The Human Cost of Climate Change
Although Jane Harper’s The Dry doesn’t explicitly mention climate change, it is an important context for the novel, where a new, drier climate causes mass poverty in the rural Australian town of Kiewarra. The novel doesn’t make scientific arguments and only indirectly references politics. Instead, it focuses on how a hotter, drier climate directly affects humans, showing how the drought destroys the local economy, tearing the small community of Kiewarra apart. What unites the characters…
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Justice
Like most detective stories, The Dry explores the concept of justice, examining how institutions like law enforcement both succeed and fail in carrying out justice. Protagonist Falk is both an insider and an outsider to conventional justice: though he is a police officer, he finds himself investigating a case outside his usual field of work and off the record after the original police investigative team make serious errors. Falk’s position as an unofficial investigator sometimes…
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Urban vs. Rural
Jane Harper’s The Dry is all about the clash between rural and urban, with big-city Melbourne resident Falk coming back to his old rural hometown of Kiewarra and struggling to fit in with the local culture. The dozens of local utes (“utility vehicles,” similar to pickup trucks) in town hint at how important manual labor is in rural Kiewarra. At first the novel may seem to focus predominantly on the negatives of rural life. The…
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Friendship
In Jane Harper’s The Dry, the actions of one teenage friend group continue to have an effect on a rural Australian community 20 years later. While Falk, Luke, Gretchen, and Ellie are inseparable in their youth, their friendship dissolves soon after the death of Ellie, when Falk leaves town and has limited contact with Luke and none with Gretchen. On the one hand, the novel depicts how friendships change and perhaps…
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