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Chapter 21
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Dry, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Human Cost of Climate Change
Justice
Urban vs. Rural
Friendship
Summary
Analysis
Falk returns to his room above the pub. He thinks of how city people like Whitlam’s family aren’t used to the quiet of the country like Kiewarra. Falk thinks about a day five years ago when he saw Luke in Melbourne.
Once again, the present links back to the past, and Falk’s ongoing investigation leads him to reconsider yet another event from his past.
Themes
On that day in Melbourne, Luke is just getting out of a supplier’s convention when he goes to meet Falk at a pub. Luke asks Falk about how he’s dealing with his father’s death, which happened a year ago. Falk is surprised but grateful that Luke cared enough to ask.
The fact that Falk is so surprised at Luke’s simple polite gestures, like asking about Falk’s father, hints at how distant Falk and Luke’s friendship must have gotten in the years leading up to this particular meeting.
Themes
Still five years ago, Falk happens to mention to Luke that he was recently investigating a financial case about a woman who drowned. This brings up Ellie, and Falk asks if Luke would ever tell him the truth about where he was on the day of the murders. Luke maintains he was shooting rabbits, then he says if this topic was coming up again, he wants to know if Falk’s own story about fishing that day was true. Falk says it was.
While Luke seems to have been trying to repair his relationship with Falk, it turns out that Falk himself was unable to let go of the past and what happened to Ellie; perhaps he was afraid of having to be emotionally vulnerable with Luke. Since they were 16, Falk and Luke have been living a relationship based on a mutual lie (their alibi about fishing together on the day of the murder), and this lie causes a permanent rift between them.
Themes
Back in the present, Falk reads a paperback crime novel before bed, which is one of Karen’s overdue library books that he hasn’t had a chance to return yet. He finds a receipt in the book, showing that Karen checked the book out February 19, four days before she died. When Falk flips the receipt over, he sees that Karen wrote “Grant??” (presumably Grant Dow) and underlined it three times. Then she wrote a 10-digit phone number below it. The phone number is Falk’s own.
Karen’s library books, which seemed like an insignificant detail earlier, turn out to contain one of the most significant clues in the novel. The twist that Karen wrote Falk’s number under the word “Grant??” is particularly surprising since Falk didn’t even know Karen. Karen’s note has clear parallels to Ellie’s, which also mentioned Falk without specifying why, further establishing how the past and present cases relate to each other.
Themes
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