Editing On the Beach (novel) (section)

==Characterisation==
The characters make their best efforts to enjoy what time remains to them, speaking of small pleasures and continuing their customary activities. The Holmeses plant a garden that they will never see; Moira initially acts as a [[socialite]] – drinking and partying excessively – but upon meeting Towers takes classes in typing and [[shorthand]]; Osborne and others organize a dangerous motor race that results in the violent deaths of several participants; elderly members of a [[gentlemen's club]] drink up the wine in the club's cellar, debate over whether to move the fishing season up, and fret about whether agriculturally destructive [[European rabbit|rabbits]] will survive human beings. Towers goes on a fishing trip with Moira Davidson but they do not become intimate, as he chooses to remain loyal to his dead wife, a decision Moira accepts.

Government services and the economy gradually grind to a halt, albeit the societal breakdown depicted is generally amiable. In the end, Towers chooses not to remain and die with Moira, but rather to lead his crew on a final mission to scuttle the submarine outside of Australian territorial waters. He refuses to allow his imminent demise to turn him aside from his duty to the US Navy, and he acts as a pillar of strength to his crew.

Typically for a Shute novel, the characters avoid expressing intense emotions and do not indulge in self-pity. The Australians do not, for the most part, flee southward as refugees but rather accept their fate once the lethal radiation levels reach the latitudes at which they live; most of them opt for the government-promoted alternative of suicide when the symptoms of radiation sickness appear. In any case, as is made clear within the text, radiation poisoning is also starting to appear as far south as [[Christchurch]], New Zealand, so any such flight would ultimately have been pointless.