This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
The TS Eliot quotation is appropriate here. As time passes some books become better known for their film counterparts than as novels–as it is with Nevil Shute’s On the Beach. Yet despite some here and there details, the film remains faithful to the story.
The citizens of Australia await nuclear death from the northern Hemisphere. The War came and everyone will die. Yet within such sadness life goes on where it survives temporarily due to distance, yet the cloud is headed their way.
Anyone who advocates nuclear arms should read this. It is restrained despite the loneliness of the characters and a young couple having to murder their infant daughter then poison themselves in order to die as a family. The characters are first rate, especially that of Moira. Everyone reacts to their doom in his and her own way. Often surprisingly. And nearly everyone develops a Dreamworld in which they have a future as a means of coping with certain death.
There are many subplots throughout the book, as well as false hope. It also delves deeper into the science of the event than the film does. And being a novel, there is a greater sense of intimacy between the characters than the film could reach–though it is haunting in its own right.
I realize that most literate people of a certain age are familiar with this work that was published in 1957 (the film came out the same year Yours Truly did, 1959). But it is a good thing to recall this cautionary tale and to recommend it to younger readers, because someday the continuing choice will be theirs.
literally stories 
Hi Leila,
For me this ties in with your post yesterday as this was another book I read at school. I think it may have been first year of secondary.
Late seventies, early eighties there was a whole load of things about Nuclear War being banded about. We were also shown a docu-drama type thing that the BBC had banned for about thirty years.
I think there was also a poem in vogue, can’t remember it but do remember a wee dog chasing it’s tale and dropping down dead.
I think all this doom and gloom helped us suffer thatcher as we knew there was some type of hope in Armageddon!!!!!
HAH! Wee Greta and her cohorts would still be getting therapy if they had been around!!
Excellent!!
Hugh
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Hi Hugh
I am old enough to remember the bomb drills at school. As if.
I like old films but not the musicals that much; this means the only two films I have ever seen with Fred Astaire are “Ghost Story” (which my friends didn’t like, but I did) and “On the Beach.” No dancing but he was good in both.
I still say that the next time Greta is “arrested” for protesting that they toss her in a holding cell with hard pipe gang chicks. I know some that would carve their names into her face just for the kick of it. I don’t really want her hurt, but the kid needs to understand that most people do not like to be told how to live. Especially the dangerous ones.
Thank you!
Leila
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Ghost Story a weird story of revenge by a ghost which featured mostly actors close to death (at least in the elder versions of the characters). Intriguing lead actress – I could look up the name – who also was a terror in “Silent Hill”.
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I can’t do this sort of book or film but somehow I ended up watching this and it scared me stiff. Haunted me for – well – I think it still does so yes, forever. There is another in the same vein Down to a Sunless Sea by David Graham. the daft thing about that one was the Ian and I both read it but remembered the ending differently. Odd because the ending is of course, vital to the way you remember the book. Anyway we had to read the last bit again and I was right. On another note entirely I really love that poem by Coleridge that holds the line. Thanks for this Leila.
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Hi Diane
I used to worry about the bomb. But I realized that I live beside (and work at) a military facility that would be vaporized about forty-minutes into WW Omega. That’s better than slow death. To paraphrase Elie Wiesel said, we face possible nuclear death because the allowed Hitler to murder millions before doing something about it.
Oh well, at least the sun is out ☀️
thanks again!
Leila
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One of the few advantages that Portland has over Seattle is we got no defense (actually war not defense for the past 70 years) industry, whereas Seattle would be lit up immediately.
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This was one of the scariest movies I ever saw. Today it remains a possible reality. I read the book afterwards, which made me want to go live in Australia he he.
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Hi Harrison
Thank you for dropping by. I was attracted to Australia until I learned that something like nineteen of the twenty deadliest creatures on Earth live there. It would be my luck to escape the bomb just to get bit by an Aussie Super-Snake!
Leila
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Thanks Leila. I’ve not read the book (or seen the film). You’ve given it a good and intriguing write-up, so I’ll be giving it a go.
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Hi Mick
Though not exactly an uplifting read it does have one thing in it I found hopeful. If you are drunk and stay that way you don’t die as fast or as miserably from radiation poisoning. Only in this world…sigh..only in this world.
Thank you!
Leila
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Dear Leila,
Thanks for bringing up this ultimate, terrifying possibility and a literary reaction to it. I remember being horrified by this novel when I read it in high school during the mid-80s. Also the film “The Day After” with Jason Robards. One answer for me, then and now, somehow seems to be “The Book of Revelation,” but not in a religious way, rather in a human way. For a while, things seemed like they had cooled down quite a bit. Now, things have heated up again, and not just because of human-caused climate change.
Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road” also grapples with this kind of an ending for life on planet Earth. Not a great novel in many ways, but some parts of it are terrifying, and, ultimately, consoling (this is another bloated book that would be much better if it were cut down to what it really is: a short story. As Allen Ginsberg said one time in a self-critical statement about his own work, “Too many words!”).
Lately, when I start worrying about this again, I put on a song, or read the lyrics. The song is “Let Me Die in My Footsteps,” by Bob Dylan. Once again, as on so many things, Bob has an answer.
Thanks again for this post. Nothing more important and nothing more true these days! Tolstoy once said the planet would be better off without humans. Not sure what he meant exactly, but I get what he said.
Sincerely,
Dale
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Hi Dale
I remember The Day After. It spooked everyone. Funny how such a thing can be placed on the “back burner” of world consciousness. I think that began when the USSR fell apart. Not rational thinking. This must be kept in the open and it would be awesome if we could just send the stockpile to the sun.
Thank you!
Leila
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Dylan’s “Masters Of War” tells it like it is.
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Doug
I forgot to reply to you! Sorry! Well sometimes Gregory was like Patrick Swayze inasmuch he had the emotional range of A to B. But he was good in Mockingbird. Although still stunning, Ava Gardner was too old for the part.
Leila
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Remeber the movie. Nothing against Gregory Peck, but I don’t think he communicated genuine emotions.
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Neville Shute is a writer I know, but haven’t got around to yet, and should. I’ve not seen the film adaptation of this one either, but I do remember a British film from the 1980s on the same topic called Threads – a film that still gives me the shivers!
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I remember watching the film as a semi-precocious kid and liking it although not entirely understanding what was going on.
I’m in a book group that largely reads best-sellers (am in it more for the conviviality than the books) and have got them to read this — we’ll be doing it sometime in the next few months.
I also liked Shute’s Beyond the Black Stump.
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Thank you Jon
The book group has good taste. It’s sad that Shute passed just as he was hitting his stride.
Thanks again!
Leila
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