Outside Reading Questions

I was surprised when Bobby was not forced to squeal like a pig during their...err…trouble with the mountain men. In the movie, it was such a chilling and horrifying sound that really (and unfortunately) defined the movie and only added to the party’s backcountry terror. I have since found that the actor who played the hillbilly in the movie improved the swine related line, along with the equally chilling “You got a purdy mouth” statement. Still, I would be happy if they hadn’t thought up dialogue because nobody remembers anything else from the movie. Burt Reynolds gave his best performance before descending into bankruptcy and campy films, and it would have been fine without that entire scene because it seemed unfeasible. Still, it was horrifying to read, and more horrifying to watch, and I’m glad Lewis had a cool head and good aim.

I noticed how Lewis fracturing his leg was a subtle example of irony that was pivotal to entire second part of the story. Lewis Medlock (portrayed by Burt Reynolds in the movie adaptation) was the amateur survivalist that got the group together for the canoe trip. He could hunt, fish, trap, and do almost anything to survive in the woods. He was the only one who even remotely knew what they were doing, and even he was in over his head on the excursion. He ended up with a compound break in his thighbone after trying to canoe down Griffin’s Shot, which was riddled with falls and twists and turns. A bullet from a sniper on a gorge that bordered the rapids grazed another member of their party; he drowned after falling out of the canoe without wearing a life preserver. They lost all of their gear, and one of the canoes snapped in half. Needless to say, they were in a situation that they believed only Lewis could resolve, but he was now wriggling in pain on a sandbar. Ed ends up climbing the 150-foot gorge, killing the sniper, and piloting the canoe another 15 miles downriver. I thought it was ironic that Lewis, the seemingly unbreakable man of survival and instinct, ended up being seriously injured, leaving Bobby, a clumsy, overweight fool when it came to the outdoors, and Ed, who could manage, but still lacked the nerves of steel and the absence of compassion seen in Lewis, to actually become the real hero in the story.

I’d like to know if the brother-in-law of the deputy was ever found. At the end of the book, it was implied that Ed might have killed the wrong man on top of the gorge; it may have been just a man out trying to get food for his family. The deputy was sure that Ed had killed his sister’s husband, whom had never returned after going out to hunt a few days prior. This was further implied when Ed discovered that the man he had killed had teeth (although he did have some implants on his top ones), while the accomplice during their backwoods horror story was described only as “the toothless man”. So did Ed kill an innocent man due to he and Lewis’ paranoia? In his defense, the man did have a gun, and he was at a prime spot on the gorge to pick off the party as they floated down the river. But could he have just coincidently stopped there for a rest? After all, Ed didn’t find him camped there, intently waiting for the canoes; he had just wandered to the spot and lazily stopped. Furthermore, after Ed shot him, he feel out of the tree onto one of his own broadheads. Was this some sort of subtle punishment brought on by the author, a punishment for slaying an innocent man?

If I had been Lewis Medlock in the novel, I would have done much more research into the river. In his defense, he did come quite prepared, with the back of station wagon filled to the brim with gear. But when they got onto the river, they had no idea what to expect. He didn’t know how rough it was, where rapids, fast water, and falls were located; he didn’t even know where the town where the cars were driven to was located. Granted, it was in the days before cell phones, the internet, and global positioning systems, but he had been up there before and still didn’t know what exactly the river held for them. He was warned multiple times by the locals that it was dangerous; even they wouldn’t go on it unless they absolutely had to, and he couldn’t even find it when they first got to the town and hired two mechanics to drive their cars to another town downriver. He was too sure of his survival skills, and, despite his immense knowledge into this, he still lacked the real experience to actually get a whole group of people down the river safely. He was arrogant and full of himself to say the least. (Even though he was pretty cool.)

I was reminded of some of my own arrogance when I’ve camped through Lewis Medlock. I’ve gone out on the river canoeing, although it was in a group and on a surveyed piece of river, and I distinctly remember flipping the canoe in some fast moving water and ended with a canoe pinned against a tree. The other person in the canoe with me and I tried in vain to free the canoe, but underestimated the power of water moving downhill. It took my step dad and scoutmaster, both very strong men, about ten minutes to free the canoe. And this was on the Niangua, which we joke about being the slowest river in the state of Missouri. I got in this situation because I was too sure of my canoeing skills, and myself, even though it was only my second time paddling a canoe. Spending my entire life around water, behind the helm of a 32.5 Oceanis or a jetboat with a 455 Oldsmobile engine in it, I should have known that water is something to be respected.