Deliverance

Part 4 begins with the novel’s climax: Ed’s hunt for the man who Lewis alleges shot Drew and who Ed suspects may have attempted to assault him. The hunt sets Ed on a new narrative path and suggests that the masculinity that Ed perceives Lewis as exuding has been transferred to Ed, who takes the leadership role as the group tries to return to civilization.

The motif of sexuality develops themes of Conflicting Ideals of Masculinity and The Conflict Between Humanity and Nature during the hunting scene. Just as when Ed made love with his wife Martha, his “union” with the rock occurs before dawn. He moves up the rock with “intimate” movements of his body—movements he thinks he has never used with any “human woman.” The moment pulls Ed in various conflicting directions. Ed re-asserts his heterosexuality—threatened by both the assault and the homosocial bonding of the trip itself—by identifying the rock with a woman, but he also experiences a primal form of sexuality unlike anything in the “civilized” world. The desire to connect with this side of himself is part of why he undertook the trip, but in this moment, he also tries to separate himself from the natural world into which he feels himself slipping; he clings, in his own words, to “the human.”

Similar ideas and images animate Ed’s actual stalking and killing of the man. Ed makes a partial transformation into a predatory animal, becoming part of the natural world himself. He imagines the man he is hunting in terms that are manifestly sexual—i.e., wondering what might have happened had Lewis not come upon the scene when the younger man attempted to attack him in the woods. However, the fact that he also wonders whether the man is an “escaped convict,” a “dirt farmer out hunting,” or a “bootlegger” highlights that the episode is at least as much about power as it about sex (164). More specifically, Ed seeks to reassert middle-class power over nature and the rural lower classes after being at the mercy of both. “If he lay down with his back to me, I would shoot,” Ed thinks (172). However, the fantasy does not hold up; it begins to collapse when the hunted man, who is armed with a gun, fails to take up the prone (and sexualized) position. When the man sees him, Ed is forced Ed to make his shot then and there, injuring himself in the process. The arrow pierces the mountaineer’s throat and not his back, symbolically silencing but not yet killing the man. Ed then cuts the arrow from his side using his knife in a scene whose action suggests the use of a knife to threaten Ed during the assault, further blurring the lines between hunter and hunted. That scene is further recalled when the injured and bleeding Ed begins to hunt for the man: He becomes the “dog” that the woodsman referred to him as, crawling on his hands and knees and seeing, smelling, and feeling the other man’s blood. Even his final “victory” is incomplete, as he remains unsure of the man’s identity after finding his body.

The discovery of Drew’s body only heightens the ambiguity. Lewis’s pronouncement that Drew was “grazed” is not a final confirmation of anything. Ed, realizing that he may not only have killed an innocent man for assaulting him but also for Drew’s death, says to Bobby, “[W]e can’t have anyone examining him” (201). The morality of the situation remains murky and takes a backseat to survival.

Following the climax, the natural world itself becomes less menacing, anticipating the men’s return to civilization. The men float on the now calm river into rural farmland, a stepping stone on the way back to urban life. An ambulance arrives, Lewis is taken in to the hospital, and Ed’s injuries are treated, emphasizing the return to civilization and the apparent triumph of man and medicine over nature and death.

Ed and Bobby wake up in the boardinghouse the morning after the trip, while Lewis remains in the hospital. The sheriff’s department raises some questions about their story: Bobby told them that Drew fell out of the “green canoe,” but that canoe was found upstream from where Drew was supposedly lost. Ed and Bobby decide to say that the green canoe overturned before Drew fell into the river and that Lewis was injured when the green canoe initially tipped over. The group then all loaded into one canoe carrying too much gear, plus the injured Lewis. They further decide to tell the sheriff that the four men in one canoe hit rough rapids and lost control of the boat, which was when Drew fell overboard.

Bobby worries that he will be questioned separately from Ed and will not be able to keep his story straight. Ed tells Bobby he doesn’t think anyone was listening to Bobby’s version of events when he spoke to the local law officer after their rescue. Bobby agrees with this, and Ed further reassures him by reminding him how difficult it would be to search the river; motorized boats could not make it up the rapids, and it would take too much time and effort to scale the cliff down to the river. After some worry that Bobby’s room could be bugged, Ed and Bobby part ways having agreed on their story.

Ed and Bobby go to the hospital, where they find three highway patrol officers and a semi-conscious Lewis. Ed asks the officers whether they have had a chance to question Lewis, and they say no. Lewis regains consciousness slowly, with Ed standing right next to him so that the officers cannot see Ed exchanging a wink with Lewis that signifies their agreement on the story Ed will lead Lewis in telling. Lewis seems only somewhat coherent and claims he mainly remembers the rough water and Ed telling him that Drew was dead. Ed “reminds Lewis that Drew died when the overladen boat tumbled over in the rapids. He then says that Lewis was injured when the green canoe was lost further up the river—a detail Ed emphasizes for the police officers through his emphasis on the word “upriver.” Lewis agrees that this is what happened and that he couldn’t see anything due to his injury and all the water spray.

The patrolmen ask Ed and Bobby to go with them. They ride in separate patrol cars back to the river. After an hour of slow driving, they reach the rapids and the yellow tree where Ed and Bobby say Drew was lost. One of the sheriff’s deputies, Mr. Queen, is very hostile. It turns out that this deputy’s sister told him that her husband went hunting in the area where the men were canoeing and never came home. The deputy is certain that they had something to do with his brother-in-law’s disappearance, but the sheriff, Mr. Bullard, does not take him seriously. Ed argues with Deputy Queen, challenging him to find some evidence or to leave them alone. Sheriff Bullard permits Ed and Bobby to leave.

On the day Ed and Bobby leave for home, Sheriff Bullard and Deputy Queen question Ed and Bobby once last time. Although Deputy Queen does not believe the story Ed tells about the events on the river, Sheriff Bullard does. Ed lashes out angrily at Deputy Queen for his suspicions, and Sheriff Bullard finally silences Queen. Bullard says that Ed and Bobby have been through an enormous physical and mental trial and suggests that without Ed’s help, the whole group would have perished. Bullard tells Ed to leave town and never come back, and Ed assures him that he won’t.

Ed and Bobby retrieve the remaining canoe, which local children are playing in. They see men wandering in the woods on the opposite shore of the river and become concerned. Ed asks the children what the men are doing in the woods, and one responds that they are digging up graves to rebury the bodies elsewhere because the cemetery will be flooded by the dam.

Ed and Bobby leave in separate cars and return to the city.

When Ed returns to his home, Martha asks what happened. Ed says he can’t tell her the whole story. She is very understanding, helping him redress his wound, and she goes with him to break the news of 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.