Thus a seemingly realistic scientific novel subtly becomes a macabre and surreal blending of the inner and outer worlds of Kerans and the other principal characters. Rather, he penetrates the heart of the apocalyptic experience by integrating the changing physical universe with a changing psychic one, as his characters progress to an intense new relationship with nature, derived partly from uterine fantasy and partly from the genetic unconscious. Ballard's interest does not lie simply in the usual apocalyptic concerns of how man is destroyed or finds a technology of escape. Robert Kerans, manager of a biological testing station monitoring the changes as the world, largely submerged under water, reverts to dense, virtually uninhabitable, tropical jungle. The main character of The Drowned World is Dr. Ballard's apocalyptic fiction, like his The Drought and The Wind from Nowhere, centers on a major "natural" change in the Earth's environment. Strangman: the pale, swaggering pirate leader of a party of grotesque and dangerous black looters Hardman: the helicopter pilot who is the-first to succumb to the triassic sun Robert Kerans: a biologist manning a testing station floating over Londonīeatrice Dahl: an exotic eccentric who chooses to remain in London rather than seek safety in GreenlandĬolonel Riggs: the director of Kerans' party An apocalyptic novel in which rising temperatures create a flooded, increasingly tropical Earth, and the human struggle to survive is complicated by psychological changes.ĭr.
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