18 pages • 36 minutes read
James DickeyCherrylog Road
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1963A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Osiris and Isis
Dickey once commented that the poem contained allusions to the ancient Egyptian myth of Osiris. Osiris was a king who was killed and dismembered by his brother Set. Pieces of the body were scattered far and wide, but Osiris’s wife Isis collected them and restored her husband to life; she also fashioned a new phallus for him, the original having been eaten by fish in the river Nile. This enabled Osiris to conceive a son, Horus. But Osiris was no longer able to rule as king and instead became ruler of the realm of the dead.
In the poem, the narrator enters the world of the dead too—dead automobiles, that is, “the parking lot of the dead” (Line 25). Within that underworld, he becomes extremely powerful in terms of exercising his male sexual power, thanks to the presence of Doris Holbrook, who is an Isis figure. Doris enlivens the phallus of this Osiris-like teenage king of the underworld, who otherwise has no outlet for it. Doris shows up carrying a wrench, which in this context can be seen as a phallic symbol. Her lover takes her with “deadly overexcitement” (Line 91), which is an amusing play on the notion of the formerly dead Osiris now sprung into passionate life.
Fortunately for the eager boy, he does not need Doris to collect his other body parts, but in a playful and amusing twist on the Osiris myth, Doris collects not human body parts like Isis but parts from the broken-down, “dead” cars, which will then be used to restore other cars to life.
The Hero’s Quest
The poem loosely fits the symbolism of what is sometimes known as the “monomyth,” an underlying or archetypal pattern found in many mythologies of the world. The term was popularized by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In brief, the hero hears a call to adventure and sets off on a journey or quest. He crosses a threshold and enters what Campbell calls a “zone of magnified power,” where he experiences life at a deeper level. This can include, among other things, a sacred marriage with the goddess, often conceived as a sexual union. The hero also overcomes challenges, gains important insight and knowledge, and then returns to the mundane world in a more exalted state, with an expanded consciousness.
In “Cherrylog Road,” the narrator hears his own call to adventure and goes on a journey which takes him off the well-beaten path—the highway—and into the junkyard, which is the equivalent of the zone of magnified power. He refers to it as the “the parking lot of the dead” (Line 25); it is as if he has entered, like mythological heroes sometimes do, the underworld. In this world-apart-from-the-world he can recreate and shape history through entering and reimagining how the vintage cars were used. He becomes a living part of what has formerly been. He also shows that he is willing to face danger (discovery by the girl’s father), which resembles the trials that the mythological hero must be prepared to face.
He works his way to the very center of the large yard (he calls it “the hub” [Line 32]) to the oldest car, where he meets and couples with Doris. Doris may seem like an unlikely goddess, but through her the young male is able to tap into the primal energies of physical life at this symbolic center of power. There he recharges himself; he accesses a kind of transcendent power, and when he returns to the mundane world of the highway he is an exalted figure, united with his motorcycle, which represents “the soul of the graveyard / Restored, a bicycle fleshed / with power” (Lines 102-04) as he rides off at high speed, like a young god or hero, wild and free.
Phallic Symbolism
The description of the automobile in which the couple has sex, “long Pierce-Arrow” (Line 35), is suggestive of the phallus (the male sexual organ) and sexual penetration. The “blacksnake, / stiff with inaction, curved back into life, / and hunted the mouse” (Lines 88-90) is about as clear as such symbolism can be, bearing in mind that the narrator has earlier referred metaphorically to himself as a “kingsnake” (Line 31) and likened Doris to a mouse. The wrench that Doris carries is also a phallic symbol. Even the poem’s title might be seen as sexually symbolic, since “cherry” is associated with a woman’s hymen, or virginity—the slang term for losing it is “popping the cherry.” The yoking of the word “log” (as in a length of a tree branch) to “cherry” in this context is suggestive of the sexual act. (It would be pedantic to point out that Doris is likely not a virgin, since the couple seems to have done this before, but even Doris was a virgin once.) There is also a kind of sexual symbolism in the seemingly innocent, even romantic, phrase, “I held her and held her and held her” (Line 85), the rhythmic repetitions suggestive not just of a lovers’ embrace but the thrusting of the male during the sexual act.
