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Chapter 32
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Beach, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Tourism and Authenticity
Power, Control, and Human Nature
War, Violence, and Escapism
Secrecy, Fear, and Paranoia
Summary
Analysis
Richard starts to see the logic of the beach, and he likes how it’s a well-kept secret that tourists don’t know about. He’s intrigued by how the group managed to pull it off.
While Richard claims to dislike tourists for their consumerism, this passage also hints at Richard’s vanity by showing how readily he sets himself apart from those other tourists—at the end of the day, Richard is himself a tourist, and his behavior isn’t entirely unproblematic. He and the other camp members have set up camp on a stretch of protected natural land, for instance—that’s the only reason the beach can remain so exclusive.
Active
Themes
Richard goes to Keaty’s tent to play Game Boy. He thinks about how in video games, bosses follow patterns, and once you figure out the pattern, you can kill the boss. Richard is struggling against a boss that only Keaty and Unhygienix, a camp resident with an Italian accent who likes the Game Boy, have beaten. Unhygienix often provides hints to Richard. Just as Richard thinks he’s cracked the boss, the batteries run out. Richard asks about other batteries in the camp, but Keaty says the only other batteries are in people’s Walkmans, and Keaty has always refused to give them batteries when they asked.
Active
Themes
