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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Chapters 3-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 3 Summary: “Towards a New Psychology”

As Kerans returns to the military base, he glances back at Beatrice on the balcony. He knows that he may stay behind with her, but he resolves to tell Riggs that he plans to leave. He notes the weapons and explosives stored in the armory, though he has never fired his service issue pistol, and takes a compass for himself. Kerans goes to the sick bay, where three men are suffering from “heat ulcers” (46). Kerans finds Lieutenant Hardman, the helicopter pilot and amateur naturalist, in a private ward. Hardman is suffering from malaria and insomnia. He cannot fly and is in retreat from public life on the base. Kerans sympathizes with Hardman, recognizing “the same symptoms he had seen in himself, an accelerated entry into his own ‘zone of transit’” (47). Kerans has asked Bodkin to keep a close eye on Hardman. Bodkin, however, is advocating a more extreme treatment method. He heats Hardman’s room until it is almost unbearable. Inside, Hardman stops listening to music. He complains that music is a “waste of time” (48). Bodkin tells Kerans that this is part of his experiment. He tells Hardman to use a new form of alarm clock to ward off nightmares by waking him every 10 minutes. When Kerans mentions Riggs’s plan to leave the base, Hardman is surprised. Kerans reassures himself that he meant to share this information with Hardman so that Hardman could finalize any outstanding business on the base, but he resents his momentary loss of self-control. For his entire life, Kerans has been proud of his total and objective awareness of his own desires and motivations.

Departing from the sick bay, Kerans tells Bodkin that he is sorry for revealing the departure date to Hardman. He is interested in Bodkin’s experiment. When Bodkin asks what Kerans has spent the last three years researching, Kerans admits that he has studied the plants and animals as they revert back to the forms of prehistoric eras. The intensity of this research, however, has gradually subsided over the years. Bodkin points out that they have studied nature’s “avalanche back into the past” but that they have done comparatively little study on how humans are changing in response to the new climate (54). Bodkin believes that humanity carries a vestigial memory of “the archaeo-psychic past” (56), when reptiles, insects, and spiders ruled the planet. He likens the current moment to a kind of déjà vu, which he dubs “Neuronics.” His experiment with Hardman was based on this idea. Kerans is intrigued by neuronics and how it might explain his own recent thoughts and behavior. Bodkin departs, leaving Kerans to examine his newly acquired compass. He wonders why he took the compass, knowing that the missing item will be reported, leading to the “petty humiliation” of confessing what he has done (58).

Chapter 4 Summary: “The Causeways of the Sun”

Hardman vanishes. Kerans prepares to leave the base by dressing in his drill uniform, though he is still debating whether he should stay with Beatrice. He has stored enough food for a month, and, together with Beatrice, they will have enough supplies for three months. They lack fuel, however, which is necessary to power the hotel’s amenities, especially the air conditioning. As such, he can envision “an accumulating series of petty annoyances” if he is left alone (61), but this does not trouble him. Instead, he wonders whether this lack of anxiety may prove that Bodkin’s neuronic time theory is correct.

Piloting the catamaran across the lagoon, Kerans watches Riggs’s men towing the floating test station back to their floating base as they prepare to depart. He visits Beatrice, who is stricken by “lethargy and ennui” because the generator—and therefore the air conditioning—has failed. The building is sweltering, though Beatrice reacts with irritation when Kerans asks her about it. Kerans leaves Beatrice to sip her whiskey and ponder her “jungle dreams” while he fixes the generator (64). Upon his return, their conversation is interrupted by a distant noise. Outside, the men have assembled on the jetty beside three boats. Riggs and Macready call to Kerans with a megaphone, announcing that a helicopter will collect him to search for Hardman.

Kerans boards the helicopter and flies over the lagoon. He tries to spot Hardman from up in the air but knows that this will be difficult. Hardman escaped in the night and may have already traveled 10 miles. Back on ground, Kerans, Macready, Riggs, and Sergeant Daley (Hardman’s co-pilot) speculate as to where Hardman might be. Though Kerans is barely paying attention to the conversation, he is struck by a sudden idea. He insists to Riggs that Hardman must be heading south. Daley does not agree; the south is hotter, he argues. Kerans insists that he is right because “there isn’t any other direction” (71), so they take the helicopter south.

They find Hardman’s footsteps on a balcony and search the building. As well as praising his “superb diagnostic insight” (74), Riggs warns Kerans that Hardman took a gun during his escape. The men sweep the building. Riggs grows impatient, so Kerans slips into one of the apartments to be alone. He sees a shadowy figure and recognizes Hardman, who pushes past and leaps from the balcony down to the lower floors. Hardman fires his gun behind him as he drags his small raft to the water with “demoniac energy” (79). Though they approach close to Hardman, the sound of the helicopter spooks him. He shoots a man named Wilson and then vanishes between the walls of the building. The men lay siege to Hardman’s hiding place. Hardman slips away, however, and is noticed by Macready. When he points out Hardman to Riggs, Riggs decides that the temperature is too high to chase him. They return to base, with Kerans administering medical care to the stricken Wilson. He tells Bodkin what happened, though Bodkin is more intrigued by the iguanas than Hardman. The strange “raucous barks” of the iguanas when near humans, Bodkin ominously warns, may be heard again soon.

Chapter 5 Summary: “Descent Into Deep Time”

That evening, Kerans sleeps in his room at the test station. He experiences “the first of the dreams” that are plaguing many others (85). In his dream, Kerans strolls along the deck and peers at the lagoon. A cloud of gas blots out the sun while a tangle of snakes and eels swirls in the water. Giant lizards lurk in the jungle and roar at the dimmed sun. Kerans feels drawn to the “powerful mesmeric” reptiles and steps forward into the lagoon (86).

Kerans wakes up. He feels exhausted, but the sounds from his dream stay with him. Beatrice once described a similar dream to him, and he thinks about visiting her. Instead, he finds Bodkin in the galley. Immediately, Bodkin can tell that Kerans has experienced one of the dreams. He congratulates Kerans on beholding “the fata morgana of the terminal lagoon” (87). Bodkin says that around half the men are suffering from these nightmares. They are not real dreams, he says, but “an ancient organic memory millions of years old” (89). After a few nights, he claims, Kerans will no longer be afraid of the dreams.

Riggs arrives. He asks whether Kerans and Bodkin are ready to depart the following day. As he listens, Kerans realizes that the dream makes him different from Riggs. While Riggs is still beholden to reason and logic, Kerans is no longer concerned with the “unimportant world with his little parcels of instructions” (90). Riggs leaves, whereupon Kerans reveals that he is considering staying behind. Bodkin reveals that the city beneath them was once London, the place where Bodkin was born. Beneath the surface, he can see the roof of the planetarium he visited as a child, and the experience feels strangely nostalgic. Kerans urges Bodkin to continue his recollections.

Chapter 6 Summary: “The Drowned Ark”

Kerans and Bodkin perform a final check of their lab before departure. They scuttle the lab and lose their unread research. They have both decided to stay. They visit Beatrice as a helicopter passes overheard with Riggs onboard. Riggs calls to them through his megaphone, but neither Kerans nor Beatrice can understand his words. The helicopter leaves. As it goes, Kerans realizes that only he, Beatrice, and Bodkin will remain. Kerans is struck by the sudden realization that Riggs was instrumental in keeping the group together. He is not sure if he can lift the morale of the remaining trio as Riggs did for his men. Privately, Kerans has already assumed that he is the “leader” (96). There will be a need for independence, however, and the trio will need to live separately. They will only meet, he speculates, “in their dreams” (97).

Chapters 3-6 Analysis

Psychology plays an important role in The Drowned World. The characters, particularly Bodkin and Kerans, are interested in the changing world from a psychological perspective. Bodkin is investigating how living in a post-apocalyptic world, for example, activates ancestral memories from millions of years ago. The subject for his first forays into this experimental discussion is Hardman, the helicopter pilot. By the time the novel starts, Hardman is already suffering. Like so many people, he is experiencing dreams that are so nightmarish and troubling that Bodkin has tried to invent a device to ward them away. Despite Bodkin’s best efforts, Hardman escapes and runs away to the south.

While most of the crew want to search in the north, Kerans knows that Hardman has headed south. He feels a natural sympathy toward this thought process, a foreshadowing that he will later be driven by the same compulsions. This intuition arises from The Overlap Between Science and Mysticism; Hardman’s journey through the physical space of the world is also a journey through what author J. G. Ballard called “inner space”—the terrain of the psyche, craving a direct confrontation with the inevitability of extinction. This impulse to head south—into the sun—is the only available means of Asserting Agency in the Face of Human Extinction, and it alludes to psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s concept of the “death drive”: the instinct of every living creature to face death on its own terms. Kerans’s success at “reading Hardman’s psychology” also distinguishes him from the rest of the crew (69). While many other people may suffer from the nightmares, only Kerans possesses the natural understanding of the human mind. This hints toward the changes that Kerans himself will undergo over the course of the novel as he begins to follow in Hardman’s footsteps.

Life in the lagoon is not pleasant. Despite the characters’ attempts to reclaim lost luxuries, they cannot compete with the changing climate. Kerans moves out of his crew quarters and into the Ritz hotel. He takes the penthouse suite, which, at one time, would have been too expensive for all but the wealthiest clientele. Now, the entire hotel is completely abandoned. Kerans enjoys the luxuries of the super-rich, though the collapse of society deprives these luxuries of much of their pleasure. Beatrice was born into wealth and has refused to abandon her family status. While most people have left London, she continues to live in her grandfather’s lavish apartment. She sunbathes and sips rare wines and spirits from his well-stocked bar, performatively defying the actual conditions of the post-apocalyptic society. Despite these trappings of luxury, however, the characters cannot overcome reality. To live in these buildings, they need air conditioning, and they cannot go outside at certain times, as it is simply too hot (and it is getting hotter). To run their machines, they need fuel; without supplies, they will not live long in such a hostile environment. The contrast between the hotel rooms and apartments (symbolizing pre-apocalypse luxury) and the fetid reality of the dangerous lagoon demonstrates the characters’ determined attempts to build themselves a place in the dystopian future. They want to live like they are still in the past, even though every aspect of their existence is a concession to their dangerous present.

Kerans comes to believe in Bodkin’s concept of “Neuronics”—a theory that, like the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and C. G. Jung, is part science, part literature, and part mythology. The Overlap Between Science and Mysticism offers “a more valid explanation for the metamorphosis taking place in his mind than any other” (58). Kerans accepts that he is changing, and Bodkin’s theory gives him the best possible explanation, even though the theory perplexes him at first. He is increasingly convinced because he feels drawn to the unknown, just as Bodkin predicted he would. He cannot explain it, but Kerans feels a subconscious pull toward the iguanas, toward the jungle, toward the south, and toward the sun, even though he knows that all are hostile to his existence. Kerans has something of a death drive, hoping to inject meaning into his life by exposing himself to everything that he knows he should not. Once his dreams begin, Kerans becomes increasingly sure. The dreams are his subconscious yearning made manifest. Just as he cannot escape his dreams, he cannot escape his yearning. He enacts this yearning alongside Bodkin and Beatrice, all three of whom come to the agreement that they will stay behind after Riggs. They do not need to explain why to one another: They have all dreamed the same dreams and felt the same pull.