Deliverance | Themes

Deliverance Themes

Strength and Weakness

Lewis is, without a doubt, held up in this novel as an ideal of masculine strength. The narrator describes him as "one of the strongest men I had ever shaken hands with," and repeatedly points out the trials of physical endurance with which he challenges himself. Even more importantly, though, is that he is presented as having the psychological strength to overcome difficulty. His physical strength, as Lewis himself explains it, is just a tool to prepare him for a time he foresees in the near future when society will collapse, when people who rely on their social skills and positions will find themselves unable to survive. "Life is so fucked-up now, and so complicated, that I wouldn't mind if it came down, right quick, to the bare survival of who was ready to survive." One apocryphal story of Lewis's strength is when he broke his leg in the woods...
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