Vertigo: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

While Luke and Anna are still enjoying their new home, the complete lack of rain in Garra Nalla continues to be an annoyance. They had known that the area was prone to drought before they moved there, but they realize that hearing about the dryness isn’t the same as living in it. The couple is amazed at how dry the air is, especially when compared to the damp smell of their apartment back in the city. This dryness gradually settles into them, and they begin to feel as if it’s a part of them now. When their water tank starts to smell a bit off, Luke installs a filtration system beneath their sink. His skill in this practical matter surprises Anna, who assumed Luke wouldn’t be able to handle some of the house’s tougher projects.

As they walk by the lagoon one afternoon, Luke and Anna meet Alan Watts, another resident of Garra Nalla who lives nearby. Alan, his wife Bette, and their two children Zack and Briony live in a large but sparsely decorated house on the headland. Luke and Anna quickly become friends with the Watts family, and they begin playing tennis together on weekends. The tennis court is near an army base, so helicopters sometimes pass overhead as the couples compete. One day, a helicopter lands and two young soldiers step out. As Luke and Alan chat with them, Luke can’t help but feel old compared to the soldiers, even though they’re not much younger than him. He feels as though he’s lost much of his nerve and youthful energy.

That same evening, Luke, Anna, and the Watts play cards and discuss how they’ve been dealing with the drought. As the men examine brochures for a portable desalination plant, Anna and Bette stand by the window and watch a distant pod of dolphins. To Anna’s surprise, Bette suddenly asks her if she’s thought about starting a family. Anna answers that they haven’t decided yet, as she and Luke “have to decide where home is” first. Anna knows that she isn’t giving Bette the whole story, and Anna hopes that the boy isn’t around to hear this conversation.

Luke’s father Ken visits Garra Nalla in July, seeming restless as he gets accustomed to his new retirement. Ken seems clearly unimpressed with the rural area his son has moved to, wondering why Luke would want to live in a place without any of the usual features of a modern city. Luke holds his tongue. He doesn’t feel like arguing with his father about the move or his law degree, which Ken believes has been squandered by Luke’s career choices. During a walk one evening, Ken asks Luke how Anna has been handling her asthma, as well as “that other business.” Luke is silently annoyed that Ken can’t even openly talk about this recent, tragic event—seemingly something about losing a child. But it also occurs to Luke that this “other business” probably hurt Ken, who has no grandchildren.

Luke and Anna continue to tolerate the presence of Ken, who tries unsuccessfully not to seem bored. Anna privately jokes about Ken, comparing him to an old-fashioned school inspector, but Luke is miffed by the way Ken condescends to Gil. In the meantime, Anna notices that the boy never seems to appear when Ken or Gil are around. She wonders if the boy doesn’t like being around old men. On Ken’s last day in Garra Nalla, Anna hears the boy crying in the middle of the night and gets out of bed to check on him. His bed is empty, but this doesn’t scare Anna, as she knows the boy always comes back.

Spring arrives in Garra Nalla, bringing a relentless wind with it. A dry, scouring wind blows constantly, surprising even Gil with its consistent intensity. While Anna tries to put up with it, the wind eventually begins to get on her nerves as it continues for weeks. The sound of the wind rattling against the old house keeps her up at night, and Luke’s wry detachment annoys her. He’s a much heavier sleeper, so the wind doesn’t bother him nearly as much. One day, Anna leaves the laundry out to dry on the line outdoors, and a sheet blows off the line and into a patch of bracken. When she reaches down to pick it up, she finds a copperhead snake coiled underneath. Frightened, she has Luke ask Gil to get rid of it. After dispatching the snake, Gil winks and remarks that now Anna can really call herself a local.

The constant wind doesn’t abate as September and October roll around, and the drought is equally stubborn. While Luke and Anna hope for rain every time they hear a rumble of distant thunder, they eventually give up hope that the drought will end any time soon. It’s easy enough for Luke to tune out the wind as he works with his headphones on, but the wind still bothers Anna as her mental health deteriorates. Back in the city, the weather had just been background noise, but out in the country, the weather defines her world much more strongly. She begins to wonder if moving to Garra Nalla was a mistake, but Luke reassures her. He insists that they give it a proper chance by staying in Garra Nalla for at least another year. He’s patient with her, but he doesn’t want to think about leaving yet.

After getting through a long and busy period of work, Luke continues reading the travelogue by Sir Frederick Treves. Frederick is once again unimpressed by his visits to holy sites. He looks down contemptuously on the pilgrims visiting the supposed site of Cavalry, describing them as gullible fools and painting the entire experience in a depressing light. As Luke reads this, he can’t help but compare Treves’s commentary to Ken’s skeptical and cynical attitude. He reflects on Sir Frederick’s disillusionment; can such a dry and desolate place really be the Promised Land? Meanwhile, Anna watches the nightly news while the boy plays on the rug in front of her. As she watches the violent horrors of the Iraq war on the screen, she tells the boy that at least he’ll never have to be a soldier.

On a Saturday afternoon, Luke and Alan discuss the book by Sir Frederick Treves as they clear weeds from behind the sand-hills. Luke marvels at how the Middle East has become an area of constant war, when it was apparently so uneventful during Sir Frederick’s day. Alan surprises Luke by telling him that Gil has a grandson deployed as a commando in Afghanistan. Luke wonders why Gil wouldn’t have told him, and Alan explains that Gil is superstitious. Gil believes that if he doesn’t dwell on it, his boy will be safe. This conversation reminds Luke of the boy—his own boy—and he realizes he hasn’t thought about the boy in a while. On the way home, Luke sees a boy who looks a lot like his boy, and Alan points out a dead swan nearby that was apparently electrocuted by wires overhead.

The drought and the winds persist into November. Still shaken by the rough climate, Anna wonders if more snakes will start showing up, and also wonders what it would take for them to move back to the city. As Luke watches birds on the veranda one evening, she tries to float the idea off-handedly, remarking that she doesn’t think she could live in Garra Nalla all her life. Luke continues watching the birds, and Anna eventually goes inside, frustrated. But Luke has been paying attention the entire time, and he knows she’s upset. Understanding that Anna needs a break from the country, he suggests that they take a vacation into town. With feigned reluctance, Anna agrees. 

When the couple tells Gil that they’re visiting the city, he tells them to be careful not to “get caught there.” Feeling that Garra Nalla is truly their home now, Luke tells Gil not to worry about it. While Luke feels optimistic about the vacation on the drive out of Garra Nalla, he almost immediately sinks into a bad mood when they’ve arrived in town. He complains about the noise and the crowded beaches, and he even misses the gulls back home: the ones that live on a diet of shellfish rather than chips and other discarded human food. After five days in the city, Luke heads home early, while Anna resolves to stay in town for a while longer.

During her time alone in the city, Anna is happy to finally be out of the wind and free from Luke’s complaints. But eventually, she begins to feel confined and homesick, missing the spacious rooms of her house and the natural beauty of Garra Nalla. She realizes that Luke has created a situation where she can’t truly feel at home anywhere, whether urban or rural. Anna also notices that the boy hasn’t appeared to her during her entire stay in the city. She wonders why the boy always takes his father’s side, and she realizes that she hasn’t even seen the boy in three weeks. When she tries to picture his face, it’s pale and hazy like an old photograph.

Before she leaves the city, Anna resolves to live in Garra Nalla for at least one more year. However, she also privately decides that one day, they must move again. Until then, she wants a project to work on—something meaningful to leave behind before they move away. She researches the kinds of plants she could grow in a garden and decides to plant some weeping she-oaks. She considers this particular kind of tree to be beautiful and mysterious like no other plant she knows. To her annoyance, Gil advises her not to plant she-oaks, as they’re extremely flammable. On her first night back home, she digs for more information on the internet and discovers that her she-oaks are fireweeds that “respond to fire as others do to rain,” making them sound almost phoenix-like.

Gil visits Luke and Anna in an uproar one night to tell them that the consortium is planning to create a massive tree plantation in Garra Nalla. He furiously explains that the reckless landscaping, chemicals, and pesticides involved in the process will poison the lagoon and pollute the area, forcing the swans to breed elsewhere. Anna is outraged at this news, wondering if the local government will do anything about it. Gil explains that the council has always been in the pockets of the developers. Both Anna and Luke are upset by the idea that their quiet country town will be disrupted by noise and pollution, but Luke soon begins to calm down about it, which annoys Anna. She tells the boy that Luke doesn’t “deal with things,” and the boy runs off, seeming to take his father’s side as usual.

Anna is usually charmed and reassured by Luke’s personality and sharp mind, but during the next few weeks, she starts to resent him. She doubts that he’s created a good life for them, and she feels as though his old personality is slipping away. Where he was once sharp and alert, he now seems distant and stupidly content, almost as if he’s high or drunk. Anna watches him have an inane conversation about birds with Rodney on the veranda one day, and she despises the dull, boyish look on Luke’s face as he grins.

Anna looks out the window at Luke coming home from birdwatching one afternoon, and she suddenly feels completely alienated from him. She feels a dizzying sense of vertigo and panic while she watches her own husband as if he’s just a feature of the landscape, or a stranger. In this frightening moment, Anna has the sensation that everything in her life is illusory, inconsequential, or slipping away from her.

The thought occurs to Anna that she and Luke could disappear and nothing would change. Is there no meaning to their lives beyond their daily struggle to survive? Anna almost wants to grab onto Luke and steady herself when he walks inside. She feels lost and unmoored, and she wonders if this is because the boy seems to have abandoned them. For some reason or another, she senses that an important part of her is fading and dying.