Alas, Babylon: Survival Analysis

The threat of nuclear warfare has been a fear tactic used multiple times to settle issues between countries. In Pat Frank’s Alas Babylon, Frank focuses on Fort Repose, a small community in rural Florida. Frank centers the time frame on the height of the Cold War between Soviet Russia and the United States. Opening on how connections can save lives and change lives. Randy Bragg and the town of Fort Repose is dealt a lucky hand when Randy’s brother, Mark, a military man tips Randy off to the threat of a nuclear strike. Mark disguises the warning through a telegram telling Randy that Mark’s wife, Helen, and two children, Peyton and Ben Franklin, will be coming down to visit also asking Randy to meet him at the Base Ops McCoy in Orlando at

Paradoxically, too much money and lack of it can ruin lives in a myriad of ways. These two views have been put across in two stories; Babylon revisited and I stand here ironing. These two stories are very different; one talks about too much wealth, and the other one talks about too much poverty. The lives of both the wealth and the poor are analyzed in the two stories in ways that reveal the damaging effects of too much poverty and wealth. Babylon revisited is a short story about a man who wasted all his money in clubs to an extent that he lost his wife and daughter. On the other hand, I stand here ironing is a story that depicts the extremes of poverty and had damaging it can be. Both show that extremes of either wealth or poverty can ruin lives in devastating ways.

The tone of “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benet is ominous. Throughout the entire first paragraph the word forbidden is used at least six times. The word forbidden is often associated with negative outcomes. This gives the reader a feeling of danger which helps to create an ominous tone. Another word Benet uses repeatedly throughout the story is death. On page 4 John states that the place where the Great Burning occurred was the greatest Dead Place they knew. They obviously knew of more than one Dead Place. Calling homes and cities dead places proves that John’s people had a rather dark outlook on life. Also, the words dead places make some readers think of a graveyard, which often brings about an ominous feeling. The ominous

“To the world you may be just another person, but to one person you may just be the world (Snyder, ThinkExist.com). In Pat Frank’s book, Alas Babylon, Randy Bragg is no one of importance. He is failed politician that lives off his family’s land in a small town, Fort Repose, in Florida. But For this small town lawyer everything was about to change. The United States had been on edge of Nuclear Warfare with Russia for years. Frank writes on about how one man, Randy Bragg, redeems himself from a failed politician to a somewhat of a town hero (Frank).

When drastic times occur and sweep one of everything they own, do they have a plan of action? Will they be prepared for a life without power, resources, and stability? Many times when people are faced with this situation they find themselves unprepared and unable to live in such conditions. They lose the connections with the world, the water they drink is likely to get contaminated, and the scarcity of goods is a threat to themselves and anyone left alive. Everywhere around them there is death and destruction leaving them isolated in their own dystopia. Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon illustrates a nuclear bomb simulation. In such a way, he gives the readers a taste of isolation and survival needs when facing such drastic times.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "Babylon Revisited" and Ernest Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro. " both of the main characters Charlie and Harry experience a tragic yet different sense of loss during the stories. The theme of loss haunts the characters as there are both forced to reflect on how each other’s decisions resulted in their grief and longing for lost time. Although Harry faced the loss of opportunity and Charlie deals with loss of time and memory, both men are responsible for their selfish actions towards wealth, fame, and women and are unable to become the successful writer and father they long to be.

While reading Alas, Babylon, the middle section of page 85 stood out to me greatly, perhaps more than any other passage I’d encountered in the book up to that point. In that section, Randy and Helen have a conversation about how Ben Franklin and Peyton, Helen and Mark’s children, have been conditioned in such a way that they are able to handle receiving the news of imminent nuclear war in a cool, even-tempered manner. I felt an immediate connection with the two children, because I’ve been exposed to similar circumstances from the time I was very young. Having been born in July of 2001, barely two months before the attacks of September 11, I can’t recall a single period in my life during which the U.S. wasn’t involved in conflict of any sort.

Think about what it would be like to have no resources left and be on the verge of dying. In Pat Frank’s, Alas Babylon this question is asked over and over. One never truly knows when one is going to have to prepare for the worst, but in this book the main character gets a hint that it is coming before it actually comes. Randy Bragg is a fortunate man, he has never had to struggle for what he wants, causing him to drink and be a carefree person, but this changed with one telegram. Randy is a person who would not survive in a time of crisis and need of survival, or so one thinks at the beginning of Alas Babylon. Randy was prepared for what was to come and he knew what he needed to do in order to survive. One of the main things that kept Randy alive was the people he surrounded himself with; he knew who he needed and each of their talents. Randy was a selfless person and knew he could not fight for his life alone; he was in need of the people around him. Some people will do whatever it takes to survive, using all of their resources. While others cannot handle the change, they believe there is no use in living anymore in times of crisis. Each person deals with a time of crisis differently, but survival is or should be everyone’s main goal. In a time of crisis, one can see the true character of the people around them and the worth of each person.

In Ted Chiang’s “Tower of Babylon”, the story serves as a pathway for the concept of the prominent fight between the existence of religion versus the intelligence of man in the genre of science fiction. The “Tower of Babylon” targets the self-righteousness and obliviousness of men when faced with any circumstances. Chiang shows the tower itself as a devotion to God in order to get closer to him in the story but in reality, is exemplifies man’s hubris which ultimately shows the man’s lack of humility towards God. The story starts off with introducing a group of miners from Elam hoping to achieve the goal of breaking the “vault of heaven”, which is the gateway to Yahweh’s paradise. Both miners from Elam and Egypt are gathered to decode this enigma, ultimately providing a utopia for mankind. As the men gear up for a long journey, they go over the basics of traveling up the tower in order. They have already figured out a way to go and break the vault, from growing a forest to supply wood for the tower to growing their own crops on the towers. The author now shows the main paradox the story is surrounded upon, they are confident and constantly uphold the superiority of their religion, but “rely on engineering rather than prayer”. The story is mainly focused on the adventure to the “vault” as “no deity makes an appearance in the story”. Specifically, man trying show their dominance in knowledge when facing God.

The main theme in the short story “Babylon Revisited” is that you can’t repeat the past. Charlie has a lot of hope for the future, but his guilt from the past catches up with him. He tries to forget about the Paris he used to know, but memories from the past haunts him throughout the story. His past is inescapable and he has to pay great debts when the party comes to an end. “Babylon Revisited”, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald was published in 1931. The story is greatly affected by the time period it was written in, and by what was going on in Fitzgerald’s life.

Throughout the time period in which the moderns were coming of age and were bearing the weight of responsibility from the world around them there were many authors that came forth. One such author was F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was probably one of the greatest American authors of the twentieth century. One of his many stories that was of interest within class was “Babylon Revisited”. Within the story it goes over the life of a man who has recently come off of being a drunk and is in the midst of attempting to get his daughter back. He had made the mistake of locking his wife out after a fight between the two in a bar, and now that she is dead he is blamed for that.

​A family is the most important thing that an individual possesses as they are the foundation of whom the person is, and who they will become. This is especially true if the individual lives far from where the family resides. In Babylon Revisited, this is the case. Charlie Wales lives in Prague, Czechoslovakia; while, his daughter, Honoria, lives in Paris, France with her uncle and aunt. However, their unconditional love is so immense that no distance or time apart can break such.

When I was about six years old, my older brother and a few of his friends thought it would be funny if they removed the divider between to the two betta fish we had in our fish tank. Bettas are very aggressive and territorial fish and usually like to be left alone, so the second that they removed the divider, they started attacking each other. Even though they are just fish and are very small, it was blatantly obvious that they were doing harm to each other. He later put the borders back up but a few hours later, one of them had died. I blamed it on the fact that my brother let the fish do that to each other and later, told my dad. My brother, of course, got in trouble. I was confused at the time on why they had to do that and why one had died. My father had told me that the reason why one of them died because he was weak compared to the other one and could not endure fighting against the other fish. I was still very upset and angry at my older brother for doing that, but that was one of the first times I had heard about something relating to the topic of

Although the Assyrian Empire deconstructed, they were able to improve their self defense against adversaries who would want to cause harm. Many enemies would, frequently, attack the civilization. It was a result of their “flat, exposed land [making it] easy for other people to attack” (Beck, 95), portraying the various opportunities for them to cause destruction and the reason to the Assyrians` naiveness. Intruders would usually come through the mountains nearby the empire. However, they desired to make a change to the invasions. Assyria`s effort in change was ceaseless, yet trying to “maintain permanent control failed… and a cycle of rebellion continued” (Rogers), implying the persistence of the Assyrians that never improved. This is

970 CE - A completed public library in Cordoba with nearly half a million books.