Cherrylog Road Analysis

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Stories and poems are very different in many ways. Poems are often shorter than stories and have rhyme and meter. Stories do not have rhyme and meter and are usually much longer in length. Nevertheless a poem and a story can have many similarities. “Cherrylog Road” by James Dickey is a poem about a taboo relationship between two teenagers, while “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel García Márquez is about an “angel” that has washed up on the shore of this small town. Both “Cherrylog Road” and “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” have somewhat twisted theological parallels to the Bible. The concrete images of “Cherrylog Road” can say a lot when the reader digs deeper into what the images actually symbolize. In “Cherrylog Road” the
There are three characters in “Cherrylog Road” and those characters include: the narrator, Doris Holbrook, and Doris Holbrook’s father. The narrator and Doris Holbrook have a scandalous rendezvous in a junkyard, and they have to hide it from her father because, “[He] would change, in the squalling barn, [Doris’s] back’s pale skin with a strop, Then lay for [the narrator],” (Dickey 86). The narrator mentions, “The ’34 Ford without wheels, Smothered in kudzu, With a seat pulled out to run Corn whiskey down from the hills,” (Dickey 84). Since the narrator mentions running corn whiskey then the reader can only infer that he is somehow involved with bootlegging; he possibly may even be a bootlegger himself. He also mentions, “Wringing the handlebar for speed,” which the reader could only infer that the narrator drives a motorcycle. So, the narrator definitely has this “bad boy” vibe to him, but do not think for one second that Doris Holbrook is all innocent. Doris Holbrook, “Would escape from her father at noon And would come from the farm To seek parts owned by the sun,” (Dickey 85). No, Doris Holbrook was not that innocent at all. This was an “it takes two to tango” type of deal. Again looking back in the Bible at the story of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis if the reader connects the narrator as Adam this all makes sense. Doris Holbrook is Eve in the fact that she is seduced by the narrator to come and surrender her body for desire and pleasure. Eve was seduced by the serpent to take a bite of the forbidden fruit, sacrificing her innocence, so that she might be as a god. Both Eve and Doris sacrifice their innocence and in Doris’s case her body for desire. In the Biblical account of Adam and Eve, Adam takes a bite of the fruit, knowing it was wrong, so Eve would not have to suffer alone. This is not really

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