Meaning and Origin of The Title
The phrase "on the beach" is a Royal Navy term that means "retired from the Service."
The book also takes its name from the T. S. Eliot poem The Hollow Men, which includes the lines "In this last of meeting places // We grope together // And avoid speech // Gathered on this beach of the tumid river." Some editions of the novel, including the first 1957 edition (and the 2009 edition) by William Morrow and Company, NY, and the 1990 publication by Mandarin Paperbacks, include extracts from the poem, such as its concluding lines:
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
The 1957 Morrow edition has the poem excerpts on the title page, under Nevil Shute's name.
The 2000 film ends with a quote from a Walt Whitman poem entitled "On The Beach at Night", strikingly appropriate, describing how frightening an approaching cloud bank seemed at night to the poet's child, blotting the stars out one by one, as the father and child stood on the beach on Massachusetts' North Shore. As much as it resembles the plot of Shute's novel, however (see below), a careful reading of the book gives no reference to the Whitman poem, while the T.S. Eliot poem is presented in the book's front matter.
Read more about this topic: On The Beach (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words meaning and, meaning, origin and/or title:
“Every time a child organizes and completes a chore, spends some time alone without feeling lonely, loses herself in play for an hour, or refuses to go along with her peers in some activity she feels is wrong, she will be building meaning and a sense of worth for herself and harmony in her family.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)
“He is the essence that inquires.
He is the axis of the star;
He is the sparkle of the spar;
He is the heart of every creature;
He is the meaning of each feature;
And his mind is the sky,
Than all it holds more deep, more high.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.”
—Neal Cassady (1926–1968)
“Et in Arcadia ego.
[I too am in Arcadia.]”
—Anonymous, Anonymous.
Tomb inscription, appearing in classical paintings by Guercino and Poussin, among others. The words probably mean that even the most ideal earthly lives are mortal. Arcadia, a mountainous region in the central Peloponnese, Greece, was the rustic abode of Pan, depicted in literature and art as a land of innocence and ease, and was the title of Sir Philip Sidney’s pastoral romance (1590)