Deliverance

James Dickey’s 1970 novel Deliverance explores themes of masculinity, the relationship between images and reality, and ideas about civilization and nature through the experience of four urban men on a canoe trip gone awry. Dickey, an influential American poet and novelist, was born in 1923 in Atlanta, Georgia. His poetry is known for its vivid imagery and exploration of nature and the human condition. Before turning to writing full time, Dickey served in World War II and the Korean War—experiences that influenced Deliverance and its themes of masculinity and violence. His accolades include the National Book Award for Poetry in 1966 for his collection Buckdancer’s Choice. Dickey’s career spanned various roles, including serving as a consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now known as the US Poet Laureate. Although he was primarily a poet, Deliverance stands out as his most famous work, later adapted into a critically acclaimed 1972 film for which Dickey wrote the screenplay.

This guide is based on the Mariner Classics paperback edition of the novel, published in 2023.

Content Warning: Deliverance contains graphic scenes of violence, sexual assault, and rape. Additionally, the source material uses offensive terms for rural and disabled people, which are replicated in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material.

Plot Summary

Deliverance is divided into five sections that focus on events before, during, and after four friends take a canoeing trip down the fictional Cahulawassee river in remote northern Georgia. The “Before” section begins with the observations of the narrator, Ed Gentry. He is a graphic artist living in a large city in Georgia (unnamed, but most likely modeled on Atlanta) and is bored with the routines of his comfortable, middle-class life. Ed and his friends Lewis Medlock, Drew Ballinger, and Bobby Trippe are gathered at a bar, where they decide to take a canoe trip on the Cahulawassee before it is dammed. The journey is proposed by Lewis, who is an outdoor enthusiast and the leader of the group. Ed agrees to go because he admires Lewis for his vitality and energy and sees the trip as an opportunity to break away from middle-aged complacency. He decides to bring his bow and arrows on the trip. Drew, a soft-spoken and thoughtful manager for a soft drink company, says that he will go but wants to bring his guitar. Bobby, an insurance salesperson, is the least physically fit of the men but agrees to go if he can bring along some of the comforts of life—specifically, liquor.

At work, Ed observes the different types of people in the office and feels a sense of ownership over them. He then oversees a photo shoot that his design firm has been hired to complete for a line of women’s underwear. Ed looks into the gray eyes of the young model in the photo and sees a peculiar tan slice of color in her left eye that strikes him as particularly powerful and memorable.

Part 2, “September 14th,” begins with Ed waking next to his wife, Martha, early in the morning on the first day of the trip. Lewis arrives to pick up Ed, and they leave for the river. On the way out of town, they meet Bobby and Drew in their car, atop which is strapped an old canoe that looks inadequate for the potentially rough river waters. Bobby and Drew follow Lewis and Ed onto the freeway.

The four men meet in the town of Oree, where they plan to begin their trip. They stop at a small country store to buy supplies and to hire someone to drive the cars downriver so that they will be there when the journey  is finished. At the store, they meet a boy whose eyes look off in different directions. The boy plays his banjo in a duet with Drew on guitar. An old man at the gas station says that there is a garage nearby and that the brothers who own it might drive the two cars to Aintry, the men’s destination.

Lewis, Ed, Bobby, and Drew go to the Griner Brothers’ Garage, where Lewis offers one of the brothers $20 to drive the cars. Eventually, the Griner brother accepts an offer of $40 to drive the cars. Lewis, Ed, Bobby, and Drew, along with the Griner brothers and another man in a pickup truck, eventually arrive at the river. The water is calm as the canoeists begin their journey, and after a while, the men stop for the night. They eat dinner and go to sleep in their tents.

Part 3, “September 15th,” begins with Ed going out into the forest before the others are awake. He sees a deer and shoots at it twice, missing his shots. Ed returns to camp, and the men load their gear into the canoes. Ed and Bobby ride together, and Ed discovers that Bobby is not a skillful paddler. Ed worries that their canoe is too laden with gear and may overturn if they hit difficult rapids. He signals Lewis and Drew to pull their canoe over to the bank, and Lewis takes some of the gear and supplies from Ed and Bobby’s canoe. After a swim, Ed and Bobby take the lead in their canoe and gain about half a mile on Lewis and Drew.

Ed and Bobby stop to rest on the shore, and two men with a shotgun come out of the woods. After a tense exchange with Ed and Bobby, the two strangers force Bobby and Ed into the woods at gunpoint. They bind Ed to a tree, and the older man rapes Bobby. The other man is about to rape Ed when Lewis shoots the man with an arrow. The other attacker runs off into the woods. Ed, Bobby, Lewis, and Drew debate what to do with the dead man’s corpse, eventually taking it into the woods and burying it in an isolated place.

The men resume their canoe trip and hit some rapids. Something happens to Drew that causes him to drop his paddle and fall into the water, turning the boat over. After falling from the canoe, Ed resurfaces downstream. He finds Bobby and Lewis in the water. Lewis has a broken leg, and Drew has disappeared. Lewis believes that Drew was shot. The three men think the man who killed him may be on a hill above the river waiting to shoot them. Ed climbs the cliff to kill the shooter.

Part 4, “September 16th,” begins with Ed resting in a rock crevice. At the top of the cliff, Ed looks for a place from which someone could shoot down at the river. He climbs up a nearby tree and waits. A man with a shotgun comes along. Ed is uncertain whether it is the man who was going to rape him, but when the man sees him, Ed kills him with an arrow. Ed falls from the tree, lands on the point of the other arrow, and passes out. He wakes up and cuts the arrow out of his side. He follows the trail of blood to where the man went to die. After finding the body, he lowers it and then himself down from the top of the gorge with a rope. He and Bobby tie rocks to the body and drop it in the river.

The three men travel downriver and find Drew’s floating corpse. Ed and Bobby are uncertain whether the wound on his head is a mark from a gunshot or a gash from the rocks. They drag Drew’s body to the remaining canoe to show it to Lewis. Though in a semi-conscious state because of his broken leg, Lewis recognizes the mark is from a bullet. The men discuss what to do about Drew’s body. Worried about what the authorities will say, they decide to sink his body in the river with rocks. They agree to say that Drew fell out of the canoe some distance away from the actual location of Drew’s body.

When the river passes a road, the men stop the canoe. Ed walks up the road until he finds a gas station. An attendant calls an ambulance, which takes Ed and Lewis to the hospital in Aintry after a highway patrolman briefly questions them. At the hospital, a doctor sews up the wound in Ed’s side and then drives him to their cars, which the Griner brothers brought to Aintry.

Part 5, “After,” begins with the sheriff’s department raising some questions about the men’s story: Bobby told them that Drew had fallen out of the second canoe, but that canoe was found upstream from where they said Drew was lost. Ed and Bobby return to the river with the sheriffs to identify where Drew may have died. A hostile sheriff’s deputy named Mr. Queen says that his sister’s husband went hunting in the woods in the area where the men were canoeing and that he never came home. The deputy thinks Ed and his friends had something to do with the man’s disappearance, but the sheriff does not take the deputy seriously. Mr. Bullard, one of the sheriffs, permits Ed and Bobby to leave.

Once home, Ed is reluctant to tell his wife what happened, but the couple goes together to break the news about Drew’s death to his wife. In the years that follow, Ed dreams about the river, now dammed up to form Lake Cahula. Bobby leaves town, but Ed and Lewis remain friends.