Free Sample Essays > Literature
The Beach a Dreamy Place or a Living Hell? by Velimira Ivanova
the regular patrol, the community manages to live undisturbed and to hide the location of their secret beach. All these unique features of The Beach embody the search for fresh start in a pure world which is away from the hustle and bustle in the cities and more important away from progress.
However, it turns out that The Beach is not as secure as its members think. On that same island, but on the opposite side, is located an illegal dope field. The owner of the field and the Beach community live in a mutual symbiosis because neither of the two groups wants to be discovered. The Beach community is obliged not to bring more newcomers on the island while the owner of the dope agrees not to bother them. Thinking that they have found their Eden which has to be guarded only by the tourist hoards, the community forgets that it may be they who will destroy the secrecy of The Beach. They forget that as human beings they carry in themselves fear, ignorance, envy, and jealousy everything innate in the hoards from which they are trying to escape. During an accident with a shark three members are hurt the first is bitten to death by the shark, the second gets bad haemorrhage and the third becomes mad because of the accident. After the incident the life on the Beach is not what it used to be the community splits into parts which dangers the beach morale. In their attempt to bring back the equilibrium of their life, the community deserts the wounded in a tent leaving him to a slow painful death. In this extreme situation the fear from destruction of the Eden beach guides their actions. The distinction among them and the outside world begins to melt slowly. Because they are busy in saving the beach morale they cannot understand, till the very end, that the secrecy of The Beach is endangered only by them. At the end, it becomes clear that the founders of the community turn this perfectly pure place into a living hell and destroy the dream for a new beginning.
The quest for this new start, whatever its shape may be, is deeply inbred in the human nature. Despite the strong moral implementation in the book that we, humans, can never be as pure, divine and perfect as the blue waters of the lagoon, The Beach makes me dream. It sets in motion my own search for new beginning, tangling my imagination, and being a dreamy place in my mind.