The Drowned World: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Kerans berths his catamaran (a type of boat) alongside the base and lets himself in. He waves at Beatrice before he closes the door, but she turns away. Macready steps out from the guard's cubicle and asks about Beatrice, and Kerans says that he thinks Beatrice will come with them. Macready doesn't seem to believe this. The narrator says that Kerans had decided to act as though he's going to leave, even if he ends up staying. He needs to spend the next few days stealing equipment and knows that acting distraught will attract attention.

Macready tells Kerans that Dr. Bodkin needs his help with Lieutenant Hardman. Kerans thinks he needs to escape Macready, so he asks him about the plan to put up more mosquito netting. Macready has a "Presbyterian conscience" that makes him highly susceptible to guilt trips, and he assures Kerans that he'll get started on the project. Kerans leaves him and walks through the base to the armory. He thinks of his Colt .45 (a type of gun) in his drawer at the Ritz, which he has never fired. He scans the weapons, all locked to the walls, and the cartons of explosive gas. Kerans gets down to inspect the gas further and picks up a broken compass, which points south.

Kerans leaves the armory with the compass. A sudden thought enters his mind of blowing up the base and testing station, and he steadies himself. He heads for the sick bay, where he finds Dr. Bodkin and Lieutenant Hardman in a private room. Hardman is the senior helicopter pilot and serves as Riggs’s deputy. He's an amateur naturalist and keeps notes of the changing plants and animals, organized by his own taxonomical system that Kerans finds questionable. Hardman's demeanor has kept the relationships among those at the base loose and fragmentary, which Kerans appreciates. Recently, Hardman began complaining of insomnia, and then retired from flying duty with malaria. As Hardman grew increasingly ill and solitary, Kerans thought little of it and left him alone, though Dr. Bodkin viewed things more seriously.

Kerans enters the private room. Not only is the air conditioning off, but Bodkin has a heater running. Hardman has on headphones, and the light from the heater makes it look like Hardman has a halo. Kerans can hear a slow drumming coming from the headphones. Bodkin makes a few notes, switches off the record player, and unplugs the heater. Hardman tells Bodkin that what they're doing is a waste of time, as he can't make any sense of the records. Bodkin says that the records are an "aural Rorschach," and finally addresses Kerans. He turns back to Hardman, motions to a contraption that looks like two connected alarm clocks, and tells Hardman how to keep the clocks set and running to keep the dreams at bay. Hardman says that it sometimes seems as though he has the dreams continuously, even during the day.

Kerans realizes that Hardman still looks emotionally well despite his illness. Bodkin says that Hardman might be right, and that there are various views on what consciousness and "being awake" actually mean. Kerans expresses agreement with Bodkin and says that Hardman will surely improve once they leave the lagoons in three days. Hardman looks surprised, but turns back to his books. Kerans is angry to realize that he tipped off Hardman deliberately, and thinks he's losing control over his own motives.

Kerans and Dr. Bodkin take Kerans’s catamaran to the testing station. The men enter their laboratory, the walls of which are covered in notes from their three years here. The notes from the beginning are dense, while the most recent ones are sparse and incomplete. They sit at their desks, and Kerans traces the shape of a compass on the surface of the desk while he waits for Bodkin to explain what he was doing with Hardman.

Kerans apologizes for telling Hardman that they're leaving, but suggests that the knowledge might jolt him out of his lethargy. Bodkin says that the prospect of leaving seems to have done nothing for Kerans, which Kerans agrees with. He asks Bodkin what he was doing with Hardman. Bodkin looks critically at Kerans, and Kerans realizes that he's as much a research subject to Bodkin as a colleague.

Bodkin asks Kerans to summarize their findings of the last three years. Kerans says that with the rising temperatures and the radiation, flora and fauna are becoming much as they were during the Triassic period. Bodkin praises this summary and continues that although they've carefully documented the "backwards journey" of plants and animals, they've neglected to study man. Kerans asks jokingly if humans will turn into pre-humans, and Bodkin turns to face a caged marmoset. He says that biological processes aren't completely reversible: humans might return to the jungle, but they'll never become apes again.

Bodkin continues and says that many on the unit have felt the sense that they actually remember the swamps and lagoons. He insists that nothing endures in the unconscious mind longer than fear, and that's the reason why humans irrationally fear spiders and snakes: humans subconsciously remember when spiders, snakes, and reptiles were the more dominant species, and therefore frequently posed serious lethal threats to humans.

Kerans asks if the increased heat and radiation are triggering these fear responses in the human mind, but Bodkin says that these memories aren't of the mind. He posits that every person contains the memories of the entire evolution of the world in their spines and central nervous system. By traveling down the spine, one can go back into the "archaeo-psychic past" to find dormant thoughts and drives. Dr. Bodkin says that he's calling this theory "neuronics" and believes that as they move back through the archaeo-psychic past, people will recognize the land around them. Further, Bodkin says that the memories aren't harmless: if allowed to take control of a person, that person will be swept backwards in time. He says that with Hardman, the experiments with the heat seem to have made him more accepting of the dreams and less disturbed by them. He says the alarm clocks will keep Hardman awake as long as possible.

Kerans gets up to look out the window and watches Macready and Riggs talk on the gangway of the base while he considers Dr. Bodkin's theory. He thinks it's a valid theory, and thinks that that the UN's policy of keeping life going like before within the Arctic and Antarctic circles is silly given the rising temperatures and water. Kerans thinks it's probably more important to map the mind than the outer world. He begins to suggest that Bodkin draft a report for Camp Byrd, but he finds that Bodkin is gone.

Kerans sits at his desk and pulls out the compass. He wonders why he took it, as he knows he'll be found out and humiliated later. As he looks at it in his hands, he becomes entranced by the idea of "south."