Alas, Babylon

The answer to this question is actually given to us in the second chapter of this excellent novel, when Alice Cooksey is told of the contents of the telegram that Randy receives by Florence Wecheck...

Randy Bragg is running for a seat in the Florida State Senate. It's the 1950s and Florida is still very much a part of the Old South. As such, there's a strong climate of racial prejudice, one...

Randy Bragg One of Randy Bragg's main character traits is his high moral code and belief in law and order. The bombing forces him to look harder at his moral code: “Yesterday, he would have...

I think there are plenty to choose from in this brilliant dystopian novel. However, one of the biggest I would say comes in Chapter Nine, when Helen, clearly struggling with the grief of losing her...

There are many symbols in the novel, and I think they are all essential. For instance, Randy's binoculars in the beginning of the novel represent his carefree life. He lazes around and uses these...

The social and cultural climate in Fort Repose at the beginning of Alas, Babylon is very true to its time: the early 1950s. For the most part, women act in domestic roles, with Randy's...

Along with the ancestral past shared by Randy Bragg and the house ("shared" metaphorically by the house), they also share a present and a future, and there is a dual aspect to the present and...

In Alas, Babylon, Randy Bragg has a very close working relationship with his neighbors, the Henry family. They live on the old, renovated slave quarters at the edge of his property. Missou comes...

Chapter Ten brings grim news to the Bragg family home. Dan Gunn has discovered two terrible issues facing Fort Repose: 1) a case of typhoid fever at the Sunsbury family, and 2)highwaymen preying...

"Alas, Babylon" is the secret message that Mark gives Randy to warn him of the impending nuclear attack: "I won't call you up and say, 'Hey, Randy, the Russians are about to attack us.' Phones...

In Chapter 2 of Alas, Babylon, Randy is preparing for the threat of nuclear war and potentially the collapse of civilization. While he is leaving his house to gather his loved ones, he observes...

I imagine that the connection exists in the understanding of what it means to be an child of the Atomic Age. Franklin was certainly a child of the Enlightenment, and many in his time began to...

At the beginning of the story, Randy Bragg is no hero; he isn't even an anti-hero. A hard-drinking playboy who's recently been defeated in his efforts to achieve political office, it seems like...

At the beginning of the novel Alas, Babylon, Randy Bragg uses his binoculars to look for a Carolina parakeet. He mistakes Florence Wechek's African lovebird, Anthony, for one, which is why...

The tenacity of the human spirit is a major theme presented by Pat Frank in Alas, Babylon. The novel reveals the pioneer spirit of Fort Repose, a small town in Florida after atomic warfare...

Consider how Bubba Offenhaus is presented at the beginning of Chapter Nine. Although he is supposedly Director of Civil Defense, the book makes it clear that it is Randy who is running around...

Alas Babylon was written in 1959 and reflects a different technological world. Specifically as regards Mark's message, it comes in the form of a telegram, an old technology that is seldom used...

After "The Day," as the nuclear attack becomes known in Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, the community of Fort Repose rally around Randy, an unlikely leader in view of his former relaxed, almost...

In chapter five, Randy slaps Jennings, the manager of the Riverside Inn in Fort Repose, where Dan Gunn kept a room. Randy goes there to find Dan on the day of the blast because he wants the...

Mark's views on U.S. Civil Defense preparedness are enlarged upon in the conversation Mark has with Randy in Randy's new Bonneville at the virtually abandoned airfield, and his views have a most...

In chapter eleven of Alas, Babylon, Randy readies Pete's grocery truck for the ambush to catch and kill the highwaymen who had been preying on travelers in Fort Repose. At the last minute,...

Malachai and the Henry family become invaluable allies of Randy and the Bragg family from the very beginning. The social and economic differences mostly derive from the fact that the Henry family...

Randy's house is a modest property on the outskirts of town. Downstairs in the house are the kitchen, a living room/den area, and Randy's office. It is in this office that he stashes his special...

This section of the novel appears in Chapter Four, and of course narrates the trigger that initiates the nuclear holocaust that leaves Randy and the people with him in such dire straits. If we look...

In Chapter One of Alas, Babylon, Pat Frank uses a Biblical phrase imbued with symbolic meaning to foreshadow the realized threat of nuclear war. Randy Bragg and his brother Mark, who now works...

The part you're talking about occurs at the end of chapter 8 on pages 157 and 158 during an exchange between Randy, Florence, Alice, and Lib. Randy enters the house to find Florence crying at the...

The story is dated in that the Soviet Union was considered to be the enemy that would launch a nuclear strike. There is no Soviet Union any longer. Nuclear worries are based around Iran and North...

The answer to this question can be found in the first chapter of this excellent dystopian clasic, where Randy remembers the conversation he had with his brother, Mark, and the code signal they...

In the first chapter, the main character in the story, Randy Bragg, talks about how he once ran for the State Legislature and lost badly. At that time, in the mid-1950s in which the book is set,...

There are many things to unpack in chapter 6 of Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon. The biggest event in the novel and history itself has occurred in this chapter—the nuclear holocaust that has devastated...

This semantic device [The Day] was not entirely original. Several generations of Southerners had referred to before and after "The War" without being required to explain what war" (123). The...

Randy Bragg is similar to Ralph inLord of the Flies by William Golding. Both novels feature a marked departure from the constructions of civilization, both novels also feature a moral character...

I live very close to a very strategic transportation hub, so it is highly unlikely that I would survive a large scale nuclear attack on the United States. In the event that I knew the US was under...