Alas, Babylon

“When a man dies, and his children die with him, then he is dead entirely, leaving nothing to show.” 

Mark accepts that he will probably die during the attacks. He sends his children and wife to Randy so they can survive and bear witness to his existence. His children show the same stoic resolve he possesses, having accepted that their father did his duty. His comments foreshadow the conversation Randy and Lib have later about whether or not they will have children.

“Censorship and thought control can exist only in secrecy and darkness.”

Alice is a librarian. Librarianship is a profession that considers privacy an inalienable right. She does not see that she is hypocritical in her gossiping with Florence, even though they typically talk about matters that Florence learns by reading private telegrams at her job. The two of them profess to maintain secrecy as a public good, while violating it for entertainment.

“LeMay says the only way a general can win a modern war is not fight one. Our whole raison d’etre was deterrent force. When you don’t deter them any longer, you lose.”

Mark quotes LeMay’s philosophy of military avoidance. By falling behind in the space race, America allowed Russia to place military reconnaissance satellites in space. They could not observe the Russians in kind. This technological gap was one of the greatest fears of the Cold War. People on both sides assumed that information gaps would be exploited and that whoever gained an advantage would use it to deter the opposition.

“‘I think you ought to go to New York or Chicago or San Francisco or any city with character and vitality. You should go to work. This place is no good for you, Randy. The air is like soup and the people are like noodles. You’re vegetating. I don’t want a vegetable. I want a man.’” 

Lib urges Randy to leave Fort Repose so that he can aspire to greater things than the town provides. She sees him as stagnant and unchallenged in their little town. This belief contrasts with how indispensable Randy becomes to the survival of Fort Repose. He thrives on challenge but does not develop into a leader until challenges force themselves on him.

“You see, all their lives, ever since they’ve known anything, they’ve lived under the shadow of war—atomic war. For them the abnormal has become normal. All their lives they have heard nothing else, and they expect it.”

Helen responds to Randy’s remark that her children have stayed very calm during the attacks. Mark and Helen did not raise their children in a pessimistic environment, but a realistic one. They have always known that nuclear war was a possibility, so the event has lost some of its terror and mystique for them. Children raised during the Cold War were more aware of nuclear threats than other generations.

“With the use of the hydrogen bomb, the Christian era was dead, and with it must die the tradition of the Good Samaritan.” 

The precepts of Christianity include the assumptions that it is good to turn the other cheek, to love and forgive one’s enemies, and to help whoever can be helped. The parable of the Good Samaritan shows that helping others, despite the short-term inconvenience, is the right choice. When resources are scarce and survival is not guaranteed, however, those who choose the philosophy of the Good Samaritan may endanger themselves and their families in their intent to help strangers.

“This incident was important only because it was self-revelatory. Randy knew he would have to play by the old rules. He could not shuck his code, or sneak out of his era.” 

After Randy sees the woman with the broken neck, he decides to keep driving, abandoning the principles of the Good Samaritan parable. However, his conscience will not let him pass without checking on the woman. He realizes that there are older matters of personal integrity that he will always abide by, regardless of the dilemmas presented by this new age.

“If the dollar was worthless, everything was worthless. There was a phrase he had heard a number of times, ‘the end of civilization as we know it.’ Now he knew what the phrase meant. It meant the end of money.” 

Edgar Quisenberry’s priorities make him unfit for a post-nuclear world. He has always worshipped money and identified as a banker. He has no concept of a civilization in which money is not its most important feature. He kills himself because if money has no worth, he cannot see worth in his life.

“The struggle was not against a human enemy, or for victory. The struggle, for those who survived The Day, was to survive the next.” 

As long as conflict exists between Russia and America, discussions of victory and defeat adopt a rational framework in which conflicts have a winner and a loser. The attacks, however, change the nature of the struggle. There is no way to “win” other than to survive until the next day. The isolation caused by the attacks removes enemies and nationalism from the equation. There is no clear enemy; instead, one must fight against one’s fellow citizens, illness, nature, and the indifference of the hostile conditions.

“Who’s winning? Nobody’s winning. Cities are dying and ships are sinking and aircraft is going in, but nobody’s winning.” 

The Admiral sees the futility of the war. A global, existential threat transcends concepts like defeat and victory. The Admiral tallies the destruction of the planet and knows that everyone who inhabits the earth is currently losing. One manmade nation triumphing over another is petty and trivial compared to the cost of endangering the human race and its chances for survival.

“The strong survive. The frail die. The exotic fish die because the aquarium isn’t heated. The common guppy lives. So does the tough catfish. The house cat turns hunter and eats the pet bird. If he didn’t, he’d starve. That’s the way it is and that’s the way it’s going to be.” 

Randy explains the new order to Florence after her fish die and her cat kills one of her birds. What happens in Florence’s house foreshadows what will happen to human society in the aftermath of the attacks. Natural selection will decide which humans are strong enough to survive the devastation, and which will die.

“It was a surprise, and a delight, to see children devour books. Without ever knowing it, they were receiving an education.”

Before The Day, people feel free to ignore the library and to spend their leisure time on activities other than learning. Once the library becomes the primary source of information in Fort Repose, Alice is thrilled to see the people’s hunger for knowledge. The children enjoy reading when the things they are learning are not framed as formal education.

“It was strange, she thought, pedaling steadily, that it should require a holocaust to make her own life worth living.” 

Alice’s work as a librarian rarely fulfilled her prior to The Day. The knowledge stored at the library could seem superfluous when the world was not in crisis. After the nuclear attacks, people’s hunger for information makes her feel useful again. Her job becomes a calling and a duty rather than a dull way to collect a paycheck.

“If man retained faith in God, he might also retain faith in Man.”

Randy sees the advertisement for the Easter service. In a time of such uncertainty, he realizes the value of any faith, regardless of what people have faith in. He hopes that the Easter service will remind people that hope and faith have benefits that transcend religion. Faith in God can serve as the preservation of faith itself.

“She is a person who requires love and is used to it. For many years a man has been the greater part of her life. So she has this conflict—intense loyalty to her husband and yet need of a man to receive her abundance of love and affection.” 

Lib describes Helen’s psychological trauma. Helen doesn’t know that Mark is dead, and she wants to be faithful to him if he is still alive. According to Lib, Helen needs to support a man. Otherwise, she doesn’t know what to do with her affection and love. It makes her anxious when these feelings have no obvious outlet for expression. Lib’s description also shows that, having lived more independently than Helen, she herself does not have the same conflict. She wants to be with Randy, but this desire is not a critical part of her identity.

“War was no longer an instrument on national policy, only an instrument for national suicide. War itself was obsolete.” 

Prior to the nuclear age, war meant the amassment of men who would then use their weapons to hurt and kill each other until one side was defeated. After the invention of the gun, firearms were the primary weapons used in war. Nuclear capabilities changed the nature of war. A conflict could begin with the press of a button and end before one side knew the war had even begun.

“It takes two to make a peace but only one to make a war.” 

The Admiral explains one of the dilemmas of the deterrent force age. Peace requires that two parties trust each other. They agree to behave peacefully but must take it on faith that each side honors their part of the agreement. The side that intends to wage war can break the peace at any second and gain a head start on the fighting.

“This is a bad time for love...when you love someone, that should be what you think of most, the first thing when you wake in the morning and the last thing before you sleep at night. Before The Day that’s how I thought of you.” 

Lib describes her feelings for Randy before and after the attacks. Before the war, life was leisurely enough to spend time dwelling on the object of one’s affection. The aftermath of The Day requires that people focus on what is expedient and vital. Romantic love is peripheral to the fight for survival.

“Randy felt nauseated, not at the sight of Dan’s injuries—he had seen worse—but in disgust at the beasts who in callous cruelty had dragged down and maimed and destroyed the human dignity of this selfless man. Yet it was nothing new. It had been like this at some point in every civilization and on every continent. There were human jackals for every human disaster.” 

Repetitive cycles of destruction and cruelty run throughout the novel. After the highwaymen rob and beat Dan, Randy is outraged and disgusted. However, the beating and robbery are both predictable as well. When civilization disintegrates, selflessness is not rewarded. Randy doubles down on his goal to find the highwaymen because he knows that their success will encourage others to copy them if their inhumane behavior goes unpunished.

“It was a wolf. It wasn’t a dog any longer. In times like these dogs can turn into wolves.” 

Every creature in the book is wired to fight for its own survival. Ben is horrified to see that he has shot a dog, an animal he associates with friendship and loyalty. Randy knows that hardships force the predatory aspects of animals and people to the surface. Men can become beasts when fighting for survival, and domesticated beasts can grow savage.

“Ben Franklin was credited with discovering a new source of food, and was a hero. Peyton was only a girl, fit for sewing, pot washing, and making beds.” 

Peyton is frustrated that no one takes her seriously. She sees that many of the women around her serve ancillary roles. Men take action and receive the credit for the survival of the group. Peyton realizes that she can be a hero too if she can solve the problem of the missing fish. Once Randy learns what she has done, he says that he would give her a medal if he had one. Peyton becomes a hero and shows that she can be as useful as the men, making her an exception among the adult female characters who rely on men for help.

“The more he learned about women the more there was to learn except that he had learned this: they needed a man around.” 

Randy reflects the novel’s often antiquated view of women. Without a man in their lives, women have no one to protect them, no one to flatter and support, and no one to maintain their emotional stability. For women to last, in Randy’s philosophy of the survival of the fittest, they require the strength and assistance of men. Otherwise, they are too weak and erratic to survive.

“‘We won it. We really clobbered ‘em!’ Hart’s eyes lowered and his arms drooped. He said, ‘Not that it matters.’” 

Hart tells Randy that America won the war. However, defeating the Russians does not mean that there was a meaningful victory. The conflict was futile, and Russia’s defeat is meaningless in a world that has to rebuild itself. Nationalism is a petty affair compared to existential threats. America may have won, but the human species has lost in equal measure.