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Dry Land
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Things We Didn’t See Coming, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Morality and Survival
Apocalypse vs. Routine
Body as Currency vs. Body as Liability
Wealth, Privilege, and Value
Care and Companionship under Crisis
Summary
Analysis
After breakfast, Margo does her stretches and then walks off—though the narrator had offered to join her, Margo wants to be alone, as always. While she’s gone, the narrator looks for something to eat and works on digging the water pit near their camp. The two of them have been out here, in this desert plateau, ever since the quarantine started. Now, the narrator usually chases off even the larks that come to their camp, because they too might have germs.
The jump to this chapter from the previous one is significant for two reasons. First, the narrator was just dreaming of a woman who is madly in love with him—and Margo is that figure, to some extent, though she seems much more complex and less committed than the narrator’s dream girl. Second, the desert setting suggests that the era of flooding is over…but that new torments, likely widespread illness, have taken the floods’ place.
Themes
While the narrator is trying to decide if a plant he’s dug up is edible, he spots a man in a brown overcoat. The warm coat signals that the man might have chills, meaning he is likely infected. The sick man crawls to the biggest nearby tree and collapses, feeling his face for fever as he vomits. As quietly as he can, the narrator crab walks to his knife, even though he would never get close enough to the man to use it. They have a gun, but Margo has taken it on her walk.
Between the earlier mention of the lark and the narrator’s fear of this sick man, it is clear that society has been swept with some deadly epidemic. It is also important to note that for the first time, the narrator is not the most extreme survivalist in his sphere: Margo doesn’t hesitate to take their best weapon out on her walks, leaving the narrator defenseless (in contrast to Dad’s “defensive” thinking).
Themes
The narrator grabs a mask, fearful that the wind could blow germs towards him. He then climbs a tree and watches for hours, furious at Margo for having left him like this. Day turns into night, and the sick man starts talking to invisible people or to God, raging at the world. The narrator reflects that Margo has been disappearing since they lived in the city together.
As the narrator hides out in the tree, his mind juxtaposes the reality of his crisis situation—a sick man could infect him with a fatal disease—with more mundane worries about Margo’s betrayals and inconsistencies. This juxtaposition both allows readers to identify with the narrator and emphasizes how hard it is to pay attention to external issues when internal ones clamor for attention.
Themes
Back in the city, Margo and the narrator used to share an apartment on the 20th floor of their building; the trek upstairs ensured that people left their stuff alone. Then, too, Margo would go off on her own (saying that she liked “quiet sometimes”), returning with stolen goods and enough water for a shower. Once she returned, she would be eager to chat with the narrator, sharing some fake story about where she had been. For his part, the narrator never liked being alone outside of the apartment, as he always felt safer with Margo around.
These details help connect the dots between this chapter and the last one: after the floods subsided (or perhaps to escape the floods), the narrator returned to the city, where various shortages made theft—even of basics like water—a necessity. This flashback also illustrates that the imbalance in the narrator’s relationship with Margo is a pattern, not a new development.
Themes
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The narrator had hoped that the wandering would stop once they built the desert camp. But after 10 days, Margo’s trips had resumed, as had the false excuses—though since there are no exes or drug dealers here, it is clear that all she really wants is solitude. Somehow, that hurts the narrator more.
The narrator’s pain at Margo’s abandonment is tremendously revealing: though he adopts a solitary mindset as a means of self-protection, Margo’s active desire for loneliness is totally alien to him. The narrator therefore seems to want companionship more than he lets on.
Themes
As he learned when he used to evacuate people, the narrator knows that “you can’t ask a person why they’re not giving you what you want and expect a response that’s going to make you feel any better.” People like Margo or the sick man are always trying to stall or find loopholes, especially in hard circumstances. The narrator considers escaping, but he knows that would make it impossible to reunite with Margo. Instead, he resolves to stay in the tree, breathing through his mask until the sick man dies.
The narrator’s insistence that Margo will not ever make him feel “any better” reflects his confusion at the unbreakable bond between Jenna and Liz—though he craves Margo’s company, he cannot imagine how another person could provide real comfort or transparency. At the same time, the narrator prioritizes remaining with Margo above his own safety, another sign that his love for her has forced him to alter his own principles.
Themes
The next morning, the sick man has finally spotted the narrator. The sick man launches into a conversation, identifying himself as the narrator’s “death warrant” even as he jokes about just having a bad cold. The sick man implores the narrator to take off his mask and crawls into the narrator’s tent, horrifying the narrator. Through it all, the sick man is interrupted by coughing fits.
On the one hand, the sick man’s failing body is a liability, as it will eventually kill him. But on the other hand, the sick man’s body is a new kind of weapon—he is able to take from the narrator with impunity (as signaled when he crawls in the tent), because the narrator is too afraid of being infected to fight.
Themes
The narrator asks the sick man to move away from him, but the sick man refuses, mocking this “Last Man Standing” mentality. Neither of them knows the exact mortality rate of this disease—it isn’t good—and the sick man at first resents the narrator’s health and youth. Soon enough, though, he changes tactics, hoping that the narrator survives and begging for “mercy.”
It is unclear if the sick man’s refusal to leave the narrator alone stems from the man’s desire for goods, revenge, or company—and this confusion mirrors and exaggerates the complex way that Margo treats the narrator, hurting him, helping him, and occasionally showing him love.
Themes
To calm himself, the narrator thinks about his morning routine with Margo: she gets up first, then collects dew in a rag for both of them to drink. Below him, the sick man is touching everything he can, as if consumed by mania. The narrator thinks that the sick man was probably a good person before he got so ill.
The narrator’s frustration with Margo is made all the more complicated by the real moments of care she does display. Again, the narrator’s view of Margo is linked to his view of the sick man: because of this warm memory of Margo, he is able to extend generosity to the sick man, imagining him before his illness.
Themes
As he moves around, the sick man urges the narrator to return to the city and steal from all the abandoned homes, particularly the ones by the waterfront. The narrator pictures the sick man as a tour guide, showing off the things people left behind when they died. The sick man tries to rile the narrator up, accusing him of not being grateful enough for his life, which is a relative “cake walk.”
The plague-ridden desert suggests a society transformed by overlapping apocalypses. But neither the narrator nor the sick man can let go of the traditions of the past: the sick man still fantasizes about fancy waterfront homes, while the narrator flashes back to city tours, a relic of a calmer time. This conversation of tour guides also foreshadows the final chapter, when the narrator will indeed lead tours for the wealthy.
Themes
The narrator lies to the sick man and says that he lives alone; when the sick man spots one of Margo’s bras, he assumes she has died. As the sick man drones on, lamenting his plight as “a barely surviving humanist in an inhuman world,” the narrator makes a deal with God: if he can get out of here alive, he will never steal anything again. The narrator tries to focus on missing Margo as a way to distract from the situation at hand. This mental tactic succeeds—“it’s like wanting her to be here makes me forget she’s not,” the narrator thinks.
Though the sick man contrasts humanism and survival, the narrator starts—in a shift from his mindset in the last two chapters—to see morality as the key to making it through instead of as an obstacle. Just as he used imagination to distract himself after Liz shot him, the narrator now wills a fantasy Margo into his head. It is telling that despite her physical reality, Margo is most comforting to the narrator as she exists in his mind.
Themes
When the narrator wakes up, he has fallen to the foot of the tree; Margo tends to his sore body, using water from the pit. To the narrator’s surprise, Margo reveals that a few walks ago, she discovered a high-tech campsite nearby. Each time she’s passed, Margo has found the campsite empty. The narrator feels uneasy about moving, but Margo calms him down by promising she misses him, too, when they’re not together. Just as Margo leans down to grab her bra, the events of the night before rush back to the narrator, and he cries out.
No wonder the narrator is confused about Margo: in this moment, her tender caretaking of the narrator’s foot contrasts with her secrecy, particularly her willingness to keep such potentially life-saving information as the campsite to herself. The sick man touched Margo’s bra, meaning it is likely infected—and therefore immensely dangerous for her to touch.
Themes
The couple is now rushing to get to the campsite, having left behind everything but a water jug (because it was all likely infected). The day is cooling down, and both Margo and the narrator privately wonder if they’re getting sick or if it’s just cold outside. They need to get to the campsite fast, especially because there will be lots of fancy drugs there.
Though Margo and the narrator are physically intimate in some ways (they have sex, they shower together), they cannot share their anxieties about illness and fragility with each other. The narrator imagines that each feels equally worried about having gotten sick, though neither of them voice it.
Themes
Recalling the deal he made with God about not stealing anymore, the narrator suddenly feels that it is not right for them to go to the campsite. Though the narrator is not religious, he feels “fallen,” the way they used to describe people in political campaigns. At the same time, he and Margo are bonded by their thievery—they met ransacking a jewelry store, when she was pinching a jewel-encrusted personal organizer.
Previously, the narrator saw thievery as a means of survival; now, he adopts a more religious moral code, believing that bad actions will reap punishment on a divine scale. Importantly, then, the survivalism that once bonded Margo and the narrator now seems to pry them apart. The narrator’s reference to political campaigns recalls the Barricades, and the split between Christian rural areas and secular urban ones.
Themes
Margo notices the narrator’s quiet, and she wonders if he is lying about whether or not the sick man ever touched him. Though the narrator is not lying about this, Margo assures him that she won’t leave, no matter what. Margo begs the narrator to talk and fill the space, so he asks why she kept the campsite a secret from him. He is especially hurt because he never keeps secrets, and “there’s nothing else to talk about out here.”
Despite her frequent flightiness, Margo does appear to have made a real commitment to the narrator, promising not to leave him even if his body betrays them both. But still, the narrator must struggle to reconcile Margo’s physical loyalty with her emotional inconsistency, her willingness to keep her own secrets even as she begs the narrator to talk and fill the space.
Themes
Margo claims she was trying to prevent the narrator from getting his hopes up, but he is skeptical. Suddenly, he is overcome with the desire to have folders and databases filled with summaries of Margo’s past trips. Though the narrator knows Margo will always come back to him, he can’t help feeling that he wants to be able to trust her completely—and that’s probably not ever going to happen.
The narrator feels so little trust in Margo that he wants to fact-check her with files and databases, relying on technology more than on human communication. This passage also foreshadows the narrator’s next government job, when he does use his access to databases to track Margo.
Themes
The two of them arrive at the tents, all of which have expensive filtration systems. It also looks like there is enough moisture here for some plants to grow still. Instinctively, the narrator wants to steal, but he is sure that if he does so, he and Margo will be “doomed” forever. Before he can decide what to do, Margo spots people—the camp is not abandoned after all. The narrator feels relieved, but guilty that their theft was stopped by circumstance rather than will.
Just a chapter ago, the narrator was struggling in floods; now, there is barely enough moisture for plants, signifying the mutability and unpredictability of each new apocalypse. The religious bent of the narrator’s sudden morality is clearer here: he wants not just to be good but to pass some sort of cosmic test.
Themes
The narrator pulls a twig from a bush, and it tastes good; to him, this is proof that he is on the right moral path. Though he and Margo have nothing left but their water jug, they eat the plant and calm down. The narrator dreams about asking Margo to marry him: “the way people used to do it,” in a garden “with everyone still alive.” Margo wants to use their gun to steal from the campers, but the narrator is firmly against it. Instead, he resolves to keep moving, and Margo agrees, impressed by her lover’s newfound confidence.
In the first chapter, the narrator questioned his grandparents’ quiet contentment, confusing their peace for boredom. Now, he wants nothing but normalcy: food that tastes good, a garden with plants that still grow, and a return to the traditions “people used to do.” More than any other passage thus far, the narrator’s desire for this kind of peaceful happiness emphasizes the true losses these disasters have caused.
Themes
