Analysis Of Alas, Babylon By Pat Frank

Great Essays
Alas, Babylon written by Pat Frank is a classic novel set during the late 1900s in the US, where a nuclear war breaks out with the US against the Soviet Union, and the author captures the struggles the characters experience. In the novel, the war is based on a real war, labeled as The Cold war, that occurred from 1947 to 1991. The author tries to picture what it would be like if the Russians sent up a Sputnik, which was a satellite, into space. The citizens of the US saw this as a complication, because of the satellites spying on them. Based on real events that took effect in Hiroshima, Pat Frank fantasizes about what would happen if the war was to happen in the US instead of in Hiroshima. Throughout the novel, Frank describes the aftermath …show more content…
But Miss McGovern, she won’t want to leave. She stuck on you” (Frank 10). Basically, Missouri is stating that Lib McGovern has a little crush on Randy, because from Missouri’s point of view, Lib would not want to leave Randy. From this point in the book, the reader can see a sense of sympathy from Lib toward Randy starting to grow. Lib’s caring of Randy started before the war began. With this in mind, Randy and Lib’s love did not begin during the war, but before, when times were normal. This concludes that their love was not because of the fear of not finding someone to love, but the true kind of love they found each other on their own time. According to critic Joyce Hart, “They strengthen the men with their love”( Novels for Students 15). In this quote, Hart is saying that women play a key role in this novel. Without the women, the men would have no love or affection. The same goes for women, without a loved one’s love and affection, the women would feel empty. For example, Randy’s brother, Mark, was believed dead, due to him not returning from war. This caused grieving and hallucinating from Helen into thinking Randy was her husband, Mark. Helen was giving Randy a haircut, when out of the blue, Helen says,” Don’t push me away! You’re Mark! You can’t deny it! You’re Mark”(Frank, 222). In this quote, the reader can clearly see the conflict Helen is dealing with. According to Lib McGovern, since Helen was so used to Mark’s love, she is still learning how to live on without his love. Overall, the reader can see that without love, there would be insanity. In this case, if Randy and Lib did not love each other, they would not have a chance at

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In Chapter 1, the cultures and societies discussed include Mesopotamian civilization, Egyptian civilization, the Hittite empire, and the Persian Empire. Major influences from these civilizations and empires have contributed to Western Civilization. Mesopotamian civilization developed between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers and evolved to three definite societies: Sumer (2000s B.C), Babylonia (1000s B.C.), and Assyria (after 700s B.C.). The first known cities were founded by the Sumerians using architecture of mud and brick.…

    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The author of “The Pedestrian”, “There Will Come Soft Rains”, and “The Sound of Thunder”, Ray Bradbury, viewed governments as too authoritative and weapons technology as extremely dangerous. His viewpoint on weapons of mass destruction is described in his story “There Will Come Soft Rains”, where a city is devastated by a nuclear bomb and everything except a single house is destroyed: “This was the only house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles”. Stephen Vincent Benet, the author of "By the Waters of Babylon", has a similar view on weapons. In his story, New York City is destroyed by some kind of chemical weapon and the new primitive civilization only knows of the city as “The Dead…

    • 177 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Who is the bad guy? I believe that John is he bad guy. Because the fact that he is a “Physician” but yet he is keeping his wife who has a depression. John is trying to protect his wife the Narrator from being hurt or getting hurt by locking her away in a room that is closed off and calling her a crazy. John thought that it would help her by moving out into the middle of nowhere and maybe being able to cure her depression.…

    • 606 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    1960s Book Comparison

    • 510 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Compare and Contrast In the novels ,While the World Watched, The Watsons Go To Birmingham, and the excerpts from The Red Scarf Girl, and the excerpts from Times have changed from the 1960s to all 3 novels. There are similarities and differences in all 3 novels. So there were times in each book where certain people couldn't do things because of the color of there skin. So in each story the music, transportation and education.…

    • 510 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In both passages “Biographies of Hegemony” by Karen Ho and “The Naked Citadel” by Susan Faludi, there are two higher institutions, which would be Wall Street and the Citadel whose goal is to “remold” an individual to fit their criteria. Each individual has a certain identity and presents themselves in a specific way. People are known to change due to influences on their everyday lives, which eventually changes their identities into someone completely different. In these two passages, it becomes evident that because of the pressures put upon people by these hierarchies, people unconsciously change and are shaped into new individuals while hiding their true identities. Any person can be completely stripped of their old identities by falling under…

    • 1249 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Neldon Ryan Hamblin Professor Robb Kunz History 2600 September 21, 2015 Compare/contrast Assignment A common theme is ever present in both The Legacy of Conquest by Patricia Limerick and The American West by Anne Butler and Michael Lansing: a profound feeling of responsibility by the authors to set the record of the west straight and to enlighten our minds with facts and depictions of the true west. They do this by using accounts from primary sources, not the fabrications of Hollywood or “John Wayne” that we are used to seeing. However, the books differ in explaining the origin of the romanticization of the west.…

    • 1281 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Technology Against Humanity Our world is controlled by technology and how fast progression is happening. The development of many apps such as Google Maps, Pandora, and Yellow Books is hugely increasing. As many of these things are more convenient and more efficient, there are some advances that are not for the better. Nuclear weapons are being worked on every day. Almost all major government military has access to a nuclear weapon that can destroy their opponent.…

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Regrets of his past “Babylon Revisited” “Babylon Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a dramatic short story, it’s about Charlie Wales, a man that made a lot of mistakes and he regrets the choices he made. He is trying to retrieve his daughter back to start a new life with her. In this short story, Charlie had experienced happiness and sadness throughout the story but, he became stronger and wanted to get is life back together again. In his revisit to Paris, his past comes and haunts him and causes him problems, while he is trying to get his daughter back. In summary of the article “Fitzgerald 's Mentors: Edmund Wilson, H.L. Mencken, and Gerald Murphy” by Ronald Berman states that Charlie wasn’t just gone not only for time but himself to and this short story relates to other stories that are really similar to “Babylon Revisited”.…

    • 1011 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Four hungry lions escape captivity. What do you do? Most people would panic, lock their doors and pray they can’t smell the leftover Thanksgiving turkey in the fridge. Now imagine your neighborhood was just attacked by aerial bombers. Believe it or not, both of these scenarios are true, and happened simultaneously in Iraq.…

    • 762 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Frank experienced rejection by his graduate student lover over his academic rival ‘Larry Sugarman’. Frank ran into his former lover and his academic rival during a rest stop on his way to California. Evidence from the movie showed that he felt distraught, disappointed and ashamed. He attempted to hide his wrists behind his back while talking to his ex-lover. His dismayed face expressed sadness when his ex-lover informed him that he was with Larry driving to Sedona for a week-end spa.…

    • 1544 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He wanted to be with her so bad that he paid to have her fly all the way to Vietnam where she was to stay with them for a few weeks. Vietnam changed Mary, however, and she begins to become rougher and less feminine than Mark wants. His love turns to obsession when she goes on raids and acts in a way that he doesn’t approve of. He tries to regain control and forces her to dress and act a certain way, and she becomes more submissive to keep his love. As a result, she is miserable and this drives her to be even less feminine and she soon leaves him to join the Green Berets, where she wears a necklace of human tongues and goes missing for weeks on end, all a result of his obsessive love and attempts at policing her.…

    • 798 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ketty KAMANZI Section 19 November 8, 2015 In Search of The Promised Land In Search of The Promised Land is a book that follows the lives of the Thomas-Rapier family, a slave-ish family in the nineteenth and twentieth century. It is able to depict the experiences of the family and showcase the “slavery situation” in the antebellum and Civil War era. With increasing tension between whites and blacks, major gray areas between freedom and slavery, varying opinions on slavery from the North and the South; In Search of the Promised Land gives an idea of how life as an African-American at that time.…

    • 790 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    His Promised Land Analysis

    • 1601 Words
    • 6 Pages

    “The right to hold human beings in perpetual and hopeless slavery is only found in the codes of barbarians and despots” (Levine 137). If this was the view of one Massachusetts’ congressman how did others feel about slavery and what did they do to stop the spread of slavery? Of course slaves fought against their bondage in subtle ways from within the perimeter of their plantation owners and their plantations that the slaves were forced to work on. Within Levine’s textbook he states that slaves resisted their masters or overseers by being clumsy, breaking tools, making the authority figure on the plantation explain the task multiple times, and slowing their working pace therefore the expectations of the slave owner were decreased from that specific…

    • 1601 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    People often refer to mental illness as being trapped in one’s own mind. This is undoubtedly depicted in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Gilman’s story, written in 1891, captivates readers and allows one to enter the mind of a mentally ill person and experience this illness in a first-hand narrative version; almost as if reading the diary of Jane. “The Yellow Wallpaper” goes into vast detail of how treatment of mental illness, and the inequality of women, during that era could cause one to spiral into a state of psychosis. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written in a time when women were oppressed in their homes as well as in society.…

    • 1092 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In the extract from the essay ’’ The new empire within Britain’’ Salman Rushdie, an Indian born Briton and author, explores the subjects of institutional racism, the subconscious racist nature of the English language and the stains that the time of imperialism has left on the British mentality. To gather Rushdie’s main thesis, one need only to look at the title: “The New Empire within Britain”. Rushdie states: “It sometimes seems that the British authorities, no longer capable of exporting governments, have chosen instead to import a new empire, a new community of subject peoples to whom they think, and with whom they can deal in very much the same ways as their predecessors thought of and dealt with’’ (p.1, ll.4-9) The Britons once dominated…

    • 941 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays