mechanical, however, and bring artist or observer into no intimate relation to subject. Ed calls himself a mechanic of graphic arts (26); he can deal with art only in mechanical terms which he opposes to inspiration. What he seeks, however, is more intimate relation. After decision to make canoe trip, in office he feels a powerful sense of being in place he had created. He thinks of employees as being in some way his own (17). What he looks for in women is the spark, absolutely personal connection, (26) and something beyond mechanism of kind of professional art he practices and of daily life is hinted at by promise of another life, deliverance, (28) which he experiences during intercourse with wife before he embarks on expedition. …
Publication Year: 1974
Publication Date: 1974-03-22
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 4
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