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The Beach – a Dreamy Place or a Living Hell? by Velimira Ivanova
I still remember the day when I took the volume in my hands. The blurred title on the cover page produced a tickling in my stomach while I was reading it. I pronounced the short title slowly, in a loud voice,”The Beach.” Then, I paused for few minutes and uttered it again, louder: “The Beach.”
The elaborate description of the setting – the rough cliffs of the coastline encircling a lagoon in a way which hides it from the open sea and makes it a secret heavenly place – set my imagination in motion. By this secluded beach lives a secret community, a multinational group of the “so-called X-generation – twentysomethings weaned on videogames, MTV, and decades’ worth of pop detritus.” Replete with their mundane everyday life they found a place untouched by human hand where to live on their own rules. The Beach community has a strict organization according to which everyone is participating in one of the four working details – fishing, cooking, gardening and carpentry. The simplicity of the Beach life is opposed to the progressive life in the cities all over the world. Living in the simplest way makes the community understand that happiness does not depend on material possessions. And the proof for their happiness is the amnesic effect which the Beach life has on everyone – no one does remember any of his family of friends; the only subject of their conversations is travelling. In addition, the community has its unspoken leader – Sal, a woman who takes care for the community morale. Giving the leadership in the hands of a woman implies for matriarchy – an organizational system of the early primitive societies where the mother is the leader of the community because of her principal part in the reproduction. Here, on The Beach, the matriarchy is emblematic presenting that the members turn back to the primitive in their quest of a new beginning.
Another unique feature of this secret community is the rituals, which keep the members so close together. These rituals represent the beach morale whose main purpose is to keep the secrecy of the place. Once they started living there, they had no right to bring newcomers who might destroy the Beach. Another example of ritual of theirs is the necklace of seashells they wore, indicating that they belong to the Beach community. But the most important ritual is the Tet celebration – it is the day when the Beach was found. Every year, the Tet celebration reminds the community that they have found one of the last secluded places in the world where a new life from the very beginning can be started. The “zero year” which marks the foundation of the community is the symbol of their chance for a new beginning.
Moreover, the secrecy of The Beach is guarded by its location on a Marine Park island in the Gulf of Thailand. The island is under the surveillance of the marine patrol and prevents it from illegal tourist visits. Despite the [next page]