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 keeps walking on the trail near where the river used to be, remembering the past. He walks back to his childhood home and remembers how he and Erik Falk had been happy once, even with his mother dead. Eventually, the woman currently living in the house comes out and asks if Falk needs anything. They have an awkward conversation, and the woman threatens to have her husband and his friends beat Falk up. Falk walks away without looking back.
Like the river, Falk’s childhood home is something he can’t return to. Falk seems to still feel grief or perhaps even guilt over the death of Ellie, and going back to his childhood home seems to be an attempt to bring back a part of the past that isn’t dead. But Falk soon finds out that his childhood house is no longer his home, representing how Kiewarra in general is no home for Falk anymore, particularly now that he’s adapted to urban life in Melbourne.
Themes
