Harsh Perspectives of Youth in Garland’s The Beach :: Garland The Beach Essays

Harsh Perspectives of Youth in Garlands The Beach As his narrator, Garland offers us Richard, a less than balanced individual, in possession of a tenuous grip upon reality. He is arrogant and reckless, often believing himself to know nothing left to learn (Fucking New Guy? ... New to what? p87) and convinced of his own immortality (Yea, though I walk through the valley of terminal I will fear no evil, for I am the evilest motherfucker in the valley p87) The beach is supposed to represent the highest level of escape attainable, entirely can only be from the outset a disappointment, because it is already built up in his mind into something unobtainable Its silly really. I think I was expecting an . . . ideology or something. A purpose. p96 Richard being the narrative voice, one can logically infer that it is his situation which is intended by Garland to be substitute of the youth culture depicted. My first impression is that the very fact that Richard commits his story to text i s indicative of a desperate need for recognition, and his style of narration suggests that its paternity is not likely to be meant as a catharsis. As a character, he is shallow and self-glorifying beyond the point to which readers might sympathise with his reckless actions p163 stash away ... experiences was my primary goal when I first started travelling. I went about it in the same way as a stamp-collector goes about collecting stamps ... Then I had to graduate to the more obscure stuff. Being in a riot was something I pursued with a truly obsessive zeal, along with being tear-gassed and hear gunshots fired in anger. The cultural phenomenon of travelling, as distinct from tourism, is one reserved for domination almost exclusively by youth. In Richards mind, as in others, it becomes the achievement of experiences with only slight moral differentiation between them, merely a reinforcement in the mind of the collector of their own broadening life perspective a form of validation which, whilst owing nothing to established mainstream cultural shelter systems, replaces these with a generation-created classification hierarchy which is just as strict. Established value systems provide the catalyst for tensions within the group, which emerge at the earliest stages immediately upon Richards arrival Theres only five people with Walkmans in the camp, and Ive refused all of them batteries in the past.