Shute in his novel, On the Beach, provides many insights on humanities’ inability to comprehend its own demise regardless of the apparent inevitability and/or proximity of ones extermination. He effectively presents this psychological shortcoming of disbelief by delineating the common coping mechanism that is shared by all of the characters: The desire to work and maintain a progressive outlook towards ones future options. Work serves as a blinder or shield from the characters near termination by
In Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, the story of the last days of the lives of the last humans on Earth is told. Victims of Global-Thermonuclear war, which they took no part in, they are aware of the massive radiation cloud drifting south towards Australia. The main focus of the novel is not the plot, but the characters, who they become and what they do in their last days. Two such characters are John Osborne, a scientist studying the effects of the radiation, and Mary Holmes, a Navy-wife and recent mother
This conflict can be seen early in the novel because the characters in the novel are the world’s last few survivors of the first atomic war and have to figure out how to live with death unavoidable and possible at any moment (“Overview of Nevil Shute Norway”). As the last survivors in the entire world and as the only members left of humankind it 's clear how society is hard to cope with in a changing and ending world. “Overriding social issue of the novel is the end of society itself” (Beacham’s
having no grounding in an object, instead being the connection between beings and experience which provides for wholeness in life. But what draws the line between whether a given experience was one of Quality or one that is hollow and meaningless? Nevil Shute’s On the Beach illustrates the difference between experiencing the immutable Quality defined by Robert Pirsig in his work, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and living a hollow existence, elaborating on the necessity of caring and self-awareness
situations on the basis of how we feel rather than what we think. However, we should not let our emotions take absolute control so that we make careless decisions or do something for which someone else has to suffer. In the novel, On the Beach, Nevil Shute creates an emotional impact on the reader by showing how man misuses his intelligence, how people react to the situation and the effect of the loss of a loved one. Over centuries mankind has beared heavy losses due to the misuse of intelligence
War has the capacity to foster love while equalizing social status. The novels The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje and A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute substantiate the fact, through fiction, that during war-time men and women who are not of the same station in life can find an incomparable love with one another. Each novel also gives evidence of love igniting during war and surviving the trials of time and distance. Hana and Kip from The English Patient and Jean and Joe both go through these