[In On the Beach] Shute portrays the end of all men upon earth. Not on a planetary or cosmic scale, but through the eyes and hearts of utterly convincing persons, Shute carries the reader to the radioactive death of man, after a third world war. The story and its motion picture are by now well known to many of us. And we have all shared in the pain-filled pages of the novel.

It is what lies beyond or beneath the obviously depressing portrayal that makes this work something more than a story well told. When men are driven to the very brink, when they are stripped of all hope of life continuing in this world, what will men do? And might we not learn something about the essential nature of man when he faces the final moment?

Shute, at first glance, seems to use the most trivial of...