| Title | On The Beach |
| Author | Nevil Shute |
| Copyright | 1957 |
| Type | Fiction |
| Length | 296 Pages |
| Finished Reading | May 3, 2024 |
| Ratings | Personal: 3 stars Amazon: 4.2 Stars (1,084 Ratings) GoodReads: 4.0 Stars (45,262 Ratings) |
In the 1950s the remnants of a nuclear war is spreading radiation slowly south where an American nuclear powered submarine is trapped in Melbourne. The novel centers on four people: Peter Holmes, an Australian navy officer, his wife, Mary, Dwight Towers (captain of the American vessel), and Moira Davidson.
Although the world slowly dies off, leaving Australia more and more isolated from the rest of the world, the survivors keep on with their day-to-day lives as best they can – adopting that “Keep Calm, and Carry On” spirit of the British empire. A strange repeating radio signal from Seattle Washington triggers a mission to find the source and see the effects of the war in the northern hemisphere. Commander Towers, operating under Australian command, is joined by Holmes as a liaison in the investigation. They must run submerged the entire time to avoid as much radiation as possible. They return with an unsatisfactory answer to the puzzle.
This novel is very much of its time (1957). The men are stoic and the women are either pure or racy. When the men speak with emotion they speak “huskily”. Whereas Mary is the pure wife and mother, Moira spent much of her life living the single life and, we are lead to believe, having dalliances with men. Nevertheless, she and Commander Towers develop a deep attraction to one another. Although Towers’ wife and family are all surely dead, Towers remains true to their memory and the two form a chaste friendship.
Looking at this from the 21st century, it is interesting to realize how limited information transfer was before satellites and cell phones. It may have worked in Australia, I don’t see everyone in America going on with their day-to-day lives knowing death was just weeks or months away.
In my previous book report I noted I never encountered The Great Gatsby in my high school or college studies even though it was a popular book for high school English classes. I have a closer attachment to this novel. In 1975 I was working toward a teaching certificate and did my student teaching at Vallivue High School in Nampa, Idaho under John Sollers (a great teacher; he reminded me of my favorite high school teacher Duane Hansen). When I first arrived, John was teaching this novel and I observed how a teacher goes about teaching literature in a high school setting.
The title refers to two things. First the phrase “On the Beach” refers to retiring from the navy. I don’t think it was explicitly stated in the novel; I learned it after finishing the book. Second, it relates to a portion of T. S. Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men. These lines appear just after the title page.
In this last of meeting places
T. S. Eliot The Hollow Men
We grope together
And Avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river…
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang but a whimper.
The characters are flat and border on cliché. But the novel does capture the dread of a slow but sure death moving toward the last of civilization. It is effective in showing the dread of the threat of nuclear war in the 1950s.
