How Many Miles to Babylon Character Notes

''How Many Miles To Babylon?'' Jennifer Johnston
Characters:
Alec Moore - Narrator
Frederick Moore - Father to Alec
Mrs. Moore - Mother to Alec
Jerry Crowe - Friend to Alec
Mrs. Crowe - Mother to Jerry
Major Glendinning - Commending Officer to Jerry and Alec in the army

General Points:
- Reflects different stages of Narrator Development.
- Written in social realism.
- There’s a continuous stream of consciousness, no chapters.
- Starting and closing lines are both the same: ''Because I am an officer and a gentleman...''

 Setting of the Novel:
 The setting is varied, begins with Alec’s detention in France, and reverts to his childhood in Co. Wicklow, moves between Dublin, Belfast, England and France.
 With each change of setting, the reader is brought deeper into the impending doom with awaits Alec and Jerry.
 The move from Ireland to France also propels the protagonist from the domestic, political disharmony of his own country into the European fray so that the scale of the violence and cruelty of Alec’s early experiences is magnified beyond himself to thousands of other people.
 Set in Ireland and focuses on the political conflict around the time of the nationalist movement and the First World War.
 Also conflicts between the upper and lower class in Ireland (classification)

Plot Summary:
*Perfect for introduction to an essay*
This is the autobiographical narrative of a man facing death. Alexander Moore, an Anglo-Irish lieutenant in The British Army during World War I, recounts the events of his life which have led to his present circumstances. In defiance of the demands of his class-bound parents to give up his friendship with local Irish boy, Jerry Crowe, Alex enlists with Jerry and both find themselves in the trenches of Flanders under the command of the cold and heartless Major Glendinning. The Major treats their warm friendship with suspicion and disdain and when Jerry goes AWOL for three days to search for his wounded father, Glendinning