On the Beach

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
The final lines of TS Eliot’s The Hollow Men are the epigraph for this understated, existential, apocalyptic novel. It’s situational, rather than plot or character-based. The writing is ordinary at the sentence level. Yet this made me feel more deeply than most novels do.

There has been a nuclear war in the northern hemisphere and radioactive fallout is spreading across the globe at a fairly predictable rate, as contact is progressively lost with places in north America, Europe, and Asia.
“The short, bewildering war had followed, the war of which no history had been written or ever would be written now.”

In Melbourne, they know what’s coming. They know roughly show more when (a few months). They know the symptoms of radiation sickness. They know it’s inevitable - and that suicide pills will be offered when death is imminent.

“It’s like waiting to be hung… Or maybe it’s a period of grace.”
However you would react (denial, recklessness, carrying on as normal, investigating and understanding, recording things for posterity), there’s a character with the same mindset, although they’re plausibly inconsistent.

Image: Dinghy racing and spectators on the beach. It's 1930s England, but I like the mood and image. (Source)

Often, daily life is spectacularly ordinary, idyllic even. People debate whether to open the trout season early, even though it will damage fishing for the following year.
“I couldn’t bear to - to just stop doing things and do nothing. You might as well die now and get it over.”
I thought of photos that have 9/11 in the background, while people in the foreground weren’t still, briefly, happily oblivious.

Men

“I’d like to do things right, up till the end.”
Dwight Towers captains what is almost certainly the last US submarine. He has/had a wife and two young children (he knows they’re long-dead, but often he talks of them in the present and future tenses). He takes some Australian crew to track radiation spread, search for survivors (they know there won't be any), and then to investigate a puzzling but nonsensical Morse message.
“They learned nothing, save for the inference that, when the end had come, the people had died tidily.”

Peter is an officer in the Australian navy, married to Mary (daughter of a naval officer), with a baby.
“She lived in a dream world of unreality, or else she would not admit reality.”

John Osborne is a scientist specialising in nuclear radiation. He wanted to be a racing driver and is lovingly restoring a Ferrari. The final Grand Prix, held earlier than usual, is a bloodbath, but exciting if that’s your thing.

Elderly gents at the Pastoral Club try to drink the cellar dry, while there’s still time.

Moira

Moira is a farmer’s daughter, only 24, and angry that she’ll never get to travel, marry, or have children, and bored because there’s no time to study or pursue a career.

The story seems to be about the men, but for me, Moira was the main character, and the most three-dimensional. The one who evolves the most. The one I wept for. She becomes insightful, selfless, and sensitive. The most mature of all of them.

Image: Moira watching a sub at sea, from the 1959 film

Is it too late?

Before the Cold War, I was taught to be afraid of strangers proffering sweets, getting a chill (as if we were in a Victorian novel), and quicksand (not a major risk of death anywhere). I knew my parents agreed with some UK, EU, and US newspapers and governments more than others. But back then, the assumption was that they all acted in good faith. Shute realised that was not necessarily the case.

“Newspapers… You could have done something with newspapers. We didn’t do it. No nation did, because we were all too silly. We liked our newspapers with pictures of beach girls and headlines about cases of indecent assault.”

Quotes

• “Northern hemisphere people seldom mixed well now with people of the southern hemisphere… The intolerable sympathy made a barrier.”

• “You’ve always known that you were going to die at some time. Well, now you know when.”

• “None of us really believe it’s going to happen - not to us.”

• “It’s not the end of the world at all,” he said. “It’s only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan’t be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.”

See/know also

There is a pervading sense of calm acceptance that makes this very different from most other apocalyptic fiction I can think of, like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (which I love and reviewed HERE).

Image: The cover of Raymond Briggs’ 1981 When the Wind Blows, the stuff of my childhood/teen nightmares.

Until a fortnight ago, I'd conflated Shute's novel with Alex Garland's The Beach, which I thought was some sort of soppy romance. However, “Wonderland: Science Fiction in the Atomic Age” on Sky Arts included this, and sent me scurrying to read it, though I confess to watching the 1959 film first. It stars Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner (too old for Moira), Fred Astaire (no dancing), and Anthony Perkins (no shower scene) and is not bad (see imdb), though of course, I preferred the book.

I thought the epigraph very apt, but in 1958, only a year after publication, Shute regretted it, telling Henry Hewes: "One reason is that while the association of the H-bomb is irrelevant to it, it would today come to everyone's mind.” See Wikipedia.

The title doesn’t just refer to pleasant scenes on the beach and in yacht races, which do feature. It’s also naval slang for retirement. show less

On the Beach by Nevil Shute tells the story of the last month’s in the lives of the last people on earth, and although slightly dated, still makes chills run up and down my spine. Nuclear war has come and gone, there is no one left alive in the earth’s northern hemisphere and clouds of radiation are slowing flowing south.

From the very beginning of the book, the people know that their time is limited, the story starts on January 27th and they know that the end will come sometime by the end of August or early September. We follow a small assortment of people living in and around Melbourne, Australia, through these end times and see them live out their time with dignity and honor. There are times when one or another gets a little show more shaky, but overall I was very moved by how they handled what was coming, of course the war was a year or so in the past so they had had time to work through their feelings of disbelief and anger. Slowly the cities of the southern hemisphere are blacked out by radiation poisoning and eventually the sickness arrives and the last surviving people on earth ready themselves for the end.

In Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, the world ends with a whimper not a bang, but this was nevertheless a shocking and terrifying read. I can imagine that this book had a powerful impact when it was released in the early 1960’s during the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis and such a future seemed possible. The author’s vision of a kinder, gentler end of life struck a cord with me, but sadly, I fear that people in today’s world of terrorism, religious intolerance and partisan politics would not go with so quietly or with such nobility. show less

2/5

Insane to think that at the end of the world, as the nuclear dust settles farther and farther away from the blast sites, as people realize their impending certain and gruesome fate at the hands of radiation poisoning, Nevil Shute thought that what would be most important is to uphold power structures, a stiff upper lip, and continue your role until the bitter end.

On the Beach is almost primordially conservative in its views. The important distinction is that, given this apocalyptic situation, not only would humans cling to the known because of the fear that pervades their last days, but also that doing so will give them the most satisfaction and purpose. Without these structures, we are nothing. Without continuing the monotonous show more tasks, jobs, and duties of everyday life, we will drink ourselves to death, which is really the only way that people lose control in the novel. Shute is completely unconcerned with larger scale changes in society, or any form of civil unrest. Society remains for the large part completely unchanged. There are no revolutions, no spiritual upheavals, nothing. Life goes on much the same as it had been, and this lack of imagination is both a symptom of Shute's worldview and unfortunately creeps into the narrative and prose.

What Shute IS concerned with is following both the explicit and unsaid rules that dictate society and honor. He believes in labor for labors sake, that labor intrinsically gives humanity some of the highest purpose they can experience. In my opinion these views are shallow and pessimistic, a monochrome perspective on what it means to be human. I felt a fundamental disconnect with the work the entire time I was reading it.

For awhile I questioned whether my opinion of On the Beach rested solely on my disagreement with his values, but I think I can concretely say that I had a distaste for the rest of the novel too. Even though it's regarded as a classic of the genre, the meat of the story doesn't really have much to do with anything SF at all. We spend a lot of time seeing the day to day activities of strained yet normal life for a cast of characters that I struggled to connect with. Few characters do anything of real importance outside their normal routines, only taking a day or two vacation during the months leading up to their deaths. It's a dull narrative, one feels very much like soap opera or movie from the 50's.

Most of the characters are so deluded about the current state of events that they plan for the years to come, planting gardens that will never sprout or repairing fence lines weeks before their death. It's an odd way to spend most of the meat of the novel, where only briefly are we granted reprieves in which characters have honest, sober conversations about their circumstances. These sober discussions are the highlight of the entire novel, and something that I wish Shute had spent more time on. Sometimes this delusion is so strong that I couldn't help but feel that everyone is so mentally unwell that I can't take anything they say seriously.

As a sidenote, Shute has a curious tendency to refer to the one infant character as 'it'. I really don't have an commentary about this piece of the novel, outside of it being rather unsettling and cold, but it's so memorably awkward I had to note it.

The ending, while touching, doesn't make up for the fundamental problems with the rest of the work. Perhaps interesting for its historical perspective, but ultimately unfulfilling and baffling. show less

On the Beach is probably the most famous atomic war book of the 1950s and 60s, and Nevil Shute's best known book, along with A Town Like Alice. He has a unique vision of the apocalypse, more like catching smallpox or the flu as radiation the silent killer slowly spreads around the world exterminating all living things. Shute's characters are exceedingly sober and responsible, and those that cross the line or don't redeem themselves get their due. Yet in the end no amount of sobriety can save them and you are left wondering what is life for. Partying? Racing cars? Scientific exploration? Religious piety? Fishing? Making babies? These were questions facing a generation of WWII vets in the 40s and 50s who were home from the war with its show more adrenaline highs and who found civilian life boring and slow. Shute's characters act out of duty, even when it's obvious it no longer makes sense to do so. It was this same blind obedience to duty that caused the war. He is advocating, indirectly, the dereliction of duty - rebellion. Just on the cusp of the 1960s, On the Beach was a book of rebellion for the sake of life. show less

What would you do if you know that you will be dead in a few months? What would you do if you know that humanity will disappear shortly after your death? Most authors will tell you a story of struggle and attempt to save humanity. Shute disagrees - in his novel humanity is doomed, even if they are not ready to admit it.

It all ended quickly - there was a war, someone threw a bomb, someone returned another and before the dust from the first one cleared, all nuclear arsenals of all nations in the Northern hemisphere were empty - and the end of the world began. There is noone left to tell the story - the people that did not die in those first hours died as the radiation settled on the land. And then it started moving south - due to the way show more the air masses move around the world, the Southern hemisphere got a bit longer - but Death was coming for them all. And it won't be easy - all the oil used to come from the North so people have to wait to die while finding a way to live.

And down at the south end of Australia, the last operational submarine of the US Navy tries to assist the last remaining command anywhere in the world - the Australian Navy's command structure is still in tact - even if they don't have any ships left - due to lack of oil. Early in the novel a second submarine is also available - attached to a friendly command in South America but as the winds keep on moving in their never ending cycle, that one is also lost.

The novel is not really about the apocalypse - it is there as a background but it is about the people and how to die with dignity. Some characters are almost cartoonish in their refusal to believe that the end is coming. Some realize all too well that they have no chance so they decide that this is the time to live - and drink all the good booze while at it. A man decides to participate in a car race. Another finds love but decides to resist it because he still feels married to his dead wife. And just because the world ends is not a reason for babies to stop being born or farms to be left untended. And people keep working and trying to find something to do.

The start of the novel drags a little bit - it seems almost pointless but as the novel continues that slow start makes more and more sense - the submarine's tour of the North Atlantic destroys the hope of a miracle and that tranquility becomes the counterpoint of the end. It does not even matter who started the war or the fact that as it turns out the retaliation strike was a mistake. One of the last surviving scientists has the best summary: the nuclear weapons got to cheap so everyone had them... even the country which should have been the last one in anyone's expectation to heat the Cold War - the first bomb was thrown by Albania.

Once the submarine is back, it is just a matter of time. And yet, people continue living. Maybe somewhere someone tries something. Maybe someone people decide to die earlier. But not the characters we get to know and the news do not report anything of the type either. As the stations of the world slowly stopped transmitting, the coming end is almost like a character of the novel.

Reading this in 2022 makes it sound too naive in places but at the same time it made me wonder if that passivity and "it won't happen to me" attitude is really that bizarre. I cannot imagine how that novel (or the movie based on it - apparently there is a movie) read to someone who lived in the mid-50s. And what will stay with me at the end is not the lack of hope but what people cared about at the end - their pets, the farm animals, their children, making sure that everything still looks good. And the big irony that rabbits will outlive everyone (that's Australia - they have interesting history with rabbits) and that Earth will be habitable again in just 20 years - but there won't be anyone and anything left. show less

In his book Rumors of War and Infernal Machines, Charles Gannon argues that "the discourse of nuclear literature has traditionally relied upon images because a personally meaningful quantitative assessment of the bomb’s annihilatory powers is impossible. Its size dwarfs and makes mute any discursive attempt to establish a connection between individual experience and the overwhelming total reality of a nuclear explosion." I definitely think this is true when it comes to On the Beach. It's the images that stuck with me between when I read this in high school (for class), reread it in college (for myself), and rereread it to teach it: the cloud of radioactive particles drifting south, the empty cities of North America, the seaman going show more out for one last fishing trip, the roads taken back over by horses. Shute's perspective on nuclear annihilation is oddly beautiful: even while nuclear war comes from the worst parts of our nature, he uses it to shine a light on our best parts. Everyone in this book does their duty up to the end, even those who didn't have any kind of duty to begin with. I started to cry when I read the last chapter, and that's the first time I've cried at a book in a long while. We no longer fear nuclear war the way we did in 1957, but the book is still a testament to how we all ought to confront death. show less

The post-nuclear holocaust future portrayed in this book hasn't yet come to pass in the real world. The survivors' actions, feelings, and fears are expertly portrayed by the author. Suspense is created by the activities of a submarine commander and the continuous search for evidence of life in the northern hemisphere. This Australian setting masterfully captures the real lives of those survivors while they wait for the arrival of the nuclear cloud. This book still challenges you to think about the possibility of nuclear annihilation. Commander Dwight Towers, an American submarine captain, clings to the illusion that his family in Connecticut is still alive, even purchasing gifts for a homecoming he knows will never occur. Shute focuses show more on how common people interpret the unimaginable through a "stiff-upper-lip" lens. When radiation sickness strikes Moira Davidson, a young woman who first attempts to drown her despair in alcohol before developing a close, platonic bond with Towers, Peter and Mary Holmes, a young Australian couple, struggle to maintain normalcy for their infant daughter while debating the agonizing necessity of euthanizing her.
A scientist named John Osborne spends his last months racing a Ferrari in the final Australian Grand Prix, a dream he has had all his life.

The story's "Slow Burn" effect has a subdued, objective tone. This eerie calm and the characters' insistence on caring for gardens they will never see bloom are exactly what make the absence of "action" or "rioting" gradually transform into a horror. I found the story to be emotionally compelling. show less