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Chapter 87
Themes
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
Everyone disperses without speaking more about Karl, and Richard can tell that the calm after Sten’s funeral is beginning to wear off. Jean, who doesn’t often talk to Richard, surprises him by approaching him later. Richard offers him a cigarette, but Jean doesn’t want to take any of Richard’s limited supply. Jean says Richard should come see the garden again someday—he hasn’t been back since Keaty was transferred to fishing, and now the garden is much larger. Richard wants Jean to go away, but he agrees to see the garden sometime.
This passage shows the ways big and small that the camp is beginning to fall apart. While Karl’s escape attempt has ruptured the fragile calm after Sten’s funeral, there are also smaller signs of disagreement in this passage. Jean, for example, feels that Richard has been ignoring him by not coming to the garden. He refuses Richard’s cigarette, in a sign that he doesn’t want to be in Richard’s debt, showing how people in the camp are starting to become closed off from each other.
Themes
Richard goes to see Christo, and both Christo and Jed seem to be in worse condition than before. Richard breaks the news about Zeph and Sammy apparently being shot. Jed doesn’t react much. Richard asks if Jed is relieved that the beach is safe, but Jed admits he doesn’t care as much about the beach as he used to. Jed complains that once again, no one came to visit Christo today, and he suspects the same would happen if Jed himself were sick.
While the other camp residents have been ignoring Christo and his impending death, Jed has been doing the opposite and obsessing over it. Jed has spent his time looking directly at the dark side of life at the beach, and this has led him to see Karl’s wisdom in trying to run away from it. While Richard isn’t quite in agreement with Jed yet, he knows that Jed is similar to him and values Jed’s opinion.
Themes
Richard recommends that Jed leave the tent for a while to get some fresh air. Jed doesn’t want to. He starts talking to himself about how he thought the camp would change after Daffy disappeared, but Daffy has found a way to come back even though he killed himself. Richard asks if Jed has been seeing him too, and Jed says he saw Daffy give the map to Zeph and Sammy. Richard makes a connection and realizes that the times when Jed sees Daffy are also the times when he’s just seen Richard.
While the book largely takes place in a version of the real world, there is a hint of something supernatural in the way that multiple characters seem to have similar hallucinations of Daffy. Rather than taking a paranormal angle, however, the novel instead takes a more grounded approach and shows how the beach camp is a shared delusion—by buying into the beach lifestyle, Richard and Jed have both lost touch with reality in the same way.
Themes
