Analyse af Bret Easton Ellis' 'On the Beach'

Analysis and interpretation of ‘On the Beach’.[NAVN A] 1.i.

Death is one of the hard aspects in life you are often forced to deal with. When a disease forces its’ victim to deal with death much sooner than needed, it affects not only the diseased, but every person within emotional range. This is also the case for Bret Easton Ellis’s ‘On the Beach’ (1994) where a young woman is forced to deal with the consequences of a deadly disease.

She was once beautiful, tall, and blonde, but as her disease came along, her hair started falling off. Her body thinned and she lost every pound of fat on her body. She is thinto the extreme, and her strength has been reduced to almost nothing. The sick girl is typical flat character, only described externally. She is from a wealthy family, since her parents can afford to pay for a high school with money enough to throw the Prom at Beverly Hills Hotel. Her mother is the only parent we hear of, and based on the fact that her mother is elsewhere when her daughter is dying, (p.21 l.7-8) makes one aware of the not-close bond between mother and daughter. As her disease is not clearly stated, one can only guess. But judged by her losing all her hair and the way she speaks of NutraSweet, she is most likely a victim of cancer. All she wants to do is lie on beach, and get tan. She never does, and her skin keeps having the same milky colour. This could be another sign of Cancer. Due to the destruction of her cells, her skin is no longer able to produce pigment. She is as very passive character as she does nothing all day, and her physical presence is almost non-existing. On page 22 (l.7-8) the passage where the protagonist explains the sick girls’ ritual with burning the cigarettes, it could be seen as a sign that the sick knows her time is running short. As she watches the cigarettes turn into ashes, she passively watches her life fade away.