“On the beach” by Nevil Shute is a set in a post nuclear war Australia. Nevil Shute shows through his book two main themes Self-Destruction and a Destructive Relationship with Technology. In this essay I will be discussing self-destruction. Self-destruction can be shown in many ways one is through extreme denial. Extreme denial is self-destructive at least in the way the book shows it because people refuse to accept the inevitable their deaths due to radiation poisoning and the deaths of other loved ones. This refusal messes with the physic of the characters giving some of them a since of extremely false hope. Dwight is one of the characters how can’t accept the deaths of his family talking about them as if they were still alive. “Dwight goes to grade school, and Helen, she’ll be going next fall. She goes to the little kindergarten just up the street.” (Shute, 96) He also buys presents for his family a fishing rod, a pogo stick, and an expense bracelet for his wife. Other characters too show signs of denial going as far as to plant things that will not grow for another five years. “Another thing I want to do is to plant a flowering gum tree here I think that’d look lovely in summer. ‘Takes about five years to come to bloom.’” “They when on happily planning their garden for the next ten years”. Their denial is amazing to…show more content… Like former Lieutenant General and John's great-uncle Douglas Froude who tries to speed up his death my drinking.” If I didn’t stop drinking the club porter he couldn’t guarantee my life for longer than a year… Do you know we’ve got over three thousand bottles of vintage port and only about six months to go?”(Shute 87) Douglas hopes to drink himself to death and enjoy himself in the process rather than die of radiation poisoning. His nephew John Osborne also tries to speed up his death by racing in his new