River trip

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River trip (original title: Deliverance , German : Redemption ) is the 1970 debut novel by the American author James Dickey . The novel describes the canoe trip of four city dwellers through a river landscape, which will shortly be sacrificed for the construction of a dam. Their encounter with two locals leads to an act of violence that is quickly followed by others.

The novel is now counted among the literary classics of the 20th century. Time magazine named him one of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. In 1972 the novel was made into a film by John Boorman under the title When everyone dies is the first .

content

The narrator of the plot is the graphic artist Ed Gentry, who wants to spend a weekend with three friends in a canoe down the (fictional) river Cahulawassee in northern Georgia before it is dammed. All four men are middle-aged, Bobby Trippe is an insurance salesman, Drew Ballinger is a manager of a beverage company and Lewis Medlock lives on the income from the real estate he inherited. Lewis is the one among them who has the greatest outdoor experience and dreams of emigrating to New Zealand, South Africa or Uruguay in order to live a life closer to nature. He is also the driving force behind the planned canoe trip. Lewis is the strongest physically among them and is an experienced tournament archer who also persuaded Ed to start archery.

With two canoes they go into the mountains of Georgia. With local auto mechanics, the raw and threatening-looking Griner brothers, they agree that they drive their cars to the (fictional) town of Aintry, where the canoe trip should end in two days. The next morning, Ed's bow and arrow hunt for a deer fails because he loses his nerve. Shortly afterwards they cast off with the canoes. Ed and Bobby share one canoe, Drew and Lewis ride the second.

Later in the day, Ed and Bobby, who paddled way ahead of the others, dock on the bank to wait for their friends. There they are surprised by two men, one of whom is carrying a gun. At gunpoint, they force Ed and Bobby to go deeper into the forest. After they have tied Ed to a tree, one of the two men raped Bobby anally. When they tried to force Ed to satisfy the other man with his mouth, Lewis, who had come unnoticed, shot one of the two men with a bow and arrow, the other escaped in The forest.

Ed, Bobby, Lewis and Drews disagree on what to do with the body. Lewis wants to bury them and explains that they don't have a fair chance in a local court process in which people from the dead person's vicinity will make the jury. Drew wants to hand the body over to the Aintry police. Humiliated and traumatized Bobby, who abuses the corpse, joins Lewis' suggestion because he does not want the fact of his rape to be widely known. Drew tries to convince Ed of his opinion, but Ed eventually supports Lewis' suggestion. The men bury the body and continue their canoe trip because this is their only way to leave the river valley. In the evening they reach rapids. While driving through the rapids, both boats capsize, one of the two canoes breaks. Lewis breaks his leg while being swept away by the water. Drew, who apparently does the same thing, does not emerge from the water again and Lewis is certain that he was shot from the steep bank the moment they were in the middle of the rapids. Ed is less sure about this, but he realizes that their lives are in peril if the second man is above them on the bluff. They have to continue their journey down the river to get to Aintry, but are helplessly exposed to gunfire from up on the river. Ed decides to climb the bluff and, if there's a man up there, kill him.

Ed agrees with Bobby that he and the injured Lewis will continue the journey at dawn. Ed then laboriously climbs the steep bank of the gorge. There he climbs up a tree and waits for the archer, who actually appears in the early morning. Shortly before he spots Ed, Ed shoots him with an arrow. The dying man shoots Ed, who falls out of the tree and drills his own arrow into the side of his body. Ed must first cut the arrow out of the side of his body. Bleeding profusely, he follows the man:

“At the edge of the forest I found the rifle, flat and long and out of place on the pine needles. I left it there and pulled the knife. I was on my knees, losing blood myself wherever I looked for his traces of blood. Once I had to go back and find the trail again because I couldn't tell what was my blood and what was his. "

Ed eventually finds the dead man lying on his stomach, whose hand has clung to the root of a dead tree. He turns him over, but remains unsure whether the dead person is one of the two men who attacked him and Bobby in the forest. Ed pulls the corpse to the edge of the canyon and lets him down to the river with a rope. When he climbs down himself, the rope breaks - Ed only with difficulty manages to jump into the river water, while the face of the corpse is so crushed by the stones on the bank that it is impossible for Bobby to see whether it is the dead man is one of the two men who ambushed her. You cannot rule out that the dead person is another redneck , reacting hostile to their presence, or even just an uninvolved hunter. They weigh down the corpse with stones and sink it into place. Ed also throws the dead man's bow, arrows and rifle into the water and the three of them continue the journey in the canoe.

They find Drew's body under the rapids. He has an injury on his head, which Lewis believes resulted from a grazing shot. They also dump his body in the river, as they cannot allow the body to be examined. A little later they reach Aintry, where they claim that shortly before they reached Aintry they lost their second canoe and their friend. They want to prevent search parties from looking for the missing person at the actual accident site. The day before, however, the remains of their canoe washed up in Aintry, so they have to change their history. In particular, the deputy sheriff, whose brother-in-law has been missing since the weekend, is convinced that Ed, Bobby and Lewis have something to do with his disappearance. But the sheriff lets the men go after the river has been searched for Drew's body in vain. However, he also warns them never to return to the place.

The novel ends with the three survivors returning to their conventional lives. Bobby eventually moves to Hawaii, while Lewis and Ed remain friends. For both of them, their experience on the now lost river has made their conventional life bearable.

The book is dedicated to Edward L. King and Albert Braselton, friends of Dickeys. The novel is preceded by a French quote from the surrealist Georges Bataille and a phrase from Obd 1,3  EU translated into English . The novel is divided into five chapters: Before ; September 14 ; September 15 ; September 16 ; After that .

filming

Burt Reynolds , Ronny Cox , Jon Voight and Ned Beatty played the leading roles in the film adaptation, which closely followed the novel . The film was nominated for an Oscar in 1973 in the categories of Best Editing , Best Director and Best Picture , but it came off empty-handed. The film also went without distinction, despite several nominations, at the British Academy Film Awards and the Golden Globe Awards . He was also nominated for the New York Film Critics Circle Award , the Directors Guild of America Award and the Writers Guild of America Award .

The film is famous for its Dueling Banjos , among other things . Drew plays the guitar while an obviously mentally retarded boy plays the banjo. The musical contest, which also appears in the novel, won the 1974 Grammy Award for best country instrumental piece. The song is based on the melody by Yankee Doodle and was arranged for the film by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandel and was composed in 1955 under the title Feuding Banjos by Arthur Smith and Don Reno .

reception

In a book review in 1971 on the occasion of the publication of the German translation, a review in the news magazine Der Spiegel described the novel as a boozy weekend getaway for four honest men that turns into a catastrophic showdown from which no one escapes unscathed. In addition, the reviewer drew comparisons to Roman Polanski's oeuvre , who supposedly wanted to get into conversation at the time for the film adaptation.

Time Magazine called the novel in its 2005 canon a dangerous thriller that goes into your guts, full of forbidden knowledge, but admitted that it has now been partially eclipsed by the film adaptation.

expenditure

Single receipts

  1. ^ Dickey: Deliverance , eISBN 978-0-307-48370-6. P. 5
  2. ^ Dickey: Deliverance , eISBN 978-0-307-48370-6. P. 97
  3. ^ Dickey: Deliverance , eISBN 978-0-307-48370-6. P. 114
  4. ^ Dickey: Deliverance , eISBN 978-0-307-48370-6. P. 192
  5. ^ Dickey: Deliverance , eISBN 978-0-307-48370-6. P. 196f. The original quote is: At the edge of the woods I found the rifle, flat and long and out of place on the pine needles. I left it there, and drew the knife. I was on my knees, bleeding wherever I looked for his blood. Once I had to go back and try to pick up the trail again, for I could not tell which was my blood and which was his.
  6. ^ Dickey: Deliverance , eISBN 978-0-307-48370-6. P. 209.
  7. ^ Albert B. Braselton papers , at Emory University
  8. ↑ Complicated life. In: Der Spiegel 13/1971. Retrieved July 28, 2014 .
  9. ^ Lev Grossman: Deliverance. Time , January 7, 2010, accessed on July 28, 2014 (English): "Though it's been partially eclipsed by the movie version [...] the original Deliverance is a visceral, dangerous thriller packed with forbidden knowledge."