The Beach (novel)
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The Beach (1996) is a novel by Alex Garland about backpackers in Thailand. Influenced by such literary works as Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies, it describes the adventures of a young Englishman in search of a legendary, idyllic beach untouched by tourism.
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[edit] The story
In a cheap guest-house on Khaosan Road in Bangkok, Richard, a young traveller from London, meets a strange Scotsman going by the pseudonym of Daffy Duck who leaves him a hand-drawn map of a hidden beach that is inaccessible to tourists, and then commits suicide. Together with a young French couple, Étienne and Françoise, Richard- who considers himself a lifestyle traveller rather than an ordinary tourist- sets out to find what he believes must be paradise on earth.
On their way to the beach, Richard gives a copy of the map to Sammy and Zeph, two Americans he meets in Koh Samui. When the group finally reaches the beach - after bribing a local boat contractor, taking a long swim and eventually jumping down a waterfall - they are faced with a tight-knit and largely self-sufficient community which has almost completely shut itself off from civilization and which has developed a sophisticated hierarchy under the quasi-dictatorial rule of a young American woman called Sal and her South African lover Bugs, who, along with Daffy, discovered the beach and founded the community there in 1989. The three went under the pseudonyms of Sylvester (pronounced SALvester and hence Sal), Bugs (as in Bugs Bunny) and Daffy (as in Daffy Duck). The novel is set in 1995, 6 years after they found the Beach. Newcomers are basically not welcome but are not sent back either because it would jeopardize the secrecy of the project. Richard, Étienne and Françoise manage to incorporate themselves into the island community and are quickly accepted. Because the community is largely self sufficient in terms of food production/supply and infrastructure, work is very important and there are a number of details, or work rosters, for the garden, fishing and carpentry. Along with Francois and Etienne, Richard becomes a part of the fishing detail.
After a few months the two Americans accompanied by three Germans arrive at the neighbouring island and Richard moves to the perimeter detail to watch them together with the group's guardian Jed, the only one who knows that Richard spread word about the beach.
Because of a free spot in the fishing detail, one of the community members named Keaty moves in and a few days later catches a dead squid that poisons most of the residents. The day after the food poisoning incident, Richard returns from his sentry duty high on the island to find that Bugs has punched Keaty in the face ( presumably out of anger for the food poisoning of most of the camp resulting from his mistake while fishing the day before), there is a heated argument and the community becomes fractured into several social groups.On this day, only two of the fishing details are still in operation and one of these, consisting of three Swedes who fish outside the safe lagoon area, is attacked by a shark.The camp only finds out about this with the return of one of the three, Christo in the early evening. Christo is injured and dies later in the story, while the second of the three, Sten(who Christo carried back to the camp), is dead on arrival. The third (Karl), who was not hurt by the shark, suffers a mental breakdown and from this point on spends all his time sitting in a hole on the beach, not talking to anyone and barely accepting food and water. The wounded Swede, Christo, requires Jed's presence in the camp as he has some medical knowledge and this leaves Richard to work alone on the island.
A few days later, a funeral is held for Sten and Sal gives a speech which goes some way to restoring social harmony within the camp. She announces that it is the 21st of September and that they will thus be celebrating the Tet festival in 3 days time - this will be the 6th birthday for the beach community and she suggests they celebrate it as a "fresh start" for the group.Being alone on the mainland of the island, Richard now begins to have hallucinations in which Daffy appears - they talk and begin to patrol the part of the island which Richard refers to as the DMZ together. This comes to a peak following the arrival, by raft, of the American/German group, who are first beaten and then taken away and killed by armed guards defending their illegal marijuana plantations.
Richard is shocked by the killings ( he hears the gunshots as the 5 rafters are murdered ) and returns to the Beach to inform Sal and Jed. He then goes to the beach to visit Karl, who suddenly attacks Richard and runs off into the jungle. The next day, the day of the Tet festival, Sal obtusely asks Richard to kill Karl because of the threat he poses to the mood of the celebrations-(Richard does not intend to do it) that night he swims out beyond the lagoon into the open sea only to find that Karl has escaped to the mainland, taking the groups only boat. He finds Étienne there and soon discovers that he- along with the rest of the camp- has become afraid of Richard "doing things" for Sal - disillusioned with the way the community is run, Richard organises to leave the beach forever later that night, along with his closest friends Françoise, Étienne, Keaty and Jed.
Night falls and the party is going well when suddenly the marijuana guards arrive at the camp and beat Richard as well as leaving the dead bodies of the American/German party as a warning. Most of the beach dwellers then go insane and rip the bodies apart- Sal then discovers that Richard had spread the secret of the beach when she picks up the map he drew for Zeph and Sammy, which the head guard brought to show them all. Most of the beach dwellers work themselves into a murderous frenzy, stabbing Richard multiple times- he is only saved when his 4 friends return from the beach with fishing spears to drive the others off.
In the last chapter the 5 friends escape to the mainland. Richard returns to his home in the UK where he still keeps in contact with his friends Keaty and Jed.
[edit] Themes
[edit] The cost of Paradise
The lifestyle which the community at the beach enjoys in the first part of the book is only possible because the location of the beach is a closely guarded secret; new members of the community generally enter it only by invitation and the community goes to extensive lengths to ensure it is not discovered- the branches of the trees above the camp are bound together to prevent the camp being seen from the air and the boat they use to commute to the mainland is hidden in a cove. However, some members of the community - Jed and the 3 Swedes- arrived without invitation and thus remain somewhat distanced from the rest of the community for the rest of their time there due to what they represent; the compromised secrecy of the beach which is a threat to their lifestyle there. Christo ultimately dies because they cannot risk taking him to a hospital on the mainland for fear that this secrecy may be compromised. As well as this, as he is dying in the hospital tent, tended to by Jed, he is virtually ignored by the rest of the community simply because they don't want their upbeat mood to be spoilt by acknowledging his suffering. It is also this sort of potential threat to the mood of the community that causes Sal to ask Richard to kill the mentally unstable Karl, who threatens to disrupt their celebrations on Tet.
[edit] Critiques on The Beach
- "[Garland is a] natural-born storyteller" who "combines an unlikely group of influences - Heart of Darkness, Vietnam war movies, Lord of the Flies, the Super Mario Bros. video game - into ... ambitious, propulsive fiction." (Washington Post).
- "A Lord of the Flies for Generation X" (Nick Hornby)
- "Generation X's first great novel" (Sunday Oregonian).
- “A furiously intelligent first novel … a book that moves with the kind of speed and grace many older writers can only day-dream about” – Washington Post
