In this essay I point out that the presence of ”Otherness” plays a key role in the novel The Beach by Alex Garland, and that the text relates to a colonial literary tradition. I’ve mainly used the distinction of Otherness and cultural representation presented by the postcolonial theorist Edward W. Said to guide me. In my examination of the text the presence of Otherness, how it is described and the effects that it has on the story’s central group of characters, has been my focus point. I’ve investigated the occurrence of different elements in the text which creates the sense of Otherness and identified the two most prominent opposition groups in relation to the protagonist of the story. On the story’s setting level aside, a colonial and imperialist theme can also be found on an intertextual level by made references to American war movies like Apocalypse Now, a specifically good example as the script of that movie is based upon the colonial themed novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I will summarize how the opposition between the Self and the Other throughout The Beach effects the plot’s outcome, and present my conclusion: that the author Alex Garland intentionally places his novel in a tradition of colonial storytelling to give a critical comment on the modern world’s similarities with its colonial past, especially when it comes to contemporary tourism. In my opinion the novel is also questioning the human’s civilized state and social evolvement.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-22523 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Hall, Nina |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kultur och lärande |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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