After discussing Cherrylog Road by James Dickey in class, I thought about the themes that became apparent in the poem that I had not seen. I also thought of possible symbols.
One thing that immediately came to mind was what the junked cars represented. I thought that they acted as a symbol of the past. When the narrator was weaving in and out of them and sitting it the seats he was exploring the past. He describes the partition that separates the woman from her black driver and he imagines what previous lives those cars may have had. I think that those actions represent the author exploring the south's past. A past that has links to the cars that he is exploring. The cars become a catalyst for the past.
I think the cars also have a connection to the past in terms of the author meeting his secret love at the junkyard. The author is breaking the norms of the society by meeting this girl outside of parental supervision. It appears that a moral code was broken. But the cars represent how society held up codes and broke them down based on the activities that happened inside of the cars. It seems appropriate that they would be breaking the moral code of society in a place that represented the past.
The overall message that I figured out from Cherrylog Road was that Dickey was trying to show the reader that the past is a developing concept. The cars illustrate the history and the complex nature of society.
3 comments:
You brought up a good point that I also noticed while reading this poem--Dickey's exploration of the South's past. We know how important tradition is to the South, so it makes sense that Dickey, like many other Southern writers, delves into this topic. In the first couple of stanzas he talks about old cars (which I imagined as hot rods), corn whiskey, and bootlegging moonshine--themes we don't see often outside of the Dukes of Hazzard.
Southern writers do seem to love to write about the past. I agree with you that the junk yard and the cars all represent the past. I really thought it was interesting when we were talking in class about how he got into the Pierce-Arrow. I never would have thought about the separation window still partially being there, and the phone still being on the hook and how it symbolized racism and the prejudiced south.
Kyle,
I really enjoyed discussing this poem in class because it opened up my mind so much more to the deeper meaning and symbolism of Dickey’s work. When I first read it, I simply saw it for what is what on the surface: a forbidden love story between two teenagers. But as we delved into the idea of the cars representing the past, as you were talking about, I was able to appreciate the poem so much more. I was able to see that even if I wasn’t particularly fond of the subject matter of Dickey’s poems, he still had a great deal to say that was worth paying attention to.
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