Presently
she said, “Peter, why did all this happen to us? Was it because Russia and
China started fighting each other?”
He
nodded. That’s about the size of it…America and England and Russia started
bombing for destruction first. The whole thing started with Albania…The whole
thing was over in a month.”
“Couldn’t
anyone have stopped it?”
“I
don’t know…Some kinds of silliness you just can’t stop,” he 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.” (On the Beach, 301)
AS
THE NOVEL OPENS, Peter Holmes and his wife Mary and their infant daughter, Jennifer,
are sitting quietly in their small cottage in southern Australia on the last
day of their lives. The war they speak of was an atomic war, with missiles and
bombs laying waste to the Northern Hemisphere, enveloping everyone there in
clouds of deadly, radioactive fallout. In the south, where the bombs and
missiles fell less, people were granted a reprieve—but only for a time. The
vast, turbulent oceans of air, the high jet streams and prevailing winds that
circle the earth, creating and modulating our weather, in Nevil Shute’s 1957 vision
of the aftermath of a nuclear war, On the Beach, these winds will soon circulate
from pole to pole until all life is extinguished. Peter and Mary and the people
of Falmouth, a small town outside Melbourne, have gained some time, but the
scientific consensus (from those scientists that are left) is that in a matter
of months the radioactive winds will migrate south and arrive for them.
THIS
IS WHERE SHUTE’S TALE BEGINS, during the final months of humanity. There is no
escape, no place to run or hide: all living things—animals, insects, birds,
fish, the forests, flowers, and grasses, all that once thrived amid earth’s
rich mantle will perish, as will humanity’s remnants, reaping a whirlwind of
their own making.
AS
THE END DRAWS NEAR, John Osborne, scientist and race car enthusiast, meets his
uncle for lunch at the Pastoral Club. They discuss the progress of the incoming
radioactivity and the old gentleman is scandalized* to learn that
rabbits, that perennial scourge of Australia, will outlive humans: “About a
year longer,” John tells him. His uncle exclaims at the injustice of such a
thing, saying: “The rabbit! After all we’ve done, and all we’ve spent in
fighting him—to know he’s going to win out in the end!... I’m going to have a
brandy and soda before going in to lunch. We’d all better have a brandy
and soda after that.” (252)
THIS
CHEEKY RESOLVE to carry on living despite the oncoming catastrophe is a common
characteristic among many of the novel’s characters. For some, life will always
be a comedy, even absurd—something both remarkable and banal at the same time—but
always worth living. Such characters banish life’s tragedies to the
wings, allowing clowns centre stage amid pratfalls and good cheer. OTHERS keep
up appearances, stick to their routines, their jobs, their families, and
relationships. Peter and Mary, for example, work on their garden, making their tiny home a
comfort for themselves and their infant daughter, Jennifer. Peter goes to his job at naval headquarters every day. Dwight Towers,
commander of the American nuclear submarine, Scorpion, docked at the
nearby naval base, conducts his remaining time in accordance with Navy regulations
and etiquette. Farmers still farm, shops in Falmouth and Melbourne remain open;
there’s a gasoline shortage but food remains available. People pay with cash or
by cheque, more out of habit than anything else. After all, who will be there
to debit their accounts in a while? They barter or trade, or else they take
what they need and accept what they’re get. There is order and government in
the southern cities and towns. People
wait patiently in queues, they walk, bicycle, or take the trams which still
operate because electricity is generated by power plants using Australia’s abundant
coal deposits. Until nearly the very end, services mostly functioned,
organizations remained intact, people carried on with their lives in the short time remaining, and accepted the
fate that awaits them. Is this a sign despair? Or
stoicism? It’s hard for me to imagine people today acting so calmly in the face
of such a calamity. Maybe they had better manners and social skills back in
Shute’s time. (Just sayin’).
WHEN
WE FIRST MEET Peter and Mary, there is an atmosphere of calm and practicality
in their life together, and in the lives of their neighbours, of making do and
doing without. We are told that earlier episodes of wild drunkenness, violence
and disorder in the weeks following the Thirty-Day War1, have
mostly dissipated because, as one character put it, “They got tired of it.” Of
course, the novel also deals with loss: the loss of home, of family, loved ones,
and of hope. After all, what do you hope for when the world is ending? Do you still want to win
the lottery? + And so, the
question of what to do in the time remaining becomes the only one worth asking.
SOME, like John’s uncle, drink and take lunch at the Pastoral Club, just more
often. Moira Davidson, a friend of Peter and Mary, also drinks heavily, raging at
the coming dark with late night parties and casual sex. However, she will
shortly meet the American naval commander, Dwight Towers and discover a more
fulfilling and joyful way to spend her final days. Some people pray. Some kill
themselves, like the madcap race car drivers jockeying in qualifying heats to
gain a coveted spot for the final running of the Australian Grand Prix. Each
race sees drivers killed in fiery crashes and twisted metal, with observers and
competitors alike agreeing that those who died, did so doing what they most wanted
to do—compete and race. It’s hard to decide, as the time remaining grows short for the people in Shute's novel,
whether life becomes more precious or cheapens. JOHN OSBORNE understands the
racing drivers’ obsessions. He is someone who has lived a life of caution, a research
scientist who always wanted to race cars. IN THE END, he fulfills his dream,
winning the Grand Prix in his beloved Ferrari.
And when his time
comes, after he has laid his mother to rest, and feeling the effects of radiation poisoning, he climbs into his car that he has
cleaned and put up on blocks. He takes his government-issued suicide pills and relieves
his moment of glory behind the wheel.
WHILE
THE NOVEL refers to drunks found in the gutter and the side effects of
radiation sickness, characters don’t dwell on the unpleasantness of illness and
death. People maintain their lives and activities. The cities and towns remain
clean and orderly until they no longer can be maintained. When ambient
radiation levels rise and begin to sicken people, they wash up, do the dishes, make their beds, and lay down to await their death. The mundanities of life
become important rituals, talismans, and touchstones of order before the coming dissolution. They tidy up, trim the roses, mend fences, then they
draw the blinds and say goodnight and goodbye to those with them and to those
who are not.
IN
THE NOVEL, there are people who live in denial, who are unable or unwilling to
accept what has happened. Peter’s wife is one. She puts off for as long as
possible acknowledging the reality that she and Peter will die, along with
their newborn daughter and everyone else. Dwight is another. He cannot accept
the loss of his wife and children back in America whose fate were sealed after
the first Cobalt bomb was dropped.2 They live in his mind,
and in his mind he is still a husband and father, and in the same fashion as he maintains his role as a naval officer
with duties to perform, he will remain a faithful husband to his dead wife, Sharron,
despite the temptations of Moira.
And Moira,
for her part, learns the joy of a love with Dwight that remains chaste. She
learns that giving herself to him, unconditionally, without expecting anything
in return, just to lighten his load and bring him some cheer, companionship, has
been the happiest time in her life. The novel ends with Moira sitting in her
car watching as the Scorpion sails
away to where Dwight will scuttle it in the deep ocean, taking him and his crew
“home”, something the commander so greatly desires. 3
NEVIL
SHUTE does not give us the gore and horror of a true nuclear war. His vision is
old-fashioned, quaint even (and dated in places if I’m being honest, especially
his depiction of women). There are few scenes describing the destruction one would
expect to find following such a conflagration, especially when Dwight takes his
submarine on a mission to discover the source of a baffling Morse code signal
coming from the Seattle area. There are no charred bodies or much wreckage
visible to the submariners, who remain submerged in their vessel because of
high radiation levels. It’s as if everyone went inside and closed the door, like
wounded or dying animals will go to ground. It’s difficult to decide whether
this is despair or stoicism.
THE
PEOPLE IN SHUTE’S FICTIONAL WORLD, those we meet and the countless others who
are never named, are at the mercy of events and processes beyond their ability
to address or even understand. The best they can do is to live their lives and put
on a brave face when the Horsemen come riding.
FOR
ME, HAVING GROWN UP watching movies like Godzilla, Them, Doctor Strangelove, and Fail
Safe, and having to do duck-and-cover drills in grade school,
I’ve always been ready to dig that fall-out shelter or hone my ‘prepping’
skills watching re-runs of Mad Max on TV. I planned to survive the nukes,
even if it meant living in the desert and eating bugs! WELL, it’s been sixty plus
years since Shute’s book and the movie adaptation of his story, and we seem to
be treading perilously near deep waters, as near to a nuclear conflict as we’ve
ever been.
STILL, I don’t think our idiot politicians are that stupid as
to drop the atomic hammer and go for it. Politics isn't that hard to do, is it? It's not rocket science, after all.
BUT WHEN TWO NUCLEAR POWERS start
squaring off for the final match of the night (with a third waiting in the
wings and others besides), well, we’ve all seen the carnage Godzilla and King Ghidorah cause when they duke it
out. If it’s smashable they’ll smash it!
THERE
ARE ALSO THE DANGERS of someone doing something really, really stupid: Mistakes
have been made in the past. Accidents happen. There have been false alarms. Nuke bombs
have gone missing. So have nuke submarines
for that matter. Jeeeze! How many times will we play Russian roulette before the dang thing goes off!
THE EPIGRAM at the beginning of On the Beach is worth revisiting. It's
taken from T.S. Eliot’s poem “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 with a whimper.
SHOULD WE CONSIDER Shute's tale as a warning against complacency, against a blind acceptance of fate? Or perhaps his story acts as a counterpoint to Eliot's vision, reminding us that even when all hope is lost, so long as there beats a single human heart, so too exists the chance for expressing the greatest of human achievements, love.
Cheers,
Jake.
__________________________________________
* He’s
also pickled by all the brandy and sherry he drinks! As John speaks with his
perpetually inebriated uncle, he recalls reading reports about a possible correlation
between alcohol consumption and a greater immunity against radiation sickness.
One can only hope!
+ Of course, the world
won’t end. Just humanity's chapter in it.
1. I
imagine an all-out nuclear war, today, would last less than 30
minutes, given the types of weapons that have been developed
since On the Beach was written. That’s progress for you!
2. Science
Fun Fact: Cobalt
bombs for a while, were on everyone’s to-do list as far back as 1950,
when such a device was thought to be more in keeping with the Protestant work ethic: A nuclear
weapon that kept property damage at a minimum while killing more people with
deadlier radiation. And the half-life from cobalt
fallout was shorter than plutonium’s half-life, for example, making real estate
development around ground zero more attractive. However C-bombs proved more difficult
to manufacture (and dangerous: Physicist Leó Szilárd worried that such a bomb was capable of destroying all life on earth!) Then the geniuses came up with neutron bombs.
3. There
was an American nuclear submarine named “Scorpion” that sunk due to unknown causes in
1968 in the Mediterranean. All the crew tragically drowned. It’s hull was
laid in 1958, a year after Shute's book was published. In 1959, in the movie version of On the Beach, Dwight's submarine was named the "Sawfish".
Shute,
Nevil. On the Beach. Random House Inc. Vintage Books. New York. 1957,
2010. Print.
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