City-dwellers and Hillbillies:
An analysis of the cultural divide in James Dickey’s Deliverance James Dickey’s classic novel, Deliverance, details the troubles that befall four suburbanites on a camping trip along an unfamiliar, unfriendly river. During their trip, the friends have several encounters with locals — “hillbillies.” Lewis, Ed, Bobby and Drew — city-dwellers and proud of it — make the assumption that these natives of the Appalachian Mountains are less intelligent for having been raised in the uncivilized wilderness. Although Ed subscribes to this cultural assumption, his encounters with the so-called hillbillies prove him wrong he emerges from their experiences with a less superior outlook. On the river, Bobby and Ed encounter two such hillbillies after becoming separated from Drew and Lewis. Ed wonders at first if the pair might be bootleggers or escaped convicts …show more content…
I’ll still stay with the city,” (42). But after his experiences on the river, he would not have the same response. He has witnessed the intelligence, humanity and grit of the hillbillies and that has changed his outlook of them and himself — he has been knocked down a peg. His change of perspective is evident in Dickey's writing in the final part of the novel, ‘After.' Ed, Bobby, and Lewis interact with a number of Appalachian natives in Aintry, but no longer do they consider them derogatorily as they did the townsfolk of Oree. In Oree, Ed thought, “Everything in Oree was sleepy and hookwormy and ugly, and most of all, inconsequential. Nobody worth a damn could ever come from such a place” (47). Ed does not make such comments about Aintry or Aintry’s residents — on their teeth or the color of their skin or their demeanor. Though the locals’ colloquialisms and dialect remain, there is no longer an emphasis because Ed perceives it differently, it no longer sticks out like a sore thumb. This is characteristic of their changed
An analysis of the cultural divide in James Dickey’s Deliverance James Dickey’s classic novel, Deliverance, details the troubles that befall four suburbanites on a camping trip along an unfamiliar, unfriendly river. During their trip, the friends have several encounters with locals — “hillbillies.” Lewis, Ed, Bobby and Drew — city-dwellers and proud of it — make the assumption that these natives of the Appalachian Mountains are less intelligent for having been raised in the uncivilized wilderness. Although Ed subscribes to this cultural assumption, his encounters with the so-called hillbillies prove him wrong he emerges from their experiences with a less superior outlook. On the river, Bobby and Ed encounter two such hillbillies after becoming separated from Drew and Lewis. Ed wonders at first if the pair might be bootleggers or escaped convicts …show more content…
I’ll still stay with the city,” (42). But after his experiences on the river, he would not have the same response. He has witnessed the intelligence, humanity and grit of the hillbillies and that has changed his outlook of them and himself — he has been knocked down a peg. His change of perspective is evident in Dickey's writing in the final part of the novel, ‘After.' Ed, Bobby, and Lewis interact with a number of Appalachian natives in Aintry, but no longer do they consider them derogatorily as they did the townsfolk of Oree. In Oree, Ed thought, “Everything in Oree was sleepy and hookwormy and ugly, and most of all, inconsequential. Nobody worth a damn could ever come from such a place” (47). Ed does not make such comments about Aintry or Aintry’s residents — on their teeth or the color of their skin or their demeanor. Though the locals’ colloquialisms and dialect remain, there is no longer an emphasis because Ed perceives it differently, it no longer sticks out like a sore thumb. This is characteristic of their changed