Moral Spheres in the Classic

¶ … Moral Spheres

In the classic American film Deliverance, director John Boorman brings the audience and the film's main characters away from the comforts of city life and suburbia and into a rural underworld where the values and necessary skills for survival are very different. At the beginning of the movie, four friends from Atlanta's suburbs believe they are heading for a simple canoeing vacation on the Georgia-South Carolina border - a few days enjoying the simple pleasures of nature - but what they find is a world infinitely more complex, where their knowledge and sense of reason is no longer applicable.

In the dueling banjo scene early in the movie, which is one of the movie's most famous scenes, Drew's remark that he is having trouble keeping up is a powerful harbinger for the struggles in the backwoods society that will plague the main characters for the rest of the movie. At the end of the dueling banjo scene, as Bobby tries to approach the boy, who appears to be inbred, the boy turns away in disgust. The message here seems to be that they may speak the same language and enjoy the same music, but that there is a wall of distrust and animosity that stands between city people and their rural counterparts. Not surprisingly, shortly after they begin their trip the men become lost, both physically and metaphorically - they have entered a world they do not understand and where their values and sense of judgment are now out of place.

Naturally, the greatest expression of that animosity between country and city people occurs when Bobby and Ed become separated during the river trip and are taken hostage by the two mountain men. Bobby's and Ed's attempts to reason with the men, like they might with men in the city, are futile, as the mountain men clearly do not share the same values or sense of logic. These rural men are in the market for something more base and animalistic, such as the needs to sexually gratify themselves and to kill.

This scene seems intended to show the complete collapse of the moral values that the four main characters had brought with them into Georgia's backwoods. As Bobby undergoes a brutal rape, he is forced to squeal like a pig - an expression of the animal he is being treated as. He is metaphorically sinking into a more animalistic nature. That moral collapse comes to fruition when Lewis kills one of Bobby's and Ed's captors and the men decide to not call the police and to simply bury the body themselves. Such a move may have been unthinkable at the start of the trip, but now the men must think about their survival, both in terms of staying alive and staying out of jail. So, symbolically, Bobby is forced to the ground and treated like an animal, and when he rises he, and the group, have accepted this new animalistic nature.

All, of course, except Drew. Drew is the last moral holdout among the group, arguing that the men should not bury the slain attacker and should do the right thing and go to the police. He is a voice of peace and reason, and when he eventually falls from the boat into the water (presumably shot), it signifies the final moral collapse of the group. Not long after, Ed kills the second mountain man who the group believes is stalking them. In the cases of both the mountain man and Drew, the men weigh down the bodies so they will never resurface - in the case of Drew, the action is symbolic in that it shows the men's former sense of morality will never be resurrected. Surviving in the backwoods has required them to abandon their values, which shows how strong the distinction is between the two societies.

Throughout the movie, Lewis serves almost as an escort for the other characters into a different moral space. He reminds the men, from the beginning of the movie, that the laws of nature are different than the laws of man, and that the laws of nature are supreme in this wilderness environment. He fancies himself a survivalist, which is a role that none of the other characters claim. And, in fact, it is Lewis who ushers the men further away from their more civilized sensibilities - first by shooting one of the attackers, and then by suggesting they bury the body. The men begin to adopt Lewis' survival-of-the-fittest mentality, which is most evident when Ed kills the mountain man and when Ed and Bobby take the lead in deciding to sink Drew's body.