Drug Culture in Alex Garlands Novel The Beach - Research Paper Example

Drug culture in Alex Garland’s novel The Beach The novel The Beach by Alex Garland was his first novel and has a major theme of drug culture. The setting of the novel is in the Thailand, where there is no discretion in the use of marijuana. The author presents an entirely different world in the isolated beach, which is greatly influenced by the presence of huge marijuana plantation. This sets the platform for discussions in this essay. The author of The Beach presents the drug, cannabis, as an enhancer for absurd experiments with identity. In the novel, fantasy can interlace with daily experience. The novel is thus presenting facts about marijuana that other previous books have illustrated. It follows the custom of cannabis writing that presents the drug as a product and a root of legend making. In Western writing, it has been a variable substance, making the user stupefied and silent. The novel is has a Thailand setting and involves a group that seeks to find a beach that is well celebrated, isolated and peaceful. The beach they are looking for is one that the tourists have not yet discovered. The book is written based on the point of view of Richard, the main character of the novel. In search for the isolated beach, Richard is in possession of a map that will lead him to this beach. In the novel, the meeting of three travelers sets the platform on which the story is told. Richard, a traveler of an English background coincidentally meets a Scotsman called Daffy Duck in Bangkok on Khao San Road (Garland 14). This is the man that gives Richard a map that is drawn by hand, showing the location of a beach that is thought to be hidden from the access of tourists. This beach is located in the Gulf of Thailand. After giving Richard the map to the beach, Daffy Duck commits suicide, leaving the English man in possession of the map to the beach. A young couple from France joins Richard in search of the hidden beach (Garland 23). This couple goes by the names Francoise and Etienne. Richard also meets some students who are from Harvard in Koh Samui, as he and the French couple tries find their way to the undiscovered beach. Zeph and Sammy are the names of the two students, who are given by Richard a copy of the map to the beach. The three travelers arrive at the beach having bribed a boat contractor from region to take them to the beach. These three are happy to get to this beach, which they feel is a paradise on earth. On arrival on the beach, they, therefore eagerly take a swim. On their way to the beach, they come across plantations of marijuana that is heavily guarded by armed men. The village they pass through has people who still have tightly knit practices of a complicated hierarchy of an American woman and his lover, who Richard later learns discovered that together with Daffy, they discovered the isolated beach. These two Americans are Bugs and Sylvester. This was about six years from the three Americans discovered the beach. The beach is entered by just a few that are selected by three people that discovered the beach. This meant that uninvited visitors that came to this beach were incorporated into the community and were not allowed to leave so that they could not put the identity of the community at jeopardy. Richard and the French couple thus incorporate themselves into the community, and its members quickly and readily accept them after they narrate to them of the death of Daffy (Garland 55). The community is self-sufficient and has all the necessary resources and duty rosters that show the work that they were supposed to do. The new community members, therefore, join the fishing troop and they fit into this community easily. Many incidences follow that show Richard and his friends that though there is a joy in their paradise, there was corrupt leadership. The final act of the novel begins when the American students arrive at the island but are seized by the dope guards, taken away, and murdered. In the climactic scene, the heavily armed Thais interrupt the annual Tet party. As a deterrent to further leaking of information about the island which they, like the backpackers, wish to keep secret, although for different reasons, the farmers display the bullet-riddled bodies of the Americans. The members of the beach community, intoxicated by fear, adrenaline, and a stew heavily laced with cannabis, tear the bodies apart. At this point, Sal discovers that Richard left a map for the Americans. Covered in flesh and blood, the beach dwellers turn on him as the source of their problems. Richard, who has foreseen trouble and stayed sober to plan his escape, runs away with Etienne, Francoise, and two other friends who stab several of the beach dwellers in self-defense, then reach the mainland. The community breaks up. Some of the themes that are broulght about by this novel are the theme of drug culture. This book is filled with incidences with many drugs from its beginning to the end. Sal Bugs and Daffy had brought the theme of drugs to the readers’ maximum attention when Richard and the French couple get to the isolated island that was discovered. These three Americans had established a marijuana plantation in this island, and they have this plantation guarded heavily by armed men. The following are the ways in which the theme of drugs is explained below in details. This explanation begins with the setting displayed in the isolated beach in Thailand. On arrival to the beach, the travelers find out, that in their new community, marijuana is grown in plantations and is legal. This is because those that come to visit the beach without being invited by those that discovered it were incorporated so that they cannot jeopardize the activities being carried out in these farms. In addition to this, the marijuana plantations were highly treasured by the owners and were protected by men who had firearms to prevent it from being stolen. As the story begins, Richard, on arriving in Bangkok he smells the familiar odor of marijuana. He says that half of the people he encountered were stoned. It is shocking how the people in this novel show that marijuana was used frequently and explicitly. Richard also is thrilled by the huge amount of backpackers in his environment. These backpackers go to Bangkok to use their money on things that they would not freely do, such as the use of marijuana. The backpackers are tourists that visit the country to use drugs. In his hotel room, Richard and his friends freely smoke marijuana, and this does not seem to annoy or disgust the hotelkeeper. Their hotelkeeper finds them smoking cannabis and to Richards’s observation, she only gave them a wan smile: "She looked at the dope paraphernalia strewn about us with a wan smile" (Garland 46). The Harvard students who are smoking cannabis with Richard show some of the effects of marijuana (Garland 45). One of these students insists that the correct name that should be used in reference to the people of Niger regardless of whether they are white or black is niggers. This shows that cannabis can lead to a contemplative mood where different social roles are imitated and important issues like politics is viewed with a high level of irony. In the beginning of the novel, Sal reminds the members of the community in the beach of what date it was. She tells them that she keeps a calendar, and she is aware that it is the eleventh of September. Her audience cheers when she mentions this. This is because there were only three days to their annual party. This is their mock party where they are a bunch of backpackers who have camped on a segregated island just to relax while smoking cannabis, and not focusing on the world they are not in (Garland 1). They only relate with the experiences they have had on global issues, like the Vietnam War those that were in the beach then could not fight due to their tender age. This party is referred to as the Tet festival, and was held to celebrate the time their community was formed. This party also illustrates the drug culture of the people of this community. Marijuana has to be smoked so that it can elicit the effects of role play and identity. In the segregated beach, there is a lot of cannabis smoking, so its effect of acting out various social roles is showcased. This is because this place is suffused with marijuana, which is enough to cause this effect. At one, a bored Richard and his friend Jed are thrilled to the idea of going to steal soma cannabis from the plantation. On their way to the plantation, the suffused marijuana makes him have imaginations of himself as a fighter who is on patrol in Vietnam (Garland 254). The cannabis also makes the people in the beach have a sense of identity, as one of its effects. Also, members of the community on the beach deny the presence of armed guards on the dope plantations, despite the existence of these guards. The community has also proven to be highly dependent on cannabis for its effects of easing any tension and making their daily experiences interesting. To Richard, this world is ideal and spectacle, making him, just the likes of other community members to isolate themselves from the real world. It happens that Richard hallucinated for a long time during his stay at the beach. The ghost of Duck often visited him and he even converses with them. Ironically, he even fights with Duck. Together with Duck, they stage the Vietnam War as actors: "He was dressed in full combat fatigues with an M16 over his shoulder and his face all painted up with green and black camouflage stripes" (Garland 348). Cannabis has an effect of making people irritant and very violent. Richard has also been affected to become violent by marijuana. He finds himself hooked on roles of an assassin, despite the fact that he did not kill Karl. When he plans his escape, he plans to stay sober so that he can execute his plan well. Their escape turns out to involve violence and Richard even find himself murdering some community members. The violence in this scene of the novel shows how marijuana causes behavior changes to its users. The community does not want Richard and his friends to escape the beach because it could jeopardize their existence in their own world. It is also evident that despite being sober, the character of Richard has turned to a violent one to the extent that he is a murderer (Garland, 410). Richard dismisses the murder he commits just saying: "There was no twitching, no resistance. [...] It really was that simple" (Garland, 413). Garland has used novel characters that are approximately of his age. This helps him to identify with the characters. The production of a movie, based on this novel in the year 1999, made the novel to gain a lot of popularity. Another major reason that has led to the increased popularity of the novel since it gives updates to already existing adventure stories, for instance, Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, giving sense to passionate group of readers that visit instead of fantasizing about foreign islands. The Beach has a violent climax, its investigation of the postcolonial politics of tourism, and its exploration of the confusion and latent aggression of its protagonist draw it into the orbit of darker, more complex narratives of youth and foreign travel such as William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Despite the allusions of the Vietnam War and its insistence on cannabis in this novel, it is very relevant to the post-9/11 world. In conclusion, the novel The Beach has vividly presented the theme of drug culture as explained by the different instances illustrated above. The novel has helped in illustrating the effects cannabis can have on individuals such as violence and hallucinations. The author of this novel has enhanced literature material by other writers by giving all these illustrations. The novel suggests that the traits it brings out, such as fanaticism, violence, and drug abuse are characteristics that the people of the west display. This is brought up by its persistent search for customized gratification and its compliance to defend its cultural and economic privileges at any cost. Due to this, the beach community is a representation of Europe and the United States. At the end of the novel, there is violence that has been illustrated, before this the novel narrates the use of marijuana and the desire to travel. References Garland, A. The Beach. New York: Riverhead Books, 1997. Print. Hodge, J. & Alex G. The Beach: Adapted From the Novel by Alex Garland. London: Faber and Faber, 2000. Print. Read More