Masculinity
The overarching theme that loom liked an enormous shadow over every other aspect of Deliverance is the idea of what is the ideal of masculinity. Lewis is immediately situated as the ideal of masculinity in contemporary society. He is what most people’s idea of an athletic, outdoorsman who would be able to survive the apocalypse looks like: tall, muscular, good-looking and seemingly capable of handling any natural emergency that may arise. Once the four city dwellers make their way into the real outdoors represented by backwoods Georgia hillbillies who are called upon to actually survive under what are considered “extreme” conditions on a daily basis, however, everything changes. The other men in the party who would not necessarily be targeted as particularly effeminate and lacking any substantial masculinity become feminized in the eyes of the hillbillies, thus losing all claims to traditional notions of masculinity as they are essentially transformed onto women for the purpose of providing sexual pleasure at the hands of men who—ironically—also do not reflect any of the conventional standard ideals of perfect masculinity. Toothless, wild-eyed and not especially muscular, the backwoods men intent on raping the city men also challenge ideals of masculinity. That it is Lewis who manages to save the men at least from perhaps the worst that might have happened while also becoming virtually useless as a result of the consequences of the encounter is perhaps the film’s greatest irony on the subject of masculinity.
The Effects of Civilization upon Society
Deliverance it’s the townies versus the hillbillies in a way that digs much deeper than merely comparing fancy city folk versus toothless country folk. At nearly every point, the uncivilized hillbillies gain the upper hand, suggesting that civilizing mankind has ripped from them an essential component of survival. Lewis voices this concern with his assertion that when civilization inevitably falls apart, it will only be men like who have prepared themselves for the collapse who will be able to survive as well as help the others survive. In the end, of course, Lewis becomes the most helpless living member of the group which strongly hints at the possibility that if and when civilization does collapse, building it back up is going to take far, far longer than anyone probably can imagine.
Rite of Passage
With Lewis incapacitated, Drew drowned and Bobby forced to face the issues of masculinity in a way that he is likely to never overcome, survival comes down to bespectacled, pipe-smoking Ed. The “deliverance” of the title certainly refers on one level to the delivery of Ed from laidback middle-class comfort into the strong, bulky embrace of real manhood. Whatever that may mean by the time these men head back to the city forever changed, one thing is for certain: Ed’s composition of testosterone has undergone an alchemical change that separates him from everybody else in the movie, even his one-time model of the ideal man, Lewis.
