On The Beach :: essays research papers

Every thought of man originates from an emotion. Most of the times our actions are carried out from the heart rather than the mind. We respond to various situations on the basis of how we feel rather than what we think. However, we should not let our emotions take absolute control so that we make careless decisions or do something for which someone else has to suffer. In the novel, On the Beach, Nevil Shute creates an emotional impact on the reader by showing how man misuses his intelligence, how people react to the situation and the effect of the loss of a loved one.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Over centuries mankind has beared heavy losses due to the misuse of intelligence. Man has used his sophisticated, superior brain for the production of things like weapons, nuclear bombs et cetera either to take revenge or explore the power of his deadly creations. Little did he notice that someday his very own creations could bring about his own death. The most scary part, however, is that these chemical bombs are global killers, i.e. effect of the explosion of a nuclear bomb dropped in one part of the world can gradually spread all over the globe killing every living organism, sometimes even bacteria because of it’s intense radioactive levels. In the novel, On the Beach, when the character Moira Davidson, a young ambitious girl who wanted to study and visit places throughout the world is faced with the fact that neither she nor anybody else in the Southern Hemisphere is going to live for more than a few months because of a nuclear bomb launched in the Nort hern Hemisphere, she gets very furious and frustrated. She says, â€Å"There never was a bomb dropped in the Southern Hemisphere. Why must it come to us?†(7th last line, pg. 29) But, Moira wasn’t the only one who was complaining. Almost every soul on the rest of the planet shared her thought because of various reasons; a developing country like China who was at the peak of becoming one of the world’s biggest industrial power was destroyed, Russia, a country with abundant land was destroyed within days and last but not the least the people living in the countries of the Northern Hemisphere where the war began were the first ones to experience their inevitable death. They did not even have the opportunity to live longer, but even if they did, they would live a pointless life of fear awaiting their uncertain death.