The Drowned World Literary Elements

Science Fiction, Post-apocalyptic, Dystopian fiction

A distant future in the year 2145 in London. The Polar Ice Caps have melted and majority of Earth’s landmass has regressed into tropical swampland similar to the Paleozoic age.

Third person, narrated through the character Dr. Kierans

Reflective, nihilistic

Dr. Robert Kerans is the protagonist and the enigmatic character known only as the Strangeman is the main antagonist; conversely readers may also consider Nature to be an antagonistic character in that it serves as the primary challenge that all the characters try to overcome.

The first major conflict occurs when the Strangeman suddenly appears in the lagoon disrupting his introspective journey of understanding the cryptic, vivid, primordial dreams he has been experiencing.

Kerans destroys Strangeman's dam, re-flooding London, affectively setting back any attempts to restore it to it’s former glory.

Dr. Kerans’ primeval dreams are a foreshadowing of his eventual abandonment of “human civilization”

When Dr. Kierans described his task of mapping as “a pointless game” he summarizes just how alien this new world had become. Even attempts at trying to “make civilized” the wild new earth they find themselves in using tried and tested methods it is indeed futile as his superiors have already given up on ever restoring the earth and human civilization to its former glory.

Strangeman is loosely alluded to as the serpent trying to ruin Paradise by Dr. Kierans and as death incarnate by his devotees. There are also references to the Biblical Adam, Eve, and Eden in describing the raw beauty of their tropical environment

The novel is full of descriptions of both ruin, in the form of the remnants of London during its temperate heyday, and new life, in the descriptions of the lush tropical flora and fauna that has resulted from major climactic shifts

Unlike Strangeman who seeks to restore humanity to his “rightful place” as the apex organism, or Dr. Kierans who seeks to abandon his humanity totally and “go feral”; Beatrice seeks to remain as she is: a wealthy socialite decked out in jewelry and bikinis lounging by the pool. She cares little for the fact that her way of life is no more, and yet, paradoxically, she persists on living as she had before the apocalypse happened.

There is an odd parallelism that occurs between Strangeman and Dr. Kierans and this is no surprise as they respectively embody the dynamic tension between wanting to restore man’s glory days and wanting to abandon humanity and civilization completely. As Strangeman slowly manages to drain the lagoon to resurrect or rebuild the ruins of London, Dr. Kierans on the other hand slowly becomes more and more feral, consumed by his primordial dreams

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When the ruins of an ancient London theater are uncovered Dr. Kierans describes the large hollow structure as “womb-like” and the layer of ever-present moss as a “velvet mantle”