Nevil Shute's On The Beach

Nevil Shute is a very good author as he can take an extremely serious situation and change it into one that seems less important. In his book, On the Beach, he takes us into the story with his unique and specific ways which keep us interested. Nevil Shute criticizes society rapid increase in number of nuclear weapons, in light of the potential innocent victims, the potential chaos of society and inevitable painful end of human kind.

She says, “There never was a bomb dropped in the Southern Hemisphere. Why must it come to us?”(pg. 29) But, Moira isn’t the only character in the book that was complaining. Almost every other person on the rest of the planet shared her thought and point of view because of various reasons; a developing country like the great China who was at the peak of becoming one of the world’s strongest industrial power was destroyed, Russia, a country with a lot of land was destroyed within days and last but not the least the people that where living in the countries of the Northern Hemisphere where the war had started were the first ones to experience the radiation. They did not even have the opportunity to live longer, but even if the radiation hadn’t gotten to them, they would live a meaningless life of fear awaiting their uncertain death. The article shows that Nevil Shute is quite able to terrify us throughout the extreme events depicted in his writing (On the Beach by Nevil Shute." Seattle News). In his novel, several characters would rather die of drinking port than of this cholera. (pg.88) the

It makes the whole world suffer and eventually the entire human race will be destroyed. In the words of the protagonist of the story, Shute himself explained the purpose of his writing if a couple of hundred million people all decide that their national honor requires them to drop combat bombs upon their neighbor, well, there’s not much we can do about it. (telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/6718768/Nevil-Shute) Destruction of society and universe can occur fairly easily if it has to do with stupid actions of those around us. Also, our national honor can get rid those we care for. Destruction of society can also take place if we do not care for our national honor, and if it is being taken advantage of. In this novel, the mistake of the Army caused millions to suffer and their national prestige was destroyed. The stages of these events were well featured and thought out by the author