Imagery in the
Georgia Wilderness
Some say
the devil is in the details, but when it comes to imagery, I say the
‘difference’ is in the details. Imagine
a picnic scene. Vivid, sensory
descriptions are all that stand between a Monet-esque
afternoon, and the third circle of Dante’s hell. On one hand we have gently swaying ash trees,
rolling grasses, polished silver with scalloped edges, and starched, white
doilies; on the other we have a threadbare blanket, an overcast sky, enormous
deep-fried turkey legs, an ant army descending upon a glob of jelly, and greasy
fingers digging into the basket for more.
Could very well be the same picnic, but the images give us vastly
different impressions. These
descriptions not only color our perceptions of scenes, they give us a deeper
understanding of the novel as a whole, particularly its theme.
In the
novel, Deliverance, James Dickey reinforces the Darwinian theme –
survival of the fittest, or, you have to adapt or you die – through his use of
sensory and emotional imagery. Janet
Burroway tells us in her book, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, “... if you are to
realize your characters through detail, then you must be careful to select the
details that convey the characteristics essential to our understanding. You can’t convey a whole person, or a whole
action, or everything there is to be conveyed about a single moment of a single
day. You must select the significant”
(Burroway 78). This goes back to the imaginary
picnic. If the theme is ‘rich people are
slobs and pigs on the inside’ wouldn’t it be better to use the latter
description over the former? Of course
that depends on the context of the rest of the novel. Looking at Deliverance, which is a
story about survival at great physical and emotional costs, it would be strange
if the narrator, Ed, who happens to be a novice hunter, only noticed fluffy
tails, wiggling noses, and cute features when encountering animals. Those details have a time and place, but not
in this novel. The imagery in the
following passage is what separates Dickey from Disney.
“In the middle of this sound the
tent shook; the owl had hold of it in the same place. I knew this before I but the light on – it
was still in my hand, exactly as warm as I was – and saw the feet with the heel
talons now also coming in. I pulled one
hand out of the sleeping bag and saw it wander frailly up through the thin
light until a finger touched the cold reptilian nail of one talon below the
leg-scales. I had no idea of whether the
owl felt me; I thought perhaps it would fly, but it didn’t. Instead, it shifted its weight again, and the
claws on the foot I was touching loosened for a second. I slipped my forefinger between the claw and
the tent, and half around the stony toe.
The claw tightened; the strength had something nervous and tentative
about it. It tightened more, very
strongly but not painfully. I pulled
back until the hand came away, and this time the owl took off.
All night the owl kept coming back
to hunt from the top of the tent. I not
only saw his feet when he came to us; I imagined what he was doing while he was
gone, floating through the trees, seeing everything. I hunted with him as well as I could, there
in my weightlessness. The woods burned
in my head. Toward morning I could reach
up and touch the claw without turning on the light” (Dickey 89).
Nothing is
fluffy or friendly about this owl.
Dickey uses words like ‘reptilian,’ ‘stony,’ ‘claw,’ and ‘scales’ to
describe an animal that, in a different setting, might be considered cute. The image Dickey creates is that of a fit and
efficient hunter, everything that Ed wants to be, and, in the end, is forced to
become. In On Becoming a Novelist
by John Gardner, the author says that “... the writer who works closely with
detail – studying his characters’ most trivial gestures in the imagined scene
to discover exactly where the scene must go next – is the writer most likely to
persuade and awe us” (Gardner 37). So
much happens in this small scene where Ed touches the owl. Through his “most trivial gestures” we
understand, or have an idea, of what has to happen next. Already we see Ed adapting himself for
survival: “I hunted with him as well as I could,” and, “I could reach up and
touch the claw without turning on the light.”
Sandra
Scofield reminds us in her book, The Scene Book; A Primer for the Fiction
Writer, to, “... keep in mind that you want details to be part of action,
not tacked on for effect. And do
remember to engage all of the reader’s senses, not just sight” (Scofield
112). The owl passage focuses more on
touch than it does sight, but an even better example of “... integrat(ing)
description – mak(ing) it a part of the flow of the action of the scene ...”
(Scofield 111) occurs during a confrontation between the protagonists and two
men who, “... stepped out of the woods, one of them trailing a shotgun by the
barrel” (Dickey 107). The climax moment
of this confrontation occurs in sounds:
“I knelt down. As my knees hit, I heard a sound, a snap-slap
off in the woods, a sound like a rubber band popping or a sickle-blade cutting
quick. The older man was standing with
the gun barrel in his hand and no change in the stupid, advantage-taking
expression of his face, and a foot and a half of bright red arrow was shoved
forward from the middle of his chest. It
was there so suddenly it seemed to have some from within him” (Dickey 116).
While
Burroway tells us, “A detail is ‘definite’ and ‘concrete’ when it appeals to the
senses. It should be seen, heard,
smelled, tasted, or touched” (Burroway 75), Dickey often creates images using a
combination of abstract and sensual details. In the following passage there are a number of
details that help us see the river on its surface level, “... as if [we] were a
movie camera” (Gardner 71), but we also see it as Ed sees it, as something
mindless, indifferent, and uncomprehending.
“What a view, I said again. The river was blank and mindless with
beauty. It was the most glorious thing I
have ever seen. But it was not seeing,
really. For one it was not just seeing.
It was beholding. I beheld the river in its icy pit of
brightness, in its far-below sound and indifference, in it large coil and tiny
points and flashes of the moon, in its long sinuous form, in its
uncomprehending consequence. What was
there?
Only that terrific brightness. Only a couple of rocks as big as islands,
around one of which a thread of scarlet seemed to go, as though outlining a
face, a kind of god, a layout for an ad, a sketch, an element of design” (Dickey 171).
One of the
lengthier scenes in Deliverance depicts Ed climbing a mountain cliff. It is a simple enough action: man climbs
mountain. But the massive amounts of sensory detail that go into the scene’s
composition turn it into an intense conflict of man versus nature.
“I got on one knee and went cautiously
outward, rising slowly with both hands palm-up on the underside of the fissure
top. I was up, slanting backward, and I
felt along and around the bulge over my head.
To the right there was nothing I could do, but I was glad to be
back. To the left the crevice went on
beyond where I could reach, and the only thing to do was to edge along it, sidestepping
inch by inch until only my toes, very tired again, were in the crack” (Dickey
175).
“Time after time I
lay there sweating, having no handhold or foothold, the rubber of my toes
bending back against the soft rock, my hands open. Then I would begin to try and inch upward
again, moving with the most intimate motions of my body, motions I had never
dared use with Martha, or with any other human woman. Fear and a kind of enormous moon-blazing
sexuality lifted me, millimeter by millimeter” (Dickey 176).
What starts
out as ‘man climbs mountain’ turns into ‘man f***s mountain.’ It makes sense in a way. There is an enormous amount of risk and
physical exertion involved in climbing and in love making and Dickey uses this
relationship between activities to not only create a visceral image for the
reader but to also how Ed’s development in becoming a survivor. Scofield says, “... ‘description’ isn’t a
discreet element in narrative” (Scofield 111), and there is certainly nothing
discreet in Ed’s triumph over the mountain:
“It was painful, but I was going.
I was crawling, but it was no longer necessary to make love to the
cliff, to f*** it for an extra inch or two in the moonlight, for I had some
space between me and it” (Dickey 177).
The
example of the picnic from the beginning gives us a taste of the spectrum of
choices an author has to make when writing imagery into a scene, but Dickey’s
text shows without a doubt the importance of making the right choices. In The Scene Book, Scofield says, “Forget
those high school classes where you talked plot, setting, character,
theme. Those things aren’t
separate! You want your descriptions to
exist as part of action and emotion, part of the meaning of your scenes”
(Scofield 111). Imagery is just one
piece of the puzzle. It’s a piece, if
done well, that is entirely unique to each author,
and even each character, and it’s the one that makes all the
difference.
Works Cited:
Burroway, Janet, and Susan Weinberg. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. New York: Longman, 2003. Print.
Dickey, James. Deliverance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970. Print.
Gardner, John. On Becoming a Novelist. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Print.
Scofield, Sandra Jean. The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer. New York: Penguin, 2007. Print.
Amanda LaFantasie © October 2013
