Setting

“On the Beach” by Bret Easton Ellis was published in a 1994 short story collection. The references to musicians like The Cars or Madonna and the tape recorder (ll. 43-44) suggest that the events of the story are probably set in the early 1990s.

The physical setting is a beach in Malibu, California, and the beach house belonging to the girlfriend’s mother. The beach setting is described briefly several times, focusing on the sun and the coming of the night, an opposition symbolic of life and death: “…on the beach in Malibu, and even though it's getting totally late we both have our Wayfarers on and even though I've been lying in the sun…” (ll. 2-4); “The sun is low now, the ocean's getting dark.” (ll. 100-101)

Social setting

The social setting explores aspects related to L.A. society in the 1990s, relationships, and death.

The narrator’s flashbacks about events such as a night of drinking or the prom night when he took cocaine suggest a decadent society, where drugs and alcohol are the equi...