Theme and message

The main theme of the story “On the Beach” by Bret Easton Ellis is death, and how it affects those how have to confront it. Additionally, the story explores the motif of materialism. The characters come from wealthy families, live a life of pleasures and excess (sex, alcohol, drugs, the comfort of a big house, etc.). But all these material comforts become irrelevant when one is faced with the prospect of death. As a result, the writer’s message can be interpreted as one of caution. The story warns readers not to take life or the people we know and things we own for granted. Death can always make its claim when one least expects it.

Death

The theme of death is explored in the story by following the narrator and several other characters as they are trying (and failing) to deal with the impending death of a girl who suffers from a deadly disease.

At one level, the story explores how having a deadly disease affects the girl, physically and psychologically. Physically, she loses her beauty and her body deteriorates. She gets thin, loses her hair, and she can no longer get a tan because her cells do not regenerate. Psychologically, she becomes depressed and distant. She cries when no one sees her, talks less with her boyfriend and her friends, and sits melancholically on the beach....