Apocalypse and Allusions: The End of The Drowned World Anjali Berdia College

In J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World, Kerans, the protagonist, decides to remain on Earth despite apocalyptic rising temperatures and dangerous levels of solar radiation. Kerans believes staying will fulfill some kind of spiritual purpose, as he wants to reconnect with prehistoric memories presented in the form of dreams. In order to achieve his goal, Kerans starts moving southward, going further into the jungles, though as he does so the temperature increasingly rises and the landscape becomes more and more dangerous. Ballard ends his novel with a sequence of important themes, starting with time and dreams, moving onto the importance of being remembered, and finally comparing Kerans’ death to immortal figures.

In the first full paragraph on the last page, Ballard plays with the concept of time and dreams to evaluate Kerans’ mission into the past. Ballard first describes Kerans, writing, “half asleep, he lay back thinking of the events of the past years that had culminated in their arrival at the central lagoons...” (198). Kerans is “half asleep” which results in him thinking of “past years” because in the novel sleep and the past are inextricably intertwined. Dreams act as a way for characters to travel back into a shared,...