The Drowned World: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

A screeching bat, confused by the webs of giant wolf spiders, flies at the cutter. As it passes a building, a giant iguana plucks it out of the air before shrinking back into the window. Giant iguanas perch in all the windows along the lagoon. The narrator says that the lagoons would've been beautiful if it weren't for the iguanas. Kerans thinks that the iguanas rekindle archaic memories of the Paleocene period, when mammals first became supreme.

The cutter moves through the central lagoon. Only the commercial and financial areas of the city survived the floods, while the residential areas were completely wiped out. Giant forests grow on massive silt flats, and the only way to navigate the city is through the water. Kerans remembers his northward journey through the cities of Europe as they were taken over by vegetation. The military base is in the third lagoon of the city, and Kerans watches the cliff-like buildings as the cutter moves through the water.

Kerans is entirely uninterested in the contents or the history of the cities, while Dr. Bodkin, who is 65, actually remembers living in some of the cities. He spends his spare time rowing around the city, searching for remembered places. Kerans grew up in Camp Byrd, north of the Arctic Circle. He came south for the first time nearly ten years ago when he joined the ecological surveys. Men like Bodkin are the only ones who remember living in the cities, though even when they were children, the cities were flooding rapidly.

Seventy years earlier, solar storms began to erode the earth's atmosphere, leaving the earth unprotected from solar radiation. Temperatures rose by a few degrees each year and people began moving north to escape the heat and radiation. "Freak botanical" forms were observed within the first 20 years, brought about by the radiation. Plants and lizards thrived. The polar ice caps melted, as did glaciers. As they melted and the rivers expanded, the rivers carried away the topsoil and completely altered the landscape. The American Midwest is now a gulf that opens into the Hudson Bay, while Europe is a system of lagoons. Now, people only inhabit the Arctic and Antarctic circles, where temperatures are around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The radiation also affected fertility among mammals, such that only one in ten human couples are able to conceive. Kerans notes that at some point in the future, there will be a new Adam and Eve alone on Earth. He smiles to himself at this thought.

Kerans notices Dr. Bodkin throwing berries to small monkeys from the testing station, while iguanas watch impatiently from 50 feet away. Macready steers the cutter towards an apartment block. Riggs and Kerans take the elevator, which still works, to the roof. Apartments surround a rooftop pool on three sides, while the open side looks onto the lagoon. Beatrice lies on a deck chair by the pool flipping through a magazine, dressed in a black bikini with big sunglasses. Kerans thinks she looks sullen and annoyed.

Riggs pauses to admire Beatrice from the rail until she notices him and reminds him she's "not a strip show." Riggs and Kerans walk down to the pool and sit next to her. Riggs reminds Beatrice that he has a responsibility to her. Beatrice curses, turns up her radio, and asks Kerans why he's here. He replies that he missed her, but adds that Riggs has made it very clear that they all need to leave in three days, and that they can't stay behind.

Beatrice asks if Kerans’s use of "they" means that he might stay with her. Kerans brushes this off and says they must prepare to leave. Riggs reminds Beatrice of the rising temperatures and the shrieking iguanas, and says that she certainly won't be able to sleep once the unit is gone. Kerans wonders whether there was more to Riggs’s inquiry about his sleep when he hears this. Beatrice insists she'll be fine, but Kerans angrily insists that Beatrice must leave. When Beatrice insists that it's their duty to stay and refuses to get Riggs a drink, Riggs leaves Kerans and Beatrice.

Kerans lies back on his chair, and Beatrice sits at his feet. Kerans apologizes for losing his temper and says that the order to leave took him by surprise. Beatrice asks Kerans if he's actually going to leave. Kerans pauses and says that he's trying to find a more valid reason for leaving. He wonders if the lagoons remind him of his "uterine childhood," but says that there's no hope against the rain and coming malaria.

Kerans asks Beatrice why Riggs asked her how she slept. She says that she's had several nightmares, but insists they're common and tells Kerans that he could stay with her if he decided to stay. Kerans reminds Beatrice that although she's tempting, she's also the only woman here. Beatrice asks if Riggs’s urgency is justified, and Kerans insists that it is.

Near noon, both Kerans and Beatrice go inside. Beatrice lounges on a sofa and Kerans admires a painting of dancing, naked, skeleton-like women by the surrealist artist Delvaux. He turns to a painting by Max Ernst of a self-devouring jungle. Kerans feels like he remembers something about the painting. He asks Beatrice for her attention and tells her that if they stay, they're staying for good.