On the Beach
Nevil Shute
1957

Introduction

The antiwar novel has a grand literary tradition. Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun (1939), and Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1948) are prime examples of novels that realistically portray the madness and brutality of war. While Nevil Shute's On the Beach is not as well-known as these other novels, it carries a powerful message about the dangers of nuclear warfare.

In his novel, Shute focuses on a group of ordinary people who wait for the inevitable radioactive fall-out of a devastating nuclear war to arrive in Melbourne, Australia. Many critics hailed the book as an insightful and humane cautionary fable. On the Beach continues to sell well for a forty-year-old novel, which suggests that the moral of the story remains relevant today.

Author Biography

Born Nevil Shute Norway, Shute was born on January 17, 1899, in a suburb of London, England. His father, Arthur Hamilton Norway, was the assistant secretary of the General Post Office in London. In 1912 his father was appointed head of the post office in Ireland. After moving to Dublin, Shute was sent to the Shrewsbury School in Oxford; in the summer, he stayed with his family in the countryside near Dublin.

In 1915, Shute's only brother, nineteen-year-old Fred, died in France during World War I. A short time later, Shute served as a stretcher-bearer during the 1916 Easter Rebellion in Ireland. During the fighting, Irish rebels occupied and burned his father's post office. He entered the Royal Military Academy and trained for several months to become a gunnery officer for the Royal Flying Corps, but a childhood stammer prevented him from getting a commission. Desperate to fight for England, he enlisted in the infantry, but the war ended before he saw any combat.

After graduating from Oxford in 1923, he worked at the de Havilland Aircraft Company. At this time he wrote his first novel, Stephen Morris, which wasn't published until after his death. His first published novel was Marazan, which appeared in 1926.

He eventually left de Havilland's to work on the R-100 airship project. The R-100 was one-half of a two-airship project commissioned by the government. Although the R-100 flew a successful round-trip to Canada, the government version of the aircraft—known as the R-101—was poorly designed and crashed in an accident over France during its first flight. The project was canceled, and Shute went on to form his own company, Airspeed Ltd., in 1930.

Shute married Frances Heaton in 1931. After publishing his third novel, Lonely Road (1932), he stopped writing to focus his attention on his new company.

In 1938 Shute resigned from Airspeed Ltd. and began writing again. With the advent of World War II, he joined the British Navy and was appointed head of the engineering section at the Admiralty Department of Miscellaneous Weapon Development. He went with the invasion fleet to Normandy on D-Day as a correspondent for the Ministry of Information.

After the war, Shute spent the next several years traveling. In 1945 he was a correspondent in Burma, and a few years later, he toured America by automobile in 1947. A few years later he flew his own airplane to Australia, which provided him with the subject matter for A Town Like Alice and Round the Bend (1951). In 1950 he moved to Australia.

Shute's later books were influenced by his growing interest in Eastern mysticism. He wrote and traveled extensively in the last decade of his life. In 1958 he had a major stroke. Only a year later he suffered a second one, but he was still able to complete his last novel, Trustee from the Tool-room (1960). On January 12, 1960, Shute fell ill while writing in his study. He died later that evening.

Plot Summary

Chapter 1

On the Beach opens with Lieutenant Commander Peter Holmes of the Royal Australian Navy preparing for a new naval assignment. One year earlier, there had been a devastating nuclear conflict in North America, Europe, and Asia. As a result, billions of people have died from nuclear radiation, which will eventually reach Australia.

However, Peter is happy to be getting a new assignment. After he fetches milk for his wife, Mary, and his infant daughter, Jennifer, he travels to Melbourne to learn the nature of his new appointment.

In Melbourne, Peter is appointed as the liaison officer to the U.S. submarine, the U.S.S. Scorpion. He has met the captain, Commander Dwight Towers, and remembers him as a "… quiet, soft-spoken man of thirty-five or so with a slight New England accent."

When the war had erupted a year earlier, the Scorpion was cruising near Australia. When Towers was unable to raise a radio signal from the United States, he set course for Yap Island, a small cable post under U.S. control:

Here he learned for the first time of the Russian-Chinese war which had flared up out of the Russian-NATO war, that had in turn been born of the Israeli-Arab war, initiated by Albania.

Consequently, Towers placed his submarine under Australian command.

Peter decides to tour the submarine before his official posting begins. He informs Towers of their orders: to cruise north to Cairns, Port Moresby (New Guinea), and Darwin to search for signs of life. The Australian Royal Navy also has plans for a much longer voyage, but Peter doesn't know where.

He invites Towers to spend some time as a guest at his home in Falmouth near the beach. Towers agrees to spend a night so he can go for a swim. Later, Peter and Mary introduce him to Moira Davidson, a young family friend. Towers and Moira have a drink in town before going to the Holmes household.

Moira continually flirts with Towers, and he is surprised to find he still has his sense of humor. Later, after the party, a drunk Moira begins to cry because she will never be able to have a family like Mary. Towers sympathizes, but he is unable to bring himself to comfort her. He asks Mary to put her to bed.

Chapter 2

The morning after the party, Towers goes to church and reflects upon his late family. He and Moira arrange to meet again before the Scorpion leaves for their first mission.

When Towers returns to his submarine, he discovers that a civilian scientific officer has been assigned to the mission. A reserved, somewhat morose, young man named John Osborne is in charge of observing and recording radiation levels during the cruise through the northern Coral Sea. Osborne is described as having a "lean, intelligent face" and a "loose, ungainly figure."

Moira arrives the following day for a tour of the submarine. While changing her clothes in Towers's cabin, she sees photographs of his late family. She vows to herself to make their evening date fun. During their date, Towers suggests to her that she should go to school instead of spending most of her time drinking.

At the end of their date, he promises to call when he returns from his mission. The next day, he learns from the First Naval Member that the radiation is now as far south as Townsville. He is forbidden to allow anyone on his submarine once he reaches that point.

Chapter Three

The mission is discouraging: there are no signs of life in Darwin or Port Moresby; they see only a dog in Cairns; they find a ghostly tanker floating between Cairns and Port Moresby, but the radiation is too high to board the ship.

The men discuss the origins of the war, which seem to be mysterious. For some reason, Albania bombed Naples. Tel Aviv was then bombed, spurring an Israeli-Arab war. Towers reveals that the Americans bombed the Soviets by mistake. Egyptians using Russian bombers attacked London and Washington D.C., and the Americans retaliated by attacking Russia. China also attacked Russia, and the Soviets retaliated.

Returning to Melbourne, the men learn that one of the crew has contracted measles. Towers also learns that the only other remaining submarine in the American fleet, the U.S.S. Swordfish, cruised along the eastern seaboard of the United States and found no signs of life.

Towers spends more time with Moira at Falmouth. He tells her that he suspects that his submarine will be sent on a mission to the United States. He also tells her about his family, and he reveals his belief that he will somehow be reunited with them in the afterlife. Moira begins to understand his need to be faithful to the memory of his family.

Chapter Four

Peter and Mary begin planning flower and vegetable gardens. Moira finds the idea ridiculous because the couple will not be alive to see the gardens grow, but Towers understands the need for some kind of hope in a time of crisis:

"Maybe they don't believe [that the radiation will soon kill them]. Maybe they think they can take it all with them and have it where they're going to, someplace. I wouldn't know." He paused. "The thing is, they just kind of like to plan a garden. Don't you go and spoil it for them, telling them they're crazy."

Moira invites Towers to her parent's farm for a few days of rest and reflection. He accepts, and they spend several days helping Moira's father work on the farm.

Towers is ordered to take the Scorpion on a long and dangerous mission to Seattle to investigate a mysterious radio signal. Peter later discusses radiation sickness with the pharmacist, Mr. Goldie. Goldie instructs Peter on the use of the mercy-killing drugs. He tells him that they will be available for free when the radiation reaches Melbourne.

Chapter Five

Peter fears that he may not return from his next mission, so he reluctantly explains to Mary the symptoms of radiation sickness and the possibility that she may have to inject Jennifer with poison and take a suicide tablet herself in order to end their suffering. Mary is appalled and the couple has a terrible argument. Later, she realizes that Peter is only trying to protect them from prolonged agony and she apologizes for her reaction.

Osborne practices racing his Ferrari on the deserted highways and a race track. Driving the car excites him and fills him with confidence. Moira reveals to Towers that she has been taking classes. Having trouble accepting the deaths of his family members, Towers purchases an expensive bracelet for his wife and a fishing rod for his son, but he cannot locate a Pogo stick for his daughter. He is deeply moved when Moira promises to find one for him while he is on the cruise.

Chapter Six

The submarine safely makes it across the Pacific and into Puget Sound. They find no signs of life in Seattle. The submarine locates the source of the radio signal, a radio installation on Santa Maria Island.

Lieutenant Sunderstrom, an officer familiar with the installation, dons a protective suit to go ashore. He discovers that a broken window frame rattling on a transmitting key is the source of the radio signal. He sends a message to Australia to inform them that all is well, shuts the installation down, and returns to the submarine to be decontaminated.

Mary and Moira are informed that the men have completed the first half of their voyage safely. Moira tells Mary that she is in love with Towers, but that he would never be able to marry her. The Scorpion returns to Melbourne and Towers discovers that he has been appointed the Commanding Officer of the U.S. Naval Forces.

Chapter Seven

Towers comes down with a fever and spends several days in bed at the Davidson farm. Moira gives him a Pogo stick engraved with his daughter's name. Osborne visits the farm and shows them his Ferrari. He informs them that the radiation is showing no signs of slowing down. Towers gets well after several days of rest.

As the weeks pass, Osborne prepares for the time trials of the Australian Grand Prix, Peter and Mary work on their garden, and Towers works on the submarine while dating Moira. Osborne wins a position for the Grand Prix.

Chapter Eight

The only other surviving American naval vessel, the U.S.S. Swordfish, is at port in Montevideo, Uruguay, when the radiation reaches it. Towers reluctantly orders the commander to sink the submarine in deep water. The Scorpion is now the last submarine in the U.S. Navy.

On a shopping trip, Peter and Mary find Melbourne dirty and almost deserted. Towers is forced to discipline some of his crew when drunkenness becomes a problem.

Osborne wins the Australian Grand Prix. Later, Osborne calls Towers to inform him that the first cases of radiation sickness have appeared in Melbourne.

Chapter Nine

Towers informs Peter that he will soon be taking the Scorpion out to sea to sink it. He will go down with the ship, and bids Peter farewell. Osborne visits his mother for the last time. He puts her dog to sleep after his mother has committed suicide.

Peter and Mary both get radiation sickness, but Peter rebounds. He visits Osborne to ask him if recovery is possible; Osborne tells him it is temporary and Peter returns home to his wife. Osborne takes his tablet behind the wheel of his beloved Ferrari.

Peter injects the baby with poison. He and Mary take their tablets in bed together after expressing their love for each other. Moira visits Towers for the last time at the submarine; they are both very sick. She asks to go with him and he reluctantly refuses. Moira drives to a point where she can watch the submarine cruise away. There, she takes her tablet with a glass of brandy.

Characters

Bill Davidson

Bill is Moira's father. An old-fashioned sheep rancher, he is glad to welcome Dwight Towers to his home for a visit. The two men discuss the grim effects the nuclear holocaust will have on Australia. Bill plans to remain on his farm when the radiation reaches Melbourne. In the end, he and his wife express regret that Tower and Moira do not marry.

Moira Davidson

Moira Davidson is a friend of Peter and Mary Holmes. She copes with her impending death by constant drinking and promiscuity. However, her relationship with American naval officer Dwight Towers changes her.

At first she is flighty and flirtatious with him, but the officer's good nature and loyalty to his dead family touches her. Unfortunately, Moira gradually realizes that Towers will never be able to completely give himself to her because he is faithful to the memory of his wife.

Yet her relationship with Towers inspires her to quit drinking and find constructive ways to spend her last days. In addition, she strives to make his last months in Australia as pleasant as possible. She brings him home to her family, mends his clothes, and takes him on a fishing trip. Although Towers will not take her with him when he leaves to sink the submarine, she dies with dignity and peace.

Mrs. Davidson

Mrs. Davidson is Moira's mother. She helps Moira mend Towers's clothes.

Sir Douglas Froude

Sir Douglas is John Osborne's great-uncle and a former general in the Australian army. In his final months, he devotes himself to drinking the three thousand bottles of vintage port stored in the cellars of the exclusive Pastoral Club.

Mr. Goldie

Mr. Goldie is the plainspoken pharmacist who describes the symptoms of radiation sickness to Peter Holmes. He demonstrates the use of the suicide tablets and syringes and informs Holmes that there will be no charge for the poison when it is needed.

Jennifer Holmes

Jennifer Holmes is the infant child of Peter and Mary Holmes. At the end of the novel, Holmes must inject the child with poison when the family becomes fatally ill from radiation poisoning.

Mary Holmes

Mary Holmes is the English wife of Lieutenant Commander Peter Holmes. She is supportive of her husband's naval career, even though it calls for him to be away from his family as the final days of civilization approach.

Mary's life revolves around her infant daughter, Jennifer. She has difficulty coming to terms with reality of her family's inevitable deaths and the devastation around her. To avoid it, she occupies her time by caring for her baby, housekeeping, and planning a garden that nobody will live to see.

Before leaving on an extended voyage to the United States, Peter explains to Mary that she may have to euthanize Jennifer and take a suicide tablet herself if the radiation reaches Melbourne before he returns from his mission. Mary is angry and horrified; she accuses him of trying to rid himself of his wife and child in order to run off with another woman.

It is at this point in the novel that Mary finally understands the reality of the situation. After her husband returns from his last mission, they spend their remaining time together working on the garden. They commit suicide together at the end of the novel.

Peter Holmes

Lieutenant Commander Peter Holmes of the Australian Royal Navy is appointed as the liaison officer to U.S. Commander Dwight Towers at the beginning of the novel. Peter is a good and generous man, loyal to the navy and a dutiful, loving husband to his wife, Mary. He becomes friends with Towers and introduces him to Moira Davidson. In his duties as liaison officer, Holmes goes on two missions aboard the American nuclear submarine, the U.S.S. Scorpion.

Before the second and final voyage, Peter reluctantly demonstrates the use of the suicide drugs to Mary in case he should not return. They have a terrible argument, but Mary ultimately recognizes the necessity of her husband's actions.

Fortunately, he does return from the mission in time to spend his final days with his family. When the first cases of radiation sickness appear in Melbourne, he bids farewell to Towers. Although Holmes and Mary get radiation sickness at approximately the same time, a couple of days later he feels as if his health is coming back. He tells John Osborne, only to be told that his recovery is only temporary. Peter decides the time has come, and he injects his baby daughter with the poison. Then he takes his tablet with Mary, committing suicide.

John Osborne

John Osborne is the pragmatic scientist assigned to the U.S.S. Scorpion. He studies the spread of radiation in the area. He is somewhat pessimistic and dour, as demonstrated by his comments when the submarine reaches Port Darwin:

They learned nothing, save for the inference that when the end had come the people had died tidily. "It's what animals do," John Osborne said. "Creep away into holes to die. They're probably all in bed."

"That's enough about that," the captain said.

"It's true," the scientist remarked.

However, Osborne's personality changes whenever he is near his treasured racing car, a red Ferrari he obtains from a widow. Osborne, knowing the end is near, plans to fulfill his lifetime dream of racing in a Grand Prix (even though he has never raced before).

In one of the more exciting passages in the book, Osborne competes in the time trials for the Grand Prix. Several racers are killed in the trials, but Osborne perseveres and gains a place in the race. Later, Towers and Moira learn of Osborne's victory in the Grand Prix while they are on a fishing trip. In the end, Osborne takes his tablet as he sits behind the wheel of his beloved Ferrari.

Mrs. Osborne

Mrs. Osborne is John Osborne's mother. John shares a few moments with her before going to the office for the last time. She worries about her pet dog, a Pekinese named Ming. When John returns from the office, he finds his mother has taken her pill and left him a note saying goodbye. He euthanizes the dog and puts it in its basket next to his mother's bed.

Mr. Paul

At the beginning of On the Beach, Peter Holmes acquires milk from a farmer named Mr. Paul. His conversation with the farmer reveals the grim conditions of postwar Australia in the novel. They discuss the difficulty of obtaining fuel and other items, and the decreasing value of money is demonstrated by the farmer's casual attitude when Peter promises that he will pay for any milk that Mary needs when he returns.

Lieutenant Sunderstrom

Lieutenant Sunderstrom volunteers to go ashore to investigate the communications installation on Santa Maria Island in order to determine the origin of the mysterious radio signal. At one time stationed on the island, he is familiar with the layout of the area. Protected by a radiation suit, he determines that the signal was caused by a broken window frame resting on a transmitting key. He yearns to take a carton of Lucky Strikes that he finds at the installation, but he knows they are hot with radioactivity. He does, however, sneak back three issues of The Saturday Evening Post.

Ralph Swain

Radar operator Yeoman First Class Ralph Swain jumps ship when the submarine surfaces near the shore of his hometown in United States. They are unable to convince him to return as he swims to shore. The submarine returns after Sun-derstrom's mission on Santa Maria Island only to find Swain fishing. The young man reports that P>everyone in the city is dead. He apologizes for jumping ship, but tells the captain that he wants to die in his hometown. The captain wishes him luck and the submarine returns to Australia.

Dwight Towers

Dwight Towers is the captain of the U.S. submarine, the U.S.S. Scorpion. The Scorpion was cruising near Midway when the nuclear holocaust devastated most of the civilized world. The Australian Royal Navy ultimately sends the submarine on two missions: one to the northern coast of Australia, and one to the western coast of the United States.

Towers becomes friends with the Australian liaison officer, Lieutenant Commander Peter Holmes. Peter and his wife, Mary, introduce him to Moira Davidson, a family friend. Moira, a vivacious young woman, falls in love with him.

Media Adaptations

• On the Beach was adapted as a film by John Paxton in 1959. This critically acclaimed film version was directed by Stanley Kramer and features an all-star cast, including Gregory Peck as Dwight Towers, Ava Gardner as Moira Davidson, Anthony Perkins as Peter Holmes, and Fred Astaire as Julian (John in the novel) Osborne. It is available on videotape and DVD.
• There is also a 1989 audiotape version of the novel, read by James Smillie, available from Chivers Audio Books.
• A television movie version is currently in production, scheduled for broadcast in 2000. Australians Bryan Brown (Osborne) and Rachel Ward (Moira Davidson) are featured.

Towers comes to care deeply for Moira, but he cannot completely reciprocate her feelings because he is faithful to the memory of his dead wife. In fact, he behaves as if his family isn't dead. He tries to buy a special gift for each family member, such as an expensive bracelet for his wife and a fishing pole for his son. However, he cannot locate a Pogo stick for his daughter. He is moved when Moira has one specially made for him.

Towers spends a considerable amount of time with Moira. Yet he is still unable to completely relinquish the memory of his wife. His loyalty to his job prevents him from allowing her to join him on the submarine at the end of the novel. Moira drives as close as she can to the point where Towers will sink the submarine. She vows to meet him in the afterlife as she takes her suicide tablet.

Themes

Death

The inevitability of death is the major theme of On the Beach. With the radiation cloud approaching Melbourne, the characters in the novel are very aware of their impending deaths. The main characters are all relatively young and they struggle with the intrinsic unfairness of this tragedy, as Peter does when he tries to explain the situation to his wife:

"It's the end of everything for all of us," [Peter] said. "We're going to lose most of the years of life we've looked forward to, and Jennifer's going to lose all of them."

Shute explores the way various people react to the sobering reality of death. Several of the characters in On the Beach are in denial, which means they ignore their impending death. For example, Mary plans a garden that she will never live to see. Towers buys thoughtful presents for his late family and remains faithful to his dead wife.

Other characters resort to self-indulgence in the face of death. Sir Douglas Froude plans to drink the entire wine inventory of the Pastoral Club. At the beginning of the novel, Moira is a somewhat promiscuous drunk. Through her growing feelings for Towers, she transforms into a selfless heroine; she tempers her drinking and self-pity in order to care for him although she knows he will never reciprocate. This selflessness is also a viable and recognized reaction to death.

Another reaction to death is to take outrageous challenges. In the novel, John Osborne's obsession with racing illustrates this reaction. Osborne is a dreary and meek man until he gets behind the wheel of his Ferarri. When Towers asks Osborne what the car is like in a race, Osborne's reply is reminiscent of someone who has been on a great roller-coaster ride:

"You get scared stiff. Then directly it's over you want to go on and do it again."

War

On the Beach can be viewed as a cautionary fable that is meant to warn readers about the dangers of nuclear war. Written during the height of the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, many people believed that World War III was inevitable.

Topics for Further Study

• Study the anti-nuclear movements of the past several decades. Who were the leaders of these movements? Were they successful in their efforts? What effects have nuclear accidents at power plants, such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, had on these movements?
• In one passage of On the Beach, Towers and Moira go to a museum to view paintings influenced by the devastation of the nuclear holocaust. Using whatever media you wish (pencils, paint, collage, video, etc.), make your own "statement" about nuclear warfare.
• Several of the characters in On the Beach spend their last days fulfilling lifelong dreams. Osborne races his car in the Grand Prix, Mary works on her garden, and Sir Douglas Froude attempts to drink thousands of bottles of port. Write an essay describing what you would do if you had only six months left to live.
• Create a timeline for the novel. How fast does radiation spread? Does the novel accurately portray what would happen in a nuclear war? How would the world's weather patterns impact the spread of radiation? Illustrate your timeline by using maps.
• Watch the film version of On the Beach and compare it to the novel. You might also watch other films dealing with nuclear warfare, such as Testament and The Day After, and compare them to On the Beach.

Shute is more concerned with exploring the reactions of the characters to the war's aftermath than he is with the war itself, but it is obvious that he believes that the idea of a "winnable" nuclear war is ridiculous and irresponsible. This attitude is reflected during the final conversation between Peter and Mary:

"Couldn't anyone have stopped it?" [asked Mary.]

"I don't know … Some kinds of silliness you just can't stop." [Peter] said. "I mean, if a couple of hundred million people all decide that their national honour requires them to drop cobalt bombs upon their neighbour, well, there's not much that you or I can do about it. The only possible hope would have been to educate them out of their silliness."

Hope

In the novel, Shute recognizes the human capacity for hope under even the worst of circumstances. The Royal Australian Navy sends the U.S.S. Scorpion on two missions in the hope that they will find some signs of life. Peter and Mary plan a garden. However, the most stirring example of hope in the novel is Towers's fervent belief that he will be joining his wife and children in the afterlife. His hope also inspires Moira at the very end of the novel:

She took the cork out of the bottle. It was ten past ten. She said earnestly, "Dwight, if you're on your way already, wait for me."

Then she put the tablets in her mouth and swallowed them down with a mouthful of brandy, sitting behind the wheel of her big car.

Euthanasia

Euthanasia, or mercy-killing, is one of the most controversial themes of On the Beach. In the novel, euthanasia is used in order to save people from the horrible affects of radiation poisoning.

Radiation sickness has horribly debilitating effects on the human body. The Australian government doles out a free drug to the general public so that people may end their lives painlessly. Syringes are also provided so that people may be injected by another person. The pharmacist, Mr. Goldie, recognizes the implications of this development:

"There must be terrible complications over the religious side," he said. "I suppose then that it's a matter for the individual."

There are indeed "terrible complications." One of the most traumatic episodes in the book takes place when Peter tries to explain to Mary that it may be necessary for her to kill her own infant daughter to spare the child from suffering. Mary is understandably horrified, and she accuses Peter of trying to rid himself of her and the baby so he can run off with another woman. Peter angrily describes an appalling scenario to shock some sense into her:

"There's another thing you'd better think about," he said. "Jennifer may live longer than you will … You can battle on as long as you can stand, until you die. But Jennifer may not be dead. She may live on for days, crying and vomiting all over herself in her cot and laying in her muck, with you dead on the floor beside her and nobody to help her. Finally, of course, she'll die. Do you want her to die like that? If you do, I don't." He turned away. "Just think about it, and don't be such a bloody fool."

In the end, Peter is responsible for injecting his daughter with the drug. Shute examines this disturbing theme in a very straightforward manner. The novelist seems less troubled by the moral issues of euthanasia than by the circumstances that might force a man to kill his own daughter.

Style

Science Fiction

Science fiction is a type of narrative that utilizes real or imagined scientific theories and technology. Although Shute is not typically recognized as a science fiction writer, On the Beach can be considered a science fiction novel because it contemplates the consequences of a global nuclear war.

Some critics do not take science fiction literature seriously as a genre. However, since the late 1950s, many science fiction authors have tackled themes of enormous importance with spectacular results. Many of the writers associated with the genre, such as Harlan Ellison, Kurt Vonnegut, and J. G. Ballard, have earned the respect of critics for their insightful and stylish work.

The devastating potential of a nuclear war is the subject of many science fiction novels and short stories. Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon (1959), Harlan Ellison's "A Boy and His Dog" (1969), and Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker (1980) are just a few diverse examples. Shute is more concerned with the psychology of his characters and their reactions to their grim circumstances than he is with the war itself, but the speculative nature of the work identifies it as science fiction.

Setting

The setting of On the Beach is an important plot element. Australia's location spares the country from the awful destruction that takes place in other parts of the world during the war. Unfortu-nately, there is no escaping the radioactive fall-out that accompanies the widespread use of nuclear weapons. The earth's winds gradually move the radiation cloud southward.

Most of the novel's action takes place in and around Melbourne. As the city is in Australia's southern region, it would be of the last cities in the world to be affected by the radiation. The inhabitants of Melbourne are therefore forced to watch as the entire populations of the cities to the north die of radiation sickness.

Shute evokes a nightmarish atmosphere. For example, most of Australia's large cities are located on the coasts. This allows the Scorpion to directly observe the ghostly, deserted streets of Cairns and Darwin. The crew realizes that in just a few months Melbourne will look the same. Thus, the setting of the novel allows Shute to examine the behavior of characters who are aware of their terrifying predicament.

Point of View

On the Beach is written in the third-person point of view. In other words, the reader is provided with an omniscient narrative perspective in order to get the thoughts of many characters.

The majority of the book concerns the thoughts and feelings of the five major characters: Peter Holmes, Mary Holmes, Dwight Towers, Moira Davidson, and John Osborne. However, the reader is also privy to the thoughts of secondary characters, such as Lieutenant Sunderstrom.

Stereotype

There are several familiar stereotypes in On the Beach. Both Peter Holmes and Dwight Towers are presented as loyal, brave military men. Mary is portrayed as the devoted mother.

Perhaps most recognizable is the mousy, pragmatic scientist, John Osborne, who is characterized by his serious, sullen demeanor. Of course, he is a completely different man when he is behind the wheel of his Ferrari. He then becomes a daredevil. All of these are common stereotypes in modern fiction.

Historical Context

Australia

On the Beach is set on the island continent of Australia. As mentioned above, the setting of the story is important as its location spares it from the destruction that takes place in the rest of the world.

Australia is the only continent occupied by a single nation. As two-thirds of the continent is desert or semi-desert, over 86% of the population lives in cities. It is the most urbanized country in the world.

When Dwight Towers visits the Davidson family's farm, he comments on the beauty of the surrounding countryside. Mrs. Davidson's reply reveals Australia's historical origins:

"Yes, it's nice up here," said Mrs. Davidson. "But it can't compare with England. England's beautiful."

The American asked, "Were you born in England?"

"Me? No. I was born in Australia. My grandfather came out to Sydney in the early days, but he wasn't a convict. Then he took up land in the Riverina. Some of the family are there still."

The history of Australia is an interesting one. After the great navigator James Cook (1728–1779) charted the waters off the eastern coast of the continent in 1770, the English began to use New South Wales (as Australia was known at the time) as a penal colony.

The first governor-designate of New South Wales, Arthur Philip, established a settlement in Sydney Harbour on January, 26, 1788 (now celebrated as Australia Day). He had with him eleven ships, 443 seamen, 586 male and 192 female convicts, and 211 marines, as well as officials, wives, and children. Over the next several decades, there were 825 passages by convict ships transporting more than 150,000 criminals to Australia.

However, Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796–1862), a British official who led the efforts to colonize the continent, realized that a stable, civil society could not depend entirely on the transportation of convicts. The proceeds of land sales were used to subsidize the migration of free settlers. By 1839 there were twice as many free settlers as there were convicts. Abolitionist sentiment in England, along with the resentment of the free settlers, ultimately led to the end of the use of exile as punishment for crimes.

Australia was granted independence from England on January 1, 1901. The nation maintained a close relationship with England through most of the twentieth century. Australia was a firm ally of the United States during the Cold War.

However, Australia increasingly began to view itself as an Asian nation with people of European descent. Although Australia's contact with America and Europe remains close, the country now has vital trading partners in the economic powerhouses of East Asia.

On February 13, 1998, Australia's legislators proposed a referendum to turn the country into a fully independent republic by severing its ties to the British Crown. The proposed Republic of Australia would replace the monarchy with an Australian citizen as president. However, in 1999, the nation voted against the referendum. Today, Australia enjoys one of the world's highest standards of living, ranking sixteenth among the industrialized nations.

Aborigines

It might seem surprising that there is no mention of aboriginal culture in On the Beach. However, Shute's characters probably wouldn't have had much contact with the aborigines.

The aborigines are Australia's indigenous people. Scientists believe that the aborigines canoed to Australia from Southeast Asia approximately 30,000 to 50,000 years ago. The aborigines were hunter-gatherers living in tribes located for the most part in the northern part of the continent.

Unfortunately, like their Native American counterparts, contact with European settlers was detrimental to their culture and their existence. When the first settlers arrived in 1788, there were approximately 750,000 aborigines. Early settlers viewed the aborigines as uncivilized savages and attacked them remorselessly over the next century. By 1930, only 67,000 aborigines remained in Australia.

Colonial leaders recognized the problem as early as 1860 when the first protection act was passed. Many reserves were also established for aboriginal use and the aboriginal people presently own 11% of Australia's land. Aborigines were granted Australian citizenship by the government in 1967, although they were not granted the right to vote until 1984.

Compare & Contrast

• 1954: The United States launches the first nuclear-powered submarine, the U.S.S. Nautilus. In 1958 the Nautilus becomes the first ship to cross the North Pole.
  
  Today: The U.S. Navy operates approximately eighty nuclear submarines. However, reductions in defense budgeting target the latest class of nuclear attack sub, the Seawolf Originally, the government planned to build thirty of the two-billion-dollar subs; this number was reduced to three.
• 1957: On October 4, the Soviets launch Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, into orbit. This signals the beginning of the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States.
  
  Today: The U. S. space program continues to dominate space exploration. Plans are implemented to explore the surface of Mars and groundbreaking information is gathered from the Hubble telescope.
• 1957: Australia remains close to its Western allies. Prime Minister Robert Menzies strives to attract U.S. and European investment in the country. However, the nation's growing independence from Great Britain is symbolized by the change in its monetary unit from the British pound to the dollar in 1966. Australia begins to consider itself as an Asian nation.
  
  Today: Despite its increasingly Asian identity, the people of Australia vote against a parliamentary referendum to become a republic.
• 1961: American forces secretly invade Cuba on April 17 to quash Fidel Castro's communist government. The Bay of Pigs invasion, as it was known, is a disaster. The 1500 troops led by the CIA are forced to retreat. One year later, President John F. Kennedy forces the Soviets to remove nuclear missiles from Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States agrees to remove its missiles from Greece and Turkey in return.
  
  Today: Fidel Castro remains in power in Cuba. However, Castro attempts to improve his country's image by allowing Pope John Paul II to visit in 1998 and by hosting the Ibero-American summit in November, 1999.

The Cold War

On the Beach is influenced by the historical events of the Cold War between the United States (along with its Western European allies) and the Soviet Union. According to the second edition of Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary, a cold war can be defined as a sharp conflict in diplomacy, economics, etc. between states, regarded as potentially leading to war. During a 1947 congressional debate, American financier Bernard Baruch was one of the first people on record to use the term.

In an infamous 1946 speech, Winston Churchill warned that the United States and its allies had to be on guard against Soviet expansionism. His remarks seemed prescient when, in June 1948, the Soviet Union began the Berlin blockade, cutting off Berlin from the West. The United States began a vast airlift to keep Berlin supplied with food and fuel. In August of 1949, tensions increased even further when the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic device. For the first time, war had the potential to wipe out the human race.

America and its allies sought to impose a "policy of containment" on the Soviet Union and the spread of communism. They created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to prevent the Soviet Union from expanding in Western Europe. The Soviets responded by signing the Warsaw Pact with its Eastern European satellites.

Like many other people at the time, Shute believed that one of these conflicts would eventually lead to a full-scale nuclear war. The Cold War was considered over when the Berlin Wall collapsed on November 9, 1989. However, there is still a great concern over the use of nuclear weapons—as demonstrated by the nuclear testing done by India and Pakistan in 1998.

Critical Overview

On the Beach received mixed reviews when it was published in 1957. Most critical reaction focused on the antiwar theme. In a review published in a 1957 edition of the Atlantic, critic Edward Weeks wrote:

Only a very humane writer could have told a story as desolate as this and made it seem at once so close and implacable. The book held a kind of cobra fascination for me. I didn't want to keep looking, but I did to the end.

The eminent critic Edmund Fuller deemed On the Beach "[a]n austere, grim, moving, important book that could become real." Fuller asserted that Shute had skillfully written a suspenseful novel in spite of the fact that the reader knows how the book will end:

His success in this is manifest in the concern we feel for his characters; for concern, identification, and anguish—not surprise—are the essence of suspense.

However, it is those same characters that create problems for other critics. Several maintained that the characters are boring or unrealistic. For example, in a review published in the October 1957 edition of the Canadian Forum, critic Edith Fowke wrote:

Despite its powerful theme, Nevil Shute's book is a very bad novel. The people in it are dull and unimaginative, and the ending is anticlimactic rather than apocalyptic. In fact, his characters are so flat and unappealing that you may well feel their final death from the inevitable radioactive sickness is no great loss.

Several other critics suggested that the death of the characters in the novel is a relief. Of course, to be fair, more than one critic pointed out that the lives of the characters are deliberately portrayed as being average in an effort to make readers empathize. As for an anticlimactic ending, Shute foreshadows this on the title page of his novel with a quote from T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men":

In this last of meeting places / 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.

There has been very little critical attention for Shute's novel. As it is a dated work of popular fiction, there is little for scholars to study. However, it still attracts some interest as a cautionary fable. Perhaps the fairest assessment of the novel was written by Robert H. Estabrook in the August 12, 1957, issue of The New Republic: "On the Beach is not great literature, but it is not, either, a mere science fiction thriller…. It falls, actually, into the category of an evangelical effort, in the form of a novel, to save the world from its own folly. Hence, its significance lies in the possibility that it might stimulate action through capturing the popular imagination…."

Criticism

Don Akers

Don Akers is a freelance writer with an interest in literature. In the following essay, he compares Shute's fictional war scenario in On the Beach with historical events in the past several decades.

While the literary merits of Nevil Shute's On the Beach may be debated, there is no doubt that he struck a nerve with the readers of popular fiction in 1957.

World War II concluded with the nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, the end of the most destructive war of the twentieth century signaled the beginning of a new conflict: the Cold War. After defeating Germany and Japan, the Soviet Union separated from its western allies. Winston Churchill coined the term "iron curtain" in a 1946 speech describing this separation. Tensions escalated between these former allies when the Soviets detonated their own nuclear bomb in 1949.

During the next decade, a variety of events intensified worry over world peace: the Korean War; the communist witch-hunts in the United States; and the launching of the Soviet satellite Sputnik the same year On the Beach was published. Shute was one of many observers who believed another regional conflict like the one in Korea could very well lead to a devastating nuclear confrontation between the superpowers.

The war scenario Shute created would have been impossible during the time frame in which he set his novel (the early sixties). Of course, today's readers have the benefit of hindsight, and some elements of Shute's scenario are still worth examining. Shute based his novel on the various political conflicts of his day. Some of these animosities still exist, but today's world is much different than it was in the 1950s. Fortunately, the threat of a nuclear war between the superpowers has abated. There are still, however, great concerns over nuclear proliferation.

At this point, a brief review of Shute's fictional war is necessary. The novel begins just after Christmas, 1962. The story of the thirty-seven-day war that takes place almost a year before the opening of the novel are revealed in the thoughts and conversations of the characters. There are many gaps in their understanding of the war; in fact, even military men Dwight Towers and Peter Holmes are bewildered by many of the events and why they happened.

Early in 1962, Albania dropped a nuclear bomb on Naples, Italy. Albania's behavior is never explained. In an apparently related event, an unidentified Arab country bombed Tel Aviv, igniting an Arab-Israeli conflict. Shortly after the bombing of Tel Aviv, American and British airplanes flew over Egypt in a show of force. The Egyptians then sent a force of thirteen bombers, all of them manufactured by Russia and identified as Russian aircraft, to bomb Washington, D.C. and London. One reached the United States and two made it to London.

What Do I Read Next?

• For those interested in other novels by Nevil Shute, his most popular work is probably A Town Like Alice (1950). It chronicles Jean Paget's experiences during World War II in Malaya and her subsequent life in the Australian outback.
• Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon (1959) is an American novel about the survivors of a nuclear war living in Florida. A loafer named Randy Bragg turns into a leader after a bomb is dropped on Miami.
• Russell Hoban's 1980 novel, Riddley Walker, is set in England thousands of years in the future after a nuclear war wipes out most of the life on the planet. It relates the story of a young man's life in a neo-barbarian society. The novel is notable because of Hoban's clever use of language.
• The Making of the Atom Bomb (1986), written by Richard Rhodes, is an in-depth history of the development of the atom bomb. The book won several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award.
• Australia: A Traveler's Literary Companion (1998) is a collection of stories by some of Australia's most celebrated writers, including Peter Carey, Robert Drewe, and aboriginal writers Oodgeroo and Kabul Ooodgeroo Noonuccal. The stories present vivid portraits of Australian culture and society.

NATO, believing that the Russians had bombed the United States and England, dropped bombs on several Russian cities before learning that the Egyptians were to blame. China, in an attempt to take advantage of Russia's war with NATO, dropped bombs on several Russian industrial cities. However, the Soviets had been planning an attack on China even before the war with NATO. They retaliated against China swiftly. Over 4700 nuclear bombs were used during the course of the war. Much of the world is destroyed and it is only a matter of time before the radioactive fall-out wipes out the remaining life on the planet.

One of the inaccuracies in Shute's scenario is in his overestimation of the rate of nuclear proliferation among the nations of the world. When Shute wrote the book in 1957, only the United States, Soviet Union, and Great Britain had detonated nuclear weapons. By 1962, when the war in the novel takes place, France was the only nation to join the nuclear powers. Thus, it would have been impossible for the rest of the countries in Shute's book to use a nuclear bomb.

As of 1999, the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, and Israel are recognized as major nuclear powers. India and Pakistan recently joined the "nuclear club," although their delivery systems are not as advanced as the aforementioned nations. There are approximately thirty-six additional countries with some form of nuclear capability (Albania is not one of them).

While a nuclear clash between the superpowers may not be as likely as it was in Shute's era, there is as much concern about proliferation now than there ever was. The United States and its allies fear that various "rogue states," such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, and North Korea, may develop nuclear weapons and endanger the rest of the world with their instability.

Here, Shute may yet prove to be prescient. His characters do not blame the major powers for the start of the war. They blame the "Irresponsibles," meaning the smaller, unstable countries (such as Albania and Egypt in the novel), for beginning a war that quickly grew out of control. Today's readers can see a power-hungry dictator like Saddam Hussein in Iraq playing the role of an "Irresponsible."

As mentioned above, there is no explanation given for Albania's bombing of Italy in the novel. In 1957 Albania was a Warsaw Pact country. Albania strengthened its ties with the Soviet Union when Yugoslavia broke with Stalin in the late 1940s. One can only speculate on the Albanian bombing in the novel; perhaps it was in retaliation for Italy's invasion of the country in World War II.

Shute also connects the bombing of Naples with the bombing of Tel Aviv for some reason. Perhaps this was a show of support by an Arab country for the large Muslim population of Albania. Of course, there is no mystery as to why an Arab nation such as Egypt might have bombed Israel during the early sixties. Israel was not even a decade old when Shute published his novel. The new country was surrounded by enemies and, in 1956, Israel went to war with Egypt and captured the Gaza Strip on the Sinai Peninsula. Israel fought several wars with its Arab neighbors over the next three decades.

However, Israel and Egypt signed a historic peace treaty mediated by President Jimmy Carter on March 26, 1979. In the last decade, the world has watched with hope as the Israelis and Palestinians bargain for a lasting peace.

One of the most frightening elements of Shute's fictional war is the "accidental" bombing of Russia. NATO bombs the Soviet Union in retaliation for the bombing of Washington, D.C. and London, when in fact the Egyptians are responsible. The mistakenly launched nuclear missile has been a plot element in several novels, including Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler's Fail-Safe (1962), and films, such as Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).

The idea is disturbing precisely because it is within the realm of possibility. After all, fallible human beings design and operate complex nuclear weapons systems. The men and women who make decisions regarding the use of these systems are not perfect. In fact, a web edition of Scientific American (November 1997) posted a chilling article detailing a very close call.

On January 25, 1995, Russian radar technicians picked up a troubling blip on their screens. A rocket had been launched somewhere off the coast of Norway. An American submarine could conceivably launch a rocket from that range capable of dropping eight nuclear bombs on Moscow within fifteen minutes. Boris Yeltsin was contacted immediately as the technicians tracked the trajectory of the rocket. Yeltsin was holding the electronic case that could fire Russian nuclear missiles in response. For the first time ever, that case was activated for emergency use:

For a few tense moments, the trajectory of the mysterious rocket remained unknown to the worried Russian officials. Anxiety mounted when the separation of multiple rocket stages created an impression of a possible attack by several missiles. But the radar crews continued to track their targets, and after about eight minutes (just a few minutes short of the procedural deadline to respond to an impending nuclear attack), senior military officials determined that the rocket was headed far out to sea and posed no threat to Russia. The unidentified rocket in this case turned out to be a U.S. scientific probe, sent up to investigate the northern lights. Weeks earlier the Norwegians had duly informed Russian officials of the launch from the offshore island of Andoya, but somehow word of the high-altitude experiment had not reached the right ears.

Although the circumstances of the "accident" in Shute's novel are quite different, the above account demonstrates the terrifying possibility of an accidental launching of nuclear missiles.

On the Beach also details an abominable concept in its description of the war between the Russians and the Chinese: radiological warfare. Rather than use their nuclear arsenals as defensive weapons, the two nations simultaneously plan to drop hydrogen bombs on each other in a strategic use of radiation.

First of all, as noted above, this would have been impossible in 1962 because the Chinese had not yet developed a bomb. Second, even though Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated after the death of Joseph Stalin, both countries were too involved in their own affairs to meddle with each other. Finally, it is hard to believe that either government would choose to follow such an insane path. Sino-Soviet relations were normalized once again when Mikhail Gorbachev met Deng Xiaoping during a 1989 summit in Beijing.

In conclusion, the Cold War tensions that influenced the creation of a work like On the Beach are today virtually nonexistent. The world rejoiced when the symbol of communist oppression, the Berlin Wall, was brought down in November of 1989. Of course, even though a major conflict doesn't appear imminent, there are some potentially dangerous situations in various hot spots around the globe. The recent ethnic and religious hostilities in the Balkans serve as an example.

Shute's intent was to educate people on the madness of nuclear war. One would like to think that he accomplished his objective, but a recent vote in the U.S. Senate might indicate otherwise. Partisan conflict prevented the ratification of a worldwide nuclear test ban treaty. Certain U.S. senators might serve their constituents better if they were to read On the Beach.

Source: Don Akers, in an essay for Novels for Students, Gale, 2000.

Gene LaFaille

In the following review LaFaille contrasts the book to Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon.

Nevil Shute's On the Beach, although certainly intended for a mainstream audience when it was first published in 1957, immediately attracted the attention of the science fiction community because of its brilliant and horrifying depiction of the end of human life after an atomic war. On the Beach begins in Melbourne, Australia, in 1963, one year after a limited exchange of atomic weapons between China and Russia resulted in a wider conflict between the superpowers, as well as a series of regional conflicts with further atomic warfare. The result of this cataclysm is that there are no outward signs of human life after an atomic war. On the Beach begins in Melbourne, Australia in 1963, one year after a limited exchange of atomic weapons between China and Russia resulted in a wider conflict between the superpowers, as well as a series of regional conflicts with further atomic warfare. The result of this cataclysm is that there are no outward signs of human life in the Northern Hemisphere, and all life appears to be dying as the radioactive fallout is swept further and further south toward Australia by the wind. The impact of this approaching death on the increasingly restricted lives of the people of Australia over the course of the next year is admirably chronicled in On the Beach, but the focus of the novel is on the interaction of American naval officer Dwight Towers and Australian naval officer Peter Holmes, as well as on their friends and families. Towers, commander of the nuclear submarine U.S.S. Scorpion, which had been forced to travel to Australia in order to survive the holocaust, has left his family in America, where by now everyone is certainly dead. Holmes is the father of a new baby; his wife cannot fathom the finality of the approaching doom. Thrown together by the demands of this emergency and the need to work together in order to have a purpose in life, each struggles to maintain his sanity and values in a society that is slowly losing its grip on what is normal….

Despite the possibility of becoming a hysterical work, as did Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon, On the Beach never succumbs to that level, maintaining the narrative thread of an unrelenting fate even in the most tearful of situations. Women of the 1990s may be offended by the limited and stereotypical roles for women in this work, but On the Beach accurately reflects 1950s society. Moreover, it is the message that is important, and that message is as powerful after thirty-five years as when it was written. On the Beach is mesmerizing in its intensity, and almost impossible to put down once begun. This is very highly recommended for grade nine to adult collections in school and public libraries.

Source: Gene LaFaille, review of On the Beach, in Wilson Library Bulletin, Vol. 66, No. 10, 1992, p. 131.

Julian Smith

In the essay below, Smith discusses how Shute came to write On the Beach, noting the author's progress from optimism to pessimism and back again before, during, and after the novel's writing.

Saturday, November 6th. The blast at Amchitka had gone off six hours before, generating lord only knows what shockwaves in the Pacific, not to mention concerned comments on the eleven o'clock news. The news ended, and the first of the late movies began: Stanley Kramer's On the Beach, based upon Nevil Shute's novel.

An epiphany! That movie of all movies on that night of all nights. The first important film treatment of nuclear holocaust, it premiered all around the world just thirteen years ago last November. I sat through it to the bitter end—everyone dead and a banner flying across the screen: THERE'S STILL TIME, BROTHER.

Thirteen years. And we're still playing with our devil toys. Is there really still time, brother, before the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper? The newscaster made a cute allusion to Eliot's lines, but I'm not being cute here, for Shute's novel took its title and epigraph from "The Hollow Men":

   In this last meeting place
   We grope together
   And avoid speech
   Gathered on this beach of the tumid river….
   This is the way the world ends …

Feeling on the beach myself, I sit down to tell you the story of how Nevil Shute, a most unlikely pacifist, came to write what is probably the most famous and best-selling antibomb novel of, as the expression goes, all time.

Oddly enough, I discovered the genesis of On the Beach with the help of a federal agency (no, not the CIA). It all started right in the middle of the campus unrest following the first of our annual territorial extensions of the Vietnam war, and during a period when I was having most grave doubts about the wisdom of ever having anything further to do with our government. It was then that I was co-opted most sinisterly via a travel and research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Why had my soul, I wondered, suddenly become so valuable? So it came to pass that I found myself bestilled in the National Liberty of Australia, there charged with somehow making a "wider application of humanistic knowledge and insights to the general public interest". Luckily, I discovered letters and notes, some on the back of the proverbial envelope, tracing the growth of On the Beach. And therein lies the story of an engineer and novelist who suddenly came to the realization that the technology he had espoused all his life might not after all be capable of creating an earthly paradise.

An earthly paradise—Shute took pride in the fact that he used the money from the only prize he won at Oxford to buy a slide rule and a copy of William Morris' The Earthly Paradise. But he quickly forgot his Morris. From the end of the First War to the outbreak of the Second, he was an aeronautical engineer. After a very responsible position in England's disastrous rigid-airship program in the twenties, he became a founder and managing director of an aviation firm that helped develop a number of technologies (in-flight refueling, for one) that would make air warfare the tremendous success it is. In 1939, angered by the shortsightedness of air-raid planning for the coming war, he wrote a very accurate description of the impact of bombing on the civilian population of England. The book was a great popular hit but somehow missed pointing out that dropping bombs on people was, well, immoral. And during the war he headed the engineering staff for a secret Admiralty department charged with developing clever ways of dispatching the Boche. Chief among his toys was a gigantic flame-thrower for knocking down low-flying planes. Ultimately impractical, the flamethrower scheme gave him the idea for a novel in which the heroes have lots of fun squirting dirty burning oil on Germans in order to kill and maim them in a particularly nasty way meant to impress the dispirited French. Oh, noble aspirations of man. Oh, William Morris.

How did this man of the machine, this author of twenty-odd romantic potboilers, decide to write the classic story of the end of the world? The answer, very simply, is that he didn't decide any such thing, that he set out quite cheerfully to write a kind of Australian Swiss Family Robinson about civilization carrying on Down Under after the big war Up Above.

It was exactly the same thing that happened to Mark Twain when he started A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: let's think of all the funny and wonderful things that could happen to a clever Yankee thrown back to the sixth century. Poor Twain, he set his Yankees in motion, and before he could stop him, Hank Morgan had machine-gunned, dynamited, and electrocuted thirty thousand knights—and found himself surrounded, trapped, and doomed by a pile of rotting corpses. What a paradigm of total war was there! So with Shute, as we will see.

The idea for On the Beach "started as a joke", Shute wrote a friend. "Now that I was living in Australia I kidded my friends in the northern hemisphere, telling them that if they weren't careful with atomic explosions they'd destroy themselves and we Australians would inherit the world". "The idea stayed in my mind in that form for about a year, in a slightly cynical or humorous form", he wrote an interviewer; but when research on the subject showed him that Australia would not escape a general doom but would only have a one-year reprieve, "it became an attractive speculation—what would ordinary people in my part of the world do with that year"? An attractive speculation. How Mark Twain must have smiled when his friends who roam through the world seeking the ruin of souls told him about that one. Behold, he who builds at-tractive speculations upon the misery of others shall be cast down.

The casting down of Nevil Shute began even before he started writing On the Beach. In mid-1954, while the idea for the book was still in its cynical form, he spent six weeks visiting West Australian oil-exploration sites. If civilization was to flourish in oil-poor Australia in the absence of the northern nations, a large part of the drama would be found in the discovery of native oil resources. It would be an exciting story, the kind he had been telling since his first Australian novel, A Town Like Alice (1950). At about the time he started research for the after-the-war book, he gushed to an interviewer that Australia "is a country with everything before it. It's what's called an expanding economy. Every time you drive along the road to town you see a new factory going up. It gives you a kind of kick to see that".

But within a year of the trip to the would-be oil fields, he had written his dreariest, most static novel, Beyond the Black Stump, in which an American oil-survey team finds no oil, in which the Australian heroine forsakes her family's remote sheep ranch for the bright America she discovers in the Saturday Evening Post—and returns disillusioned to her starting point. Never had he written such a book; the sense of movement and change and expansion that had marked his earlier books was suddenly aborted and would soon be followed by that almost motionless story of waiting for the end of mankind.

"When I was a student I was taught that engineering was 'the art of directing the great sources of Power in Nature to the use and convenience of man.'" Shute had operated throughout his professional life on that principle, but something had made him change: perhaps it was the result of thinking about the abuse of those great sources of Power in Nature that had made nuclear catastrophe a constant threat. But there is no way of knowing how the change came about—among the piles of notes and letters, no external clue to the internal process that darkened him, convinced him of a universal fate.

On the Beach envisions a world done in by gadgets, but a world that still loves the gadgets which have destroyed and will outlast their markers and quondam masters. The best example is the cataclysmic auto race that comes late in the novel. Round and round the track goes mankind, concerned only with proving that one machine is faster than another, concerned more with the efficiency of the machine than the safety of the men who use them or worship them. Shute was not mocking man, only explaining how things are. In fact, he bought a brand new Jaguar XK 140 when he started writing On the Beach and raced it himself in order to write about racing in the novel—or that was his excuse. From beginning to end, the novel is suffused with man's love for his creations: the scientist who carefully prepares his Ferrari for eternal storage before taking a suicide pill in the driver's seat; the captain who takes his submarine out to sea and sinks it, crew and all, rather than leave it behind "unprotected". Best of all, the book's last sentence: back on the beach a young woman watches the submarine disappear, then takes her pills, "swallowing them down with a mouthful of brandy, sitting behind the wheel of the big car". Drug, drink, car: the best the world has to offer. No criticism intended.

Ah, Amchitka. We don't intend to use our bombs, you understand. We just want to see if they will work.

On the Beach's message, if any, is that the human race was a nice try. Unfortunately, it worked too well, trundling down the path until it found a way to destroy itself. This is not the novel of an angry man or even an anxious man, but of a man who has seen the possibilities and accepted them. Mankind endures in obedience only, making its appointed rounds, going about its business as usual, indulging in that hobgoblin of little minds (for the average human mind is little): consistency. Once a thousand rockets have been launched by mistake, why not launch the rest?

The novel's obvious sincerity has kept it alive, and so has its versatility. It has been praised by pacifists, theologians, philosophers, political scientists—and now crops up on environmental reading lists. Indeed, it was probably the first important fictional study of ecological disaster. The Australian heroine rejects her fate as unfair, for "No one in the Southern Hemisphere ever dropped a bomb…. We had nothing to do with it. Why should we have to die because other countries nine or ten thousand miles away from us wanted to have a war"? Having discovered Spaceship Earth for himself, Shute probably did more than any other writer of the fifties to make a large audience understand that men must suffer equally the results of what they do at home or allow to happen far away. Moreover, the novel's stoicism and objectivity left the burden for feeling on the reader, made it clear that the author didn't care one way or another how his audience reacted. After all, "It's not the end of the world", says Shute's alter ego, the auto-racing scientist. "It's only the end of us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan't be in it. I daresay it will get along all right without us".

Another writer talented at looking at the future, Philip Wylie, suggested that On the Beach "ought to be compulsory reading at the Pentagon, West Point, Annapolis. Ike should set aside his western and puzzle his way through it". When I came across a letter from John Kennedy, then a senator, thanking Shute's American publishers for sending him a copy of the novel, I wondered for a minute whether he would have dared the Cuban Missile Crisis had he read On the Beach. Then I came back to reality: presidents don't need novelists to tell them what can happen—they already know, or are supposed to. No, Shute was talking to the ordinary reader, the man charged with the extraordinary responsibility of telling his politicians what to do. And when I read John Kennedy's letter, I suddenly remembered that 1962, the year Shute chose for Armageddon, was also the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And if the reader in 1973 quivers a bit when he remembers that Shute's Russian-Chinese war grew out of Arab-Israeli conflict, then Shute's little time bomb is still lethal.

Exactly a hundred years before Shute's doomsday, Henry Adams made his own prediction in a letter to his brother: "Man has mounted science, and is now run away with. Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world".

Is there really still time, brother?

EPILOGUE

Shute finished his novel in late 1956. In November, 1959, the month he saw Kramer's film, he began the story of a miraculous birth in the Australian wilderness, an epiphany witnessed by "three wise men" bearing a series of gifts that sound like a return to the wishful thinking that preceded the writing of On the Beach: the gifts of oil to Australia through known coal deposits, of water by magnetic distillation, of defense against radioactivity. In other words, self-sufficiency in industry and agriculture combined with protection from the follies of the rest of the world—all sanctified through an implied or explicit Second Coming. He had recovered the optimism that the creation of On the Beach had robbed him of. He never lived to finish the novel, but died two months later while Kramer's film was premiering all around the world. It was almost as though he had been struck down before he had a chance to undercut his own last testament to the world.

Source: Julian Smith, "On the Beach at Amchitka: The Conversion of Nevil Shute," South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 72, 1973, pp. 22-28.

Sources

Bruce G. and Harold A. Blair and Frank N. VonHippel, "Taking Nuclear Weapons Off Hair-Trigger Alert," Scientific American, http://www.sciam.com/1197issue/1197von-hippel.html.

Robert H. Estabrook, "After Armageddon," in The New Republic, Vol. 137, No. 20, August 12, 1957, p. 20.

Edith Fowke, in a review in Canadian Forum, Vol. 37, No. 166, October, 1957.

Edmund Fuller, in a review in the Chicago Sunday Tribune, August 4, 1957, p. 1.

Bruce Ryan, "Australia," in Compton's Encyclopedia Online v 3.0, http://comptonsv3.web.aol.com.

Edward Weeks, in a review in the Atlantic, Vol. 200, No. 80, August 1957.

For Further Study

Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, Simon & Schuster, 1995, 731 p.

The sequel to his Pulitzer Prize-winning history The Making of the Atom Bomb (1986).

Nevil Shute, Slide Rule: The Autobiography of an Engineer, Morrow, 1954, 254 p.

Shute's autobiography chronicles his experiences as an engineer and a writer.

Julian Smith, Nevil Shute, Twayne, 1976, 166 p.

Smith provides the only critical biography of Nevil Shute. Although this book is no longer in print, it is available in its entirety on the web at http://www.cha-neover.com/shutebio/.

H. A. Taylor, Airspeed Aircraft since 1931, Putnam, 1970, 206 p.

Recounts the history of Shute's aircraft company.