SOURCE: Thompson, Terry. “Cahulawassee: The Bend Sinister River in Deliverance.” English Language Notes 36, no. 2 (December 1998): 44-8.

In the following essay, Thompson considers the “heraldic symbolism” found in Dickey's Deliverance.

Originally published in 1970, Deliverance, James Dickey's first and most popular novel, has been much lauded for its poetic description of nature and for its vivid narration of a harrowing canoe trip down a wild Georgia river by four would-be outdoorsmen from Atlanta whose adventurous weekend getaway quickly turns into a bloody nightmare once they discover “the primordial dangers of the river.”¹ Their overly romanticized view of nature—and what might lurk in it—is shattered by their encounter with human savagery and depravity, including torture, rape, and murder. The naive quartet of urban Nimrods learn through blood trial that, as D. H. Lawrence once argued, “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.”²

Although lambasted in...