The Drowned World

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1962

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-6

Chapters 7-11

Chapters 12-15

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Sun

The sun is the source of all humanity’s problems in The Drowned World. The sun is distant, unknowable, and powerful. Following a “series of violent and prolonged solar storms lasting several years” (33), human society has collapsed. The sun is a symbol of the fragility of human life and of the lack of human agency over the planet. Humans may have built giant cities and invented airplanes and helicopters. They may have become the dominant species on the planet, but everything can be undone in a few generations thanks to a random fluctuation in the storms on the surface of a star millions of miles away. Compared to the power of the sun, the ingenuity of humanity means nothing. The sun is a humbling symbol of mankind’s fragility, and it is one that will not relent. The opening line of the novel establishes the sun as an ever-present force in the lives of the characters. The days are hot and getting hotter, and soon, the planet will be “too hot” (17). The sun seems passive in the sky, yet it dictates the contours of human life. The humans may—in contrast—seem busy and purposeful, but they lack any agency over the state of their own planet. The sun is a symbolic reminder of humanity’s weakness.

The sun forces the characters to alter their lives and behaviors. In the pre-apocalyptic age, the sun was associated with luxury. The Ritz, where Kerans has a room, and Beatrice’s apartment were both built in the time before the climate changed. As such, they present access to the sun as a luxury. Beatrice’s apartment has a swimming pool in full view of the sun. Her patio is lined with deckchairs, allowing people to bask in the luxury of sunlight. Sunglasses might hide Beatrice’s “smooth sleek face” (37), but they no longer serve the same purpose they once did. The luxury of the sun is gone; faces need to be hidden behind sunglasses because they are no longer a fashion accessory but a survival necessity. Furthermore, the sun continues to change and shape human behavior. After Riggs leaves, Kerans spends several weeks attempting to adhere to his familiar routine. He cannot do so, however, as the sun makes the world hotter and hotter. The temperature soars, driven by the indifferent sun. No one can sunbathe any longer, and Kerans can barely even stay awake long enough in such hot and humid conditions. His cycles and his routine are dictated by the sun, which is the dominant presence in his life.

Kerans has a fascination with the sun, perhaps due to its power. Having grown up in a post-apocalyptic world, Kerans cannot take the sun for granted. Beatrice may try to sunbathe, but she cannot remember a time when doing so was truly enjoyable. Now, the sun is actively dangerous. This danger has a compelling power; it orientates Kerans’s schedule, so it comes to impose itself on his mind. He feels his skin darken as he spends more time in the sun. This changing physical characteristic is matched by a growing fascination with the idea of traveling south. Previously, going south would have meant exposure to the dangers of the sun. Kerans has stopped caring about the danger. The sun is now such an ever-present feature in his life that it shines in his subconscious as well as in his waking life. He cannot stop thinking about the sun, nor its influence. Like Hardman, he knows that he must travel south. This will entail exposure to the sun, but he does it anyway. When Kerans meets Hardman in the ruins of a temple, Hardman is covered in cancerous sores. His skin and his sight have been ravaged by the sun. Yet Kerans knows that Hardman will continue south, just as he will. The sun symbolizes the lack of agency in the lives of humans, so choosing to head directly into the sun becomes a conscious embrace of this futility. Kerans’s journey into the sun is a symbolic acceptance of his lack of agency but one that occurs on his own terms.

The Sunken Cities

The Drowned World takes place in the area where the city of London was once located. At the beginning of the novel, the city is submerged in nearly 100 feet of water due to rising sea levels brought about by catastrophic and unexpected climate change. The sunken city of London is a symbol of the seriousness of the apocalypse: Even a city as important and as historic as London could not be saved. London, the former hub of the British Empire, known for cool and rainy weather, is now the site of a tropical lagoon populated mostly by giant iguanas. The world that was known is gone, though the city itself continues to exist underwater. The proximity of the sunken city is also symbolic, illustrating the relative recency of the apocalypse. This is particularly relevant to Bodkin. He grew up in London, so his most formative memories were made in the same streets that are now beneath the lagoon. Bodkin is both close and far from his childhood home: close enough that he can dive down beneath the water and visit his favorite planetarium but far enough that he can never truly return to the city as it once was. Through Bodkin’s personal relationship with the sunken city of London, the reader is able to comprehend the extent to which the characters are living in the ruins of the relatively recent past. This past may be recent, just as the cities may be physically close, but there is no way to return completely to the world as it was.

London is not the only sunken city. All over the world, the great capitals have been flooded and abandoned. This is evident in the treasure collection aboard Strangman’s pirate ship. He has pillaged great artworks from these sunken cities, effectively creating the world’s greatest museum. These pillaged relics decorate his pirate ship, turning humanity’s greatest artistic creations into backdrops for Strangman’s criminal escapades. The looted relics symbolize the speed with which the cities sank and were abandoned. The last vestiges of human society have scattered to the poles, turning the sunken cities into dead reliquaries of human intellect. The sunken cities are being swallowed by the sea and slowly eroded. Strangman may tell people that he is preserving the great works of art, but he is pillaging loot from dying societies. The sinking of the cities and the collapse of civilization has become, for men like Strangman, a source of amusement. The way in which he loots the sunken cities and uses the relics as decoration at his parties symbolizes the nihilistic abandon that has taken hold in the minds of many people. The cities are gone, so people must choose between survival and indulgence.

While Strangman may be a pirate and criminal, he does succeed in draining the lagoon and—for the first time in a generation—allowing people to walk the streets of London. For Kerans, this is the first time that he has ever stepped foot in one of the old cities. To him (and to Beatrice), the reality of the sunken city is horrific. He hates the reclaimed city and insists that it should be reflooded. Bodkin also agrees, so much so that he tries to blow up Strangman’s dam. The reclaimed city is a symbol of decay. The city is a ghost town, symbolizing humanity’s social collapse, but it is also populated by Strangman’s pirates, symbolizing the moral collapse that has made this reclamation possible. The recovered city is an attempt to live decadently and immorally in the past—a symbolic rebuke of human progress. Kerans deplores what the reclaimed city symbolizes and determines that it must be destroyed. Riggs, by contrast, praises Strangman’s dam and acknowledges that this may not be the last instance of reclaiming the city. He tells Kerans that “reclaiming land, particularly an urban area like this right in the center of a former capital city, is a Class A1 priority” (180). Strangman will not just be forgiven for his crimes but rewarded. The return to sunken cities is a symbolic confirmation for Kerans that he must go south. He embraces the symbolism, refusing to be a part of a society living in the reclaimed ruins of a sunken city.

Iguanas and Alligators

The lagoon is populated by iguanas, bats, and mosquitoes. Kerans notes that these creatures are increasing in size, adjusting to the hotter temperatures brought about by the same climate conditions that have seemingly doomed humanity. The overwhelming presence of the iguanas—which must be regularly fought off—symbolizes the holistic nature of the environment. The changing conditions may be bad for humans, but humans are not the only inhabitants of the earth. Reptiles ruled the planet in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous eras, only to have their dominance curtailed by changing climates on the planet. Now, the era of mammals (and, more specifically, humans) is seemingly coming to an end. An apocalypse for one species, the giant iguanas show, is an opportunity for another.

For Bodkin, the iguanas are symbolic of The Overlap Between Science and Mysticism. Bodkin theorizes that the giant size of the iguanas is not a reaction to the present nor an accommodation for the future. Rather, this is a reversion to the past. Bodkin believes that the changing conditions have activated a deep ancestral memory in the genetics of the iguanas and other species, allowing them to revert to a prior, remembered state. To Bodkin, the giant iguanas represent this vestigial recurrence. Bodkin hails the iguanas as the cyclical inheritors of the world, returned to their dominant position. For humanity to survive, he reasons, humans must accept similar vestigial memories.

If the giant iguanas represent a reptilian rising on a changing planet, then Strangman’s alligators symbolize the unpredictability of this change. The arrival of Strangman’s pirate crew is heralded by Strangman in his hydroplane and thousands of trained alligators. Strangman has been looting the treasure of the ruined world for his own amusement. Like the iguanas, he sees opportunity in social collapse. Rather than accommodate the iguanas or work around them, he finds a way to master the seemingly uncontrollable wildlife. Strangman’s troop of alligators are a symbol of the danger he poses, demonstrating his ability to bend a violent and chaotic world to his will.