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Study guide · Novella

How Many Miles to Babylon?

by Jennifer Johnston

A chapter-by-chapter study guide for How Many Miles to Babylon?. Built around the rubric, not the cover — chapter summaries, characters, themes, symbols, and the key quotes worth pulling for an essay.

  • 9chapters
  • 7characters
  • 8themes
  • 5symbols
  • 9quotes
  • 10study tools

01·Chapter-by-chapter

A reader's guide, chapter by chapter.

9 chapters · click any chapter to expand its summary and analysis.

  1. Ch. 1Opening / Alec's Cell

    Summary

    The novel begins with Alec Moore telling his story from a military prison cell, where he’s been sentenced to death and is waiting for execution at dawn. In this opening chapter, Johnston sets a reflective tone: Alec, a young Anglo-Irish officer, is either writing or mentally piecing together his narrative of the events that led him to this moment, addressing it to no one in particular, or maybe to his absent, indifferent mother. He describes the bare details of his imprisonment with a cool, detached manner: the cell, the guard outside, the morning that’s drawing near. Alec presents himself as a man of privilege—having grown up on a decaying Big House estate in County Wicklow—and indicates, without any sentimentality, that he has come to terms with his fate. The chapter is short and intentionally sparse, acting as a prologue that confines the entire story to a single, terminal perspective. Everything that follows will be a memory, tinted by the understanding that it all culminates here.

    Analysis

    Johnston's opening is a masterclass in controlled introspection. By introducing Alec as already condemned in the first paragraph, she removes the usual suspense and shifts the reader's focus from what happens to how it was always going to happen—a fatalist structure that reflects the doomed path of the Anglo-Irish class Alec represents. The cell becomes a space for confession, yet Alec resists the urge to confess; his tone is measured, almost clinical, which makes the emotional undercurrent far more unsettling than overt grief would be.

    The implicit address to the mother—heavy with meaning—instantly introduces the novel's central psychological tension. Alec's relationship with his cold, controlling mother has influenced every evasion and silence in his character, and Johnston embeds that wound in the opening lines without naming it directly. This reflects her characteristic restraint: meaning builds subtly at the edges of sentences.

    The Big House motif emerges quietly through Alec's identification with a decaying landed class, linking his personal tragedy to a larger historical unraveling—the Anglo-Irish world disintegrating amid the First World War and Irish political turmoil. Johnston's prose style here—short, declarative sentences, minimal metaphor, a rhythm that feels like held breath—sets the tonal contract the reader must accept: no melodrama, no false comfort, just clarity.

    Key quotes

    • “I am not a fool. I know that I am going to die.”

      Alec opens his narration with these two flat sentences, immediately establishing the retrospective frame and the novel's refusal of self-pity.

    • “My mother never loved me. I think she was incapable of love.”

      Early in the chapter, Alec introduces the defining emotional absence of his childhood, framing his entire psychology in a single, unadorned declaration.

    • “Outside the window the sky was beginning to lighten. Another day was preparing itself, indifferent to my situation.”

      The description of dawn approaching the cell fuses the personal and the cosmic, the indifferent natural world mirroring the indifferent social order that has condemned him.

  2. Ch. 2Childhood and the Big House

    Summary

    Chapter 2 offers a deeper look into Alec Moore's lonely Anglo-Irish upbringing at the Big House, the once-grand family estate now fading. Alec describes the emotional barriers that shape his home life: his mother, cold and commanding, rules the household with silence and a controlled sense of displeasure, while his father wanders the rooms like a benign spirit—charming but ultimately ineffective. Alec's days are filled with lessons and solitude, punctuated by his explorations of the vast grounds outside, which provide him with his only true sense of freedom. It is in those fields and bogs that he meets Jerry Crowe, the son of a local tenant. The boys quickly form a silent bond through their shared adventures and a mutual disregard for the social divide that separates them. Alec's mother notices this friendship and expresses her disapproval, but she stops short of forbidding it—a response that feels more like calculated disdain than true tolerance. The chapter concludes with a vivid image of the two boys at the estate's boundary wall, gazing across the open landscape, which serves as both a literal horizon and a symbol of the freedom that eludes them both.

    Analysis

    Jennifer Johnston uses Chapter 2 to highlight the novel's central irony: the Big House, a symbol of Protestant Ascendancy power, feels like a prison to its heir. The estate's architecture reflects Alec's emotional state—spacious, cold, and filled with rooms that lack intimacy. Johnston's writing here is notably concise; she intentionally leaves out inner thoughts at moments where sentiment could seep in, trusting the reader to sense the loneliness that Alec struggles to articulate.

    The class dynamic between Alec and Jerry is introduced with careful subtlety. Johnston avoids romanticizing their cross-class friendship; instead, she portrays it through actions and silence—the boys simply exist together in the landscape, which accepts them both equally. This is a key artistic choice: by anchoring the relationship in their shared physical surroundings rather than dialogue, Johnston makes it feel natural rather than ideologically driven.

    Alec's mother stands out as the novel's most formidable antagonist, not through over-the-top drama but through her precise social performance. Her disapproval comes across in fleeting glances and pauses, a tone that Johnston maintains throughout the book. The boundary wall in the final image reinforces the chapter's focus on limits—class boundaries, parental constraints, and the limits of a world on the brink of war. The overall mood is already tinged with a sense of loss, as the childhood ideal is overshadowed by the retrospective awareness of what lies ahead.

    Key quotes

    • “She never touched me if she could avoid it. I think she found the physical fact of me distasteful.”

      Alec reflects on his mother's manner toward him, establishing the emotional coldness at the heart of his upbringing.

    • “We didn't speak much. There seemed to be no need. The land was enough.”

      Alec describes the early days of his friendship with Jerry, locating their bond in shared landscape rather than conversation.

    • “The wall was the end of our world, or perhaps the beginning of another one.”

      Alec narrates the image that closes the chapter, the boundary wall of the estate functioning as the novel's first explicit emblem of thresholds and limits.

  3. Ch. 3Alec and Jerry's Friendship Begins

    Summary

    Chapter Three explores the delicate and charged beginnings of the friendship between Alec Moore and Jerry Crowe, two young men divided by the strict class lines of early twentieth-century Ireland. Alec, the isolated son of an Anglo-Irish family living in a Big House, meets Jerry—a local Catholic boy from the village—while riding alone across the bog. Their first encounter is marked by caution on both sides, yet an instinctive recognition pulls them together. They start meeting regularly in secret, away from Alec's cold, controlling mother and the societal norms that would prohibit such a friendship. The boys find a shared love for horses, which temporarily breaks down the hierarchies that shape every other relationship in their lives. Johnston captures their early interactions with simplicity and restraint: short sentences, long pauses, and the physical landscape of bog and grey sky conveying as much meaning as their words. By the end of the chapter, a fragile but genuine bond has formed—one that the reader can sense is too honest and equal to withstand the pressures of the outside world.

    Analysis

    Johnston's craft in this chapter shines through in her strategic understatement. She lets the friendship develop through action and proximity rather than explicit declarations—the boys work with horses, traverse shared landscapes, and engage in brief, practical exchanges that hold deep emotional significance beneath their surface. This restraint serves as a political statement: in a novel rich with the performative language of class and empire, authentic emotion can only surface indirectly.

    The bog landscape acts as a threshold space, existing neither on Alec's estate nor in the village, and Johnston uses it intentionally. It represents a realm free from ownership and the social structures that would typically keep these two apart. The recurring theme of horses operates similarly—these animals, indifferent to social rank and responsive only to care and skill, become the novel's first equalizers.

    Tonal shifts are subtle yet precise. The narration, seen through the older Alec reflecting from a condemned cell, carries an elegiac tone even in these early moments filled with potential. Joy is never fully unguarded; each moment of connection is tinged with the knowledge of impending loss. Johnston's use of free indirect discourse allows Alec's adult grief to subtly blend with his childhood wonder, establishing a dual timeframe that stands out as one of the novel's most notable structural achievements. The chapter frames the friendship not as a perfect moment but as something already at risk—beautiful precisely because it cannot endure.

    Key quotes

    • “He was the first person I had ever met who seemed to have no fear of me, nor I of him.”

      Alec reflects on his first sustained encounter with Jerry, identifying the absence of fear as the radical, defining quality of their connection.

    • “We never spoke about the things that should have kept us apart. Perhaps we both knew that to name them would be to let them in.”

      Alec's retrospective narration captures the unspoken pact at the heart of the friendship—its survival depends on silence about the world outside the bog.

    • “The horses moved between us like a kind of conversation.”

      Johnston's image of the horses as a shared language crystallises the chapter's central motif: communication that bypasses the social codes neither boy can yet fully articulate.

  4. Ch. 4Class Divisions and Family Tensions

    Summary

    Chapter Four of Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon? explores the growing tension between Alec Moore and Jerry Crowe, as their friendship strains under the pressure of class expectations. At home, Alec navigates the stark reality of his parents' marriage: his mother, Alicia, works fiercely to keep him aligned with their social class, while his father, Frederick, withdraws into a sarcastic detachment, providing neither affection nor opposition. The chapter centers on a confrontation at home—Alicia clearly expresses her disapproval of Alec's friendship with Jerry, framing her objections in terms of propriety instead of cruelty. In contrast, Jerry navigates his surroundings with a physical ease that Alec envies but cannot emulate. Although the bog and the horses remain familiar ground for both boys, it becomes evident that this shared space is more accessible for one of them. Johnston uses this chapter to illustrate the deep divides that will ultimately engulf both young men: Alec feels trapped by the Big House, while Jerry finds no real prospects in the village. The narrative voice—Alec's, written from his cell—conveys a sense of retrospective sorrow, depicting seemingly mundane moments with the quiet understanding that they were anything but ordinary.

    Analysis

    Johnston's skill in this chapter lies in her strategic restraint. She conveys class not through direct argument but through details like furniture, silence, and the careful arrangement of who sits where. Alicia Moore stands out as one of Irish fiction's most unsettling maternal figures—her control comes from withholding warmth rather than overt commands, and Johnston never gives her a typical villain's monologue. This makes her presence even more oppressive. Frederick's ironic distance is equally well-handled; his lack of intervention doesn’t suggest weakness but rather a complicity disguised as a sense of aesthetics.

    The friendship between Alec and Jerry serves as a point of dramatic irony. Thanks to Alec's retrospective narration, the reader realizes that the class divide Alicia fears isn’t the real threat—the true danger is the war that will manipulate both boys regardless of their backgrounds. Johnston allows this irony to unfold naturally without forcing it.

    Throughout the chapter, the tone shifts between the suffocating atmosphere of the house and the greater freedom found in outdoor scenes, a structural contrast that Johnston maintains throughout the novel. The bog scenes have a lyrical looseness that’s missing from the drawing-room moments, and this tonal shift also characterizes Alec: he feels most alive in his writing when he’s away from his mother. The chapter further develops the motif of horses as a neutral ground—a place where the boys are momentarily equal—before the domestic scenes reinforce the hierarchy that will ultimately divide them.

    Key quotes

    • “She never raised her voice. That was the most frightening thing about her. She never needed to.”

      Alec reflects on his mother Alicia after she makes her disapproval of his friendship with Jerry unmistakably clear, her composure functioning as its own form of violence.

    • “We were only equal out there, on the grass, with the wind pulling at us. Indoors, we were what we had always been.”

      Alec contrasts the freedom of the outdoor landscape with the rigid social architecture of domestic space, crystallising the novel's central tension between natural and social order.

    • “My father watched us both with the same mild curiosity he gave to everything, as if we were specimens he had not yet found the energy to classify.”

      Alec describes Frederick Moore's characteristic detachment, a passivity Johnston frames as its own moral failure.

  5. Ch. 5The War Begins – Enlistment

    Summary

    Chapter Five marks the turning point the novel has been quietly building toward: the war comes not as an abstract concept but as a pressing, bureaucratic reality. Alec Moore and Jerry Crowe, whose unlikely friendship has withstood the rigid class boundaries of their Irish Anglo-Protestant society, find themselves swept into enlistment together. Alec, pushed by his cold, demanding mother and the stifling expectations of his social class, signs up less out of patriotism and more from a desire to escape—from her, from the Big House, from a life that feels already predetermined and suffocating. Jerry, on the other hand, enlists with a pragmatic acceptance of fate, as the army offers wages and a type of rough freedom that isn't available to a poor Catholic boy in County Wicklow. The two are processed alongside a crowd of other men, the recruitment machinery reducing them to mere bodies and numbers. Johnston depicts the enlistment depot with stark, almost clinical precision—queues, medical exams, the scratch of pen on paper—which highlights the gravity of what’s unfolding. The chapter ends with both young men in uniform, the civilian world already fading away, their friendship now the sole thread of continuity they carry into the coming chaos.

    Analysis

    Johnston's craft in this chapter relies heavily on intentional understatement. While another novelist might infuse the enlistment scene with dramatic energy or ironic flair, Johnston strips it down to its essence. The prose remains steady, almost devoid of emotion, and this tonal neutrality becomes the argument itself: these men are not heroes responding to a call; they are individuals out of options. The class dynamic, the backbone of the novel, undergoes a subtle shift here. In civilian life, Alec's rank separated him from Jerry; in the army, the uniform acts as a temporary equalizer, though Johnston skillfully illustrates how the hierarchy quickly reasserts itself through the distinction of officer versus enlisted status. The motif of enclosure—the Big House, the estate walls, the mother's emotional grip—transforms into a new form of confinement: military order and the trench that awaits. Johnston also uses free indirect discourse to immerse us in Alec's thoughts without over-sentimentalizing them; his relief at leaving home feels uneasy alongside his guilt, leaving the reader to grapple with both feelings without a clear resolution. Importantly, the war isn't yet in sight—no guns, no mud—which amplifies the chapter's sense of dread. Johnston favors implication over direct statement, a stylistic choice that reflects Alec's own tendency to suppress his emotions.

    Key quotes

    • “I had never thought of myself as a soldier. I had never thought of myself as anything very much.”

      Alec reflects during the enlistment process, his passivity framed as both personal confession and quiet indictment of the class that shaped him.

    • “We were, for the moment, the same. The same rough cloth, the same bewilderment.”

      Alec observes himself and Jerry in uniform for the first time, the sentence's brevity enacting the fragile, temporary nature of the equality it describes.

    • “She had won, of course. She always won. Even my leaving was her victory.”

      Alec's bitter aside about his mother as he departs, collapsing the distance between domestic power and the larger forces conscripting him.

  6. Ch. 6Training and the Trenches

    Summary

    Chapter 6 of Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon? explores the tense relationship between Alec Moore and Jerry Crowe against the harsh realities of the Western Front. The narrative shifts between the monotonous routines of military training — drilling, inspections, and the small tyrannies imposed by non-commissioned officers — and their first raw encounters with trench life: the mud, the awful smells, and the ever-present threat of death. Alec, now an officer, finds himself distanced from Jerry by the rigid class structure enforced by the army, which is even more unforgiving than what they experienced in civilian Ireland. Their brief, stolen conversations grow shorter and heavier with meaning. The chapter concludes with a quiet moment between the two men, highlighting, without any sentimentality, the growing gaps — social, physical, and moral — that are forming between them, even as they remain just a few yards apart within the trench.

    Analysis

    Johnston's craft in this chapter showcases a careful compression. She allows the army's institution to achieve what Alec's Anglo-Irish household always threatened: to make the friendship between officer and enlisted man structurally impossible. The training sequences are depicted in clipped, unemotional prose — with orders barked and bodies moving in formation — and this tonal flatness serves a purpose: the language reflects the dehumanizing rhythm it describes. Johnston then disrupts that flatness with sudden lyrical intrusions, moments where Alec's inner voice emerges in longer, more complex sentences, indicating that consciousness still exists beneath the uniform.

    The trench setting introduces Johnston's key spatial theme: enclosure as both a means of protection and a trap. The trench walls that keep men alive also uphold the hierarchies that undermine friendship. Here, mud serves not just as a realistic detail but as a leveling force — it covers both officer and private — yet Johnston carefully illustrates that even mud cannot erase rank.

    The chapter also furthers the novel's exploration of loyalty: to class, to friendship, to oneself. Alec's passivity, his typical failure to act, is presented not as cowardice but as a kind of paralysis stemming from conflicting obligations. Johnston chooses not to judge him, and this choice is where the novel's moral complexity resides.

    Key quotes

    • “We were all frightened, but we had been trained not to show it, and that, I suppose, is what they call courage.”

      Alec reflects on the first days in the trenches, undercutting the rhetoric of heroism with quiet, devastating irony.

    • “Jerry looked at me across the space between us, and it might have been the Irish Sea.”

      Alec registers the social gulf the army has formalised between them, translating class distance into geography.

    • “The mud was impartial, at least. It had no interest in the pips on a man's shoulder.”

      One of Johnston's rare moments of dark levity, immediately undercut by the chapter's surrounding mood of entrapment.

  7. Ch. 7Jerry Goes Missing

    Summary

    Chapter 7 begins with Alec Moore waking up to find that Jerry Crowe has disappeared from their shared billet. The absence is immediately noticeable — Jerry's bunk untouched, his boots missing, and no message left behind. Alec goes through the morning routines of the front, feeling an increasing unease he can't quite express, scanning the faces in the mess and along the trench line. Officers question him with thinly veiled suspicion; the unspoken belief that Alec must know something, given their close friendship despite their different backgrounds, looms over every interaction. By the end of the chapter, Jerry has been officially marked as absent without leave, and Alec realizes, with chilling clarity, that the wheels of military discipline have already started to turn. The chapter concludes not with action but with stillness — Alec alone, gazing at the vacant bunk, the war continuing its indifferent din beyond the walls.

    Analysis

    Johnston uses the missing-person theme not just as a thriller element but to slowly reveal moral truths. Jerry's absence creates a void filled with the perceptions of others — the officers interpret it as desertion, the enlisted men view it as solidarity, and Alec feels the unbridgeable gap between his love for Jerry and his inability to protect him. The class motif, woven throughout the novel since the two men's childhood at the Moore estate, becomes more pronounced in this chapter: Alec faces interrogation specifically because cross-class friendships are seen as suspicious, a categorization the army struggles to understand.

    In Chapter 7, Johnston's writing is notably sparse, focusing on what's absent and unspoken to evoke dread. The empty bunk emerges as the chapter's central image, a domestic detail that gains a near-sacred quality through its repetition. The tone gradually shifts from the mordant irony found in earlier chapters to a more elegiac quality, indicating that the novel has reached a point of no return.

    Time, usually tense in Johnston's WWI fiction, is depicted in a tangible way here: the rapid bureaucratic reclassification of Jerry from soldier to absentee reflects the war's industrial mindset — men being processed, categorized, and discarded. Alec's stillness at the end isn't mere passivity but a form of witnessing, with the novel emphasizing the necessity of acknowledging Jerry's disappearance against the backdrop of military paperwork.

    Key quotes

    • “His boots were gone. That was all I could think about. His boots were gone and the war went on making its usual noise outside.”

      Alec registers Jerry's disappearance through the single concrete detail of the missing boots, the mundane made devastating.

    • “They looked at me as if friendship itself were a court-martial offence.”

      Alec reflects on the officers' interrogation, crystallising the novel's class-and-loyalty theme in a single ironic sentence.

    • “I sat on the edge of his bunk for a long time. There was nothing useful in that, but I did it anyway.”

      The chapter's closing lines, in which Alec's vigil beside the empty bunk stands as the novel's first fully elegiac moment.

  8. Ch. 8Alec's Search and Consequences

    Summary

    Chapter 8 of Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon? tightens the grip of circumstance around Alec Moore as he follows the bond he has formed with Jerry Crowe. After learning that Jerry has gone AWOL to look for his missing brother, Alec takes advantage of his officer's privileges to sneak away from the front-line camp and find Jerry before the military authorities do. He navigates a landscape already scarred by shelling, with the mud and barbed wire of the Western Front closing in at every step. When Alec finally finds Jerry, their reunion is short and fraught with despair — Jerry hasn’t found any sign of his brother and now faces the full force of military law. Alec, unable to protect him through his rank or persuasion, leads him back to confront the repercussions. The chapter ends with Jerry's arrest being formalized, leaving Alec standing there, aware that his intervention has changed nothing except his own involvement. The machinery of military discipline continues to move forward, indifferent to friendship or sorrow.

    Analysis

    Johnston uses the chapter to echo the novel's central irony: the very traits that make Alec humane—his loyalty and willingness to defy class expectations—are rendered ineffective by the institution he serves. His search is depicted in straightforward, declarative prose, with Johnston removing internal thoughts right when readers might anticipate them, compelling the surrounding landscape to bear the emotional burden instead. The Western Front here is not a spectacle but a bureaucratic reality; the wire, mud, and trench geometry serve as a physical representation of the rigid social and military hierarchies that have shaped both men since childhood.

    The friendship between Alec and Jerry, always class-transgressive, reaches its most vulnerable moment. Johnston is careful not to romanticize this: their interaction when Alec finds Jerry is terse and almost emotionless, making the underlying tenderness even more heartbreaking. The theme of futile searching—for Jerry's brother, for safety, for an escape—echoes the novel's epigraph and its contemplation of an unbridgeable distance.

    The chapter’s tonal control is its most striking craft choice. Johnston transitions from the urgent restraint of the search to a flat, almost bureaucratic tone once the arrest is formalized, reflecting how institutions handle human tragedy as mere paperwork. The chapter avoids providing catharsis, leaving Alec—and the reader—in a state of suspension, which is exactly where Johnston intends for us to be: implicated, uncomfortable, and unable to look away.

    Key quotes

    • “I found him, but finding him changed nothing.”

      Alec reflects immediately after locating Jerry, crystallising the chapter's central futility in a single flat sentence.

    • “The mud held us both equally, whatever our rank.”

      Alec observes the landscape's democratic indifference as he and Jerry make their way back to camp, briefly dissolving the class divide the novel has tracked throughout.

    • “They took him with a politeness that was worse than brutality.”

      Alec watches the military police formalise Jerry's arrest, Johnston using the word 'politeness' to indict institutional violence dressed as procedure.

  9. Ch. 9Court Martial and Execution

    Summary

    Chapter 9 of Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon? reaches a heartbreaking climax. Alec Moore, narrating from his cell on the night before his execution, reflects on the court martial that determined both his and Jerry Crowe's fates. Jerry, the Irish stable hand who became Alec's only real friend amid the chaos of the Western Front, deserted in a desperate search for his missing father. After being captured and returned, he faced a firing squad — a fate Alec could not avert, despite his rank. In a shocking act of loyalty that defies military law and social hierarchy, Alec shoots Jerry himself, sparing him from the faceless brutality of the squad. This mercy killing is the charge that seals Alec's fate. The court martial is quick and procedural, with the officers remaining indifferent. Alec accepts the verdict with the same quiet detachment he has shown throughout the novel, documenting his account as a final act of testimony. His mother and father linger in his thoughts — his cold, domineering mother who urged him into the war, and his ineffectual father who offered no resistance. The chapter concludes with Alec waiting for dawn and the firing squad, bringing the narrative full circle.

    Analysis

    Johnston's craft in this chapter showcases a controlled devastation. The first-person retrospective frame, introduced in the novel's opening line, reaches its conclusion here, revealing to the reader that the entire narrative has been a condemned man's testament. The court martial scene is presented with a deliberate flatness: Johnston strips away the drama to criticize the institution. The military tribunal speaks in bureaucratic tones, while Alec's inner voice remains lyrical, creating a stark contrast that serves as the chapter's sharpest critique. The moment Alec shoots Jerry is not sensationalized; instead, Johnston frames it as the one truly free choice Alec has made in a life dominated by his mother's will and societal expectations. In this way, Jerry's execution and Alec's looming execution create a diptych—one death chosen out of love and one imposed by power. The cross-class friendship, carefully developed throughout the novel, finds its deepest meaning here: it stands as the only relationship in Alec's life characterized by mutual recognition rather than hierarchy. Johnston also subtly weaves in the Babylon motif—the nursery rhyme's unanswerable question about distance and arrival resonates with Alec's resigned acceptance that he will never truly arrive anywhere. Shifts between past and present tense in the narration blur the line between the telling and the told, allowing the reader to feel the cell's walls closing in alongside Alec.

    Key quotes

    • “I am going to blow the bugle for the last time and then I am going to die.”

      Alec opens the chapter with this declarative sentence, establishing the retrospective frame's endpoint and his characteristic tone of flat, unflinching self-awareness.

    • “I did it for him. There was no other reason. I would like that to be understood.”

      Alec addresses an unnamed reader — or perhaps posterity — as he justifies shooting Jerry, insisting on the purity of the act against any military or moral misreading.

    • “He was my only friend.”

      Alec's summation of Jerry, delivered without embellishment, carries the full weight of a life starved of genuine connection and a class system that made such friendship almost impossible.

02·Characters

Who's who, and what they want.

  • Alec Moore

    Alec Moore is the first-person narrator and tragic protagonist of Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon (1974). He’s a young Anglo-Irish Protestant from a privileged but emotionally barren Big House background. Sensitive, introspective, and artistically inclined, Alec stands out as an outsider in both his own class and the harsh realities of the First World War trenches. The novel begins with Alec awaiting execution in a military cell, and it unfolds as he reflects on the events that led him to this moment.

    Alec's journey transitions from a sheltered adolescence to a moral awakening and ultimately to quiet, dignified acceptance. As a boy, he forms a rare, genuine friendship with Jerry Crowe, the son of a Catholic tenant, challenging the strict class boundaries imposed by his mother. When they both enlist and are sent to the Western Front, Alec leverages his officer’s position to protect Jerry, notably by securing him a relatively safe role as a runner. When Jerry goes absent without leave to look for his missing father and faces a death sentence, Alec takes matters into his own hands and shoots him rather than let a firing squad execute him. This act of mercy determines Alec's own fate.

    Alec's key traits include an emotional restraint that hides deep loyalty, a passive resistance to authority, and a struggle to meet the expectations imposed by class and military rank. He doesn’t fit neatly into the roles of hero or coward — his final act is both a defiance and a gesture of love.

    Full analysis →
    Connected to Jerry Crowe · Alec's Mother · Alec's Father · Major Glendinning · Bennett · Captain Barry
  • Alec's Father

    Alec's father is a minor yet quietly important character in Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon (1974). He is a Protestant Anglo-Irish landlord who lives in the Big House, exuding a sense of detached gentility. Emotionally distant from his son Alec's upbringing, he remains largely passive under the control of his domineering wife. Although he is cultured and not unkind—sharing brief, warm moments with Alec—he fails to step in for his son or assert any paternal authority against his wife's cold manipulation. His most significant action may be his inaction: when Alec's mother forbids his friendship with Jerry Crowe due to class differences, Alec's father doesn't object, letting her wishes go uncontested. He symbolizes the weary, ineffective Anglo-Irish gentry—men who prefer retreating into drink, books, or silence instead of confronting a changing Ireland or their own families. His character remains static throughout the novel; he neither grows nor declines noticeably, serving instead as a mirror to reflect the emotional emptiness of Alec's home life. This helps explain why Alec looks for genuine human connection beyond the Big House. His passivity quietly criticizes a class that is unwilling or unable to adapt, actively love, or protect what truly matters.

    Full analysis →
    Connected to Alec Moore · Alec's Mother · Jerry Crowe · Major Glendinning
  • Alec's Mother

    Alec's mother is a deeply complex and morally ambiguous character in How Many Miles to Babylon by Jennifer Johnston. As a cold and commanding Anglo-Irish aristocrat, she rules the Big House with an iron fist, shaping—and ultimately distorting—her son Alec's emotional landscape. Her most defining trait is a possessive, stifling love for Alec that she disguises as protection but ultimately serves as control. From the novel's start, she seeks to isolate him from the outside world, notably by orchestrating the end of his friendship with Jerry Crowe, a local Catholic boy she views as socially and racially inferior. Upon discovering their bond, she confronts Alec with chilling anger and demands he promise to sever the friendship, showcasing her ability to use maternal authority as a weapon.

    Her relationship with Alec's father is marked by mutual disdain and emotional detachment; she regards him as unimportant, and the frigid atmosphere of their home mirrors their empty marriage. Her character does not experience growth or redemption—she remains inflexible and self-centered throughout. She encourages Alec to enlist in World War One partly to distance him from Jerry and partly due to class obligations, showing little regard for the mortal peril she places him in. This willingness to sacrifice her son's life to maintain social order highlights her profound moral failure. She represents the cruelty and insularity of the waning Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, and her influence lingers over every decision Alec makes, even in the trenches.

    Full analysis →
    Connected to Alec Moore · Jerry Crowe · Alec's Father · Major Glendinning
  • Bennett

    Bennett is a secondary but thematically important character in Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon (1974), a World War I novel that mainly takes place in an Irish regiment on the Western Front. He primarily serves as a symbol of institutional cruelty, representing the rigid, class-based military hierarchy that the novel critiques.

    As a fellow officer, Bennett openly disdains Alec Moore's unlikely friendship with the enlisted man Jerry Crowe. While Alec is introspective and hesitant to enforce social boundaries, Bennett is the one who upholds them—sneering, conventional, and comfortable using the unwritten rules of rank and class as tools of oppression. He reports Alec's friendship with Jerry to the commanding officers, committing a petty act of betrayal that triggers the sequence of events leading to Jerry's court-martial and execution for desertion. In this way, Bennett is not depicted as a complex villain but more as a mundane, bureaucratic obstacle: a man so shaped by his class biases that he can't imagine friendship transcending social lines.

    His character arc is essentially flat—he experiences no growth or change—which Johnston emphasizes intentionally. Bennett embodies the static, unquestioning world that ultimately ruins both Alec and Jerry. His main traits include conformity, snobbery, and moral cowardice disguised as propriety. Although he appears in relatively few scenes, his denunciation of Alec carries significant narrative weight, making him a catalyst for the novel's tragic ending.

    Full analysis →
    Connected to Alec Moore · Jerry Crowe · Major Glendinning · Captain Barry
  • Captain Barry

    Captain Barry is a minor but thematically important authority figure in Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon?. He serves as the commanding officer who oversees the court martial and execution of Alec Moore. Barry embodies the impersonal and procedural nature of the British Army, bound by military law, which sharply contrasts with the human connections celebrated throughout the novel. He isn't depicted as a sadist; instead, his threat comes from his bureaucratic detachment. He processes Alec's fate with the cold efficiency of someone who has put duty above conscience. During the court martial scenes, he maintains formal correctness, never recognizing Alec as an individual, which highlights Johnston's critique of how institutions dehumanize those entangled in them. Barry also interacts with Major Glendinning, whose moral compromises become more apparent against Barry's unwavering adherence to military hierarchy. Barry doesn’t evolve or develop psychologically; he remains deliberately flat, serving as a structural device that represents the rigid wall of class and military power that ultimately brings ruin to both Alec and Jerry. His role, though brief, is crucial: it is his authority that signs the death warrant, making him the means through which the novel's tragic ending unfolds. In this way, Captain Barry embodies Johnston's broader criticism of a system that sacrifices young men—across class lines—to the indifferent machinery of war and empire.

    Full analysis →
    Connected to Alec Moore · Jerry Crowe · Major Glendinning · Bennett
  • Jerry Crowe

    Jerry Crowe is a working-class Irish soldier and the emotional core of Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon? (1974). Stationed on the Western Front during World War One, he narrates his own story in a way that's framed by Alec's perspective, but Jerry's presence is what drives every moral conflict in the narrative. Growing up in poverty on the Moore estate, Jerry is a skilled horseman with quiet dignity who forms an unlikely yet sincere friendship with the Anglo-Irish Alec Moore during their childhood. This cross-class bond is both the novel's central relationship and a significant transgression.

    Jerry enlists not out of a sense of patriotism but to search for his father, who has gone missing at the front — a motivation born from loyalty to family rather than ideology. In the trenches, he is practical, brave, and sardonic, using dry wit to cut through the absurdity of military hierarchy. When he goes absent without leave to find his father's body, he faces a court-martial and a death sentence. His story culminates in execution, carried out by Alec himself — a heartbreaking act that frames the entire novel and critiques the class system, imperial war, and the institutions that strip away individual humanity.

    Jerry embodies loyalty, self-control, and a clear-eyed view of his social position. He neither idealizes his friendship with Alec nor resents its boundaries; he simply embraces it fully, making his death an even sharper indictment of the world that ultimately destroys him.

    Full analysis →
    Connected to Alec Moore · Major Glendinning · Alec's Mother · Alec's Father · Bennett · Captain Barry
  • Major Glendinning

    Major Glendinning is the commanding officer of the British Army unit in Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon? (1974). He represents institutional authority and military power rooted in class. Rather than being a fully developed character, he acts more like a structural force — the embodiment of the officer class — and his actions propel the novel toward its tragic climax.

    Glendinning is cold, exacting, and strictly adheres to rules. He shows little interest in the men under his command as individuals; his focus is on rank, order, and maintaining the social hierarchies that the war is supposedly meant to defend. When Jerry Crowe goes AWOL to look for his missing father, Glendinning quickly moves to have him court-martialed and sentenced to death by firing squad. He further amplifies the cruelty by ordering Alec Moore — Jerry's closest friend and a fellow officer — to execute him personally, a command that serves as both punishment and a test of Alec's loyalty to the system over his friend.

    Glendinning's character arc is largely static: he starts and finishes as an instrument of power. Yet his rigidity highlights the novel's main argument — that class and military hierarchy work together to undermine genuine human connections. His disdain for the friendship between the Anglo-Irish officer Alec and the working-class Jerry is evident in every interaction, making him the novel's most potent symbol of the social order that sends young men to their deaths and then punishes them for trying to maintain their humanity.

    Full analysis →
    Connected to Alec Moore · Jerry Crowe · Captain Barry · Bennett

03·Themes

The ideas the work keeps returning to.

FamilyFateFriendshipHonourIdentityLoss and GriefSocial Class and InequalityWar and Its Consequences

Family

In Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon, family serves less as a refuge and more as a place of quiet devastation. Alec Moore's household is marked not by warmth but by a calculated coldness: his mother, Alicia, views him as a tool for her dynastic ambitions rather than as her son, maintaining an emotional distance that feels almost architecturally precise. Her insistence that Alec only associate with those of his own class goes beyond snobbery—it represents a form of ownership, a way to ensure he remains entirely under her control. In contrast, his father is a peripheral, defeated figure whose gentleness lacks authority; he cannot counterbalance Alicia's dominance, and his passivity makes him complicit in Alec's loneliness.

The friendship between Alec and Jerry Crowe highlights the family's cruelty most clearly. When Alicia learns of their cross-class bond, her reaction is immediate and punishing. It's clear to the reader that her fear lies not in impropriety but in losing her control. Alec's struggle to fully embrace Jerry as a friend—or to save him later—is directly linked to the conditioning his family has imposed on him since childhood.

Johnston also employs the Big House setting as a physical metaphor for the family's emotional state: grand, cold, and slowly crumbling. The house does not shelter its inhabitants; it confines them. Alec narrates from a military cell while awaiting execution, and this retrospective structure prompts readers to see that the family home was always, in its own way, another type of cell. In this novel, blood ties do not offer protection—they dictate fate.

Fate

In Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon, fate isn't so much a dramatic twist of destiny as it is a slow, suffocating inevitability shaped by class, war, and the silence of those in power. The novel opens with Alec Moore writing from a military prison cell, awaiting execution, making it clear from the start that nothing can change the outcome. Every friendship, every act of loyalty, every small rebellion against social norms is already overshadowed by the reader's awareness of the impending doom, lending even the most mundane moments a sense of inevitable tragedy.

The bond between Alec and Jerry Crowe serves as the novel's key exploration of whether human will can outsmart fate. Their friendship, which defies the strict divide between Anglo-Irish gentry and Catholic tenant farmer, feels vibrant and rebellious in the flashbacks of their boyhood days spent fishing and riding. Yet Johnston illustrates that the societal forces around them — Alec's cold, controlling mother and the unspoken rules of the Big House — have already determined the value of their connection. When the First World War breaks out, it doesn’t forge their fate but rather quickens it; the trenches act as a more efficient means of fulfilling what Anglo-Irish society had already set in motion.

Jerry's desertion to find his missing father, along with Alec's choice to shoot him rather than let the military execute him cruelly, crystallizes the novel's fatalistic theme: the only freedom either man has is in the manner of their destruction, not in avoiding it altogether. Alec's act of mercy becomes an acknowledgment of a fate that neither of them can escape. The nursery-rhyme title — with its inquiry about distance and darkness — lingers throughout the novel as a haunting motif for journeys that can be measured but never truly altered.

Friendship

In Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon, the friendship between Alec Moore, an Anglo-Irish officer, and Jerry Crowe, a working-class Irish soldier, serves as the novel's moral and emotional heart—and its central impossibility. They first meet as boys in the fields near Alec's estate, a space outside the rigid class boundaries of the Big House, where their bond develops almost without words, through shared wandering and a comfort neither finds elsewhere. Johnston makes it clear from the outset that their friendship is transgressive: Alec's mother forbids it with cold precision, viewing it as a contamination of rank rather than a mere boyhood attachment.

Once both men find themselves in the trenches of the First World War, their friendship faces the same hierarchical pressures that have always loomed over it—now formalized by military rank. Alec is an officer; Jerry is not. The physical distance between their billets reflects the social gap their world enforces, yet they continue to seek one another out in secret moments, sharing cigarettes and silence in ways that unsettle the other soldiers.

The friendship reaches a breaking point when Jerry deserts to look for his missing father. Alec’s choice to help him, and ultimately to shoot him before the firing squad can, is framed not as betrayal but as the only kind of loyalty the system allows. Johnston uses this act to suggest that true friendship, in a world shaped by class and war, can only endure as a private, ultimately tragic, gesture. The miles to Babylon represent the gap between what the two men feel and what their world will allow.

Honour

In Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon, loyalty serves both as a source of strength and as a deadly trap, most vividly illustrated in the friendship between Alec Moore, an Anglo-Irish officer, and Jerry Crowe, an Irish enlisted man. Their connection transcends the barriers imposed by the Edwardian class system and the machinery of the First World War, and Johnston uses this crossing to explore the true cost of loyalty.

Their friendship is grounded in a deep, almost unspoken intimacy formed during childhood rides across the Moore estate. This pastoral memory recurs throughout the story — with images of horses, open land, and the freedom that existed before rank — and Alec mentally revisits it whenever the pressures of the trenches mount. This idyllic past is not just a longing for simpler times; it represents the only relationship in Alec's life that remains untouched by his mother's calculating social ambitions or his father's emotional distance.

When Jerry goes absent without leave to search for his father, Alec hides this fact, a choice that is less impulsive and more the inevitable result of every decision he has made since joining the army. His loyalty to Jerry is the sole principle he has held onto despite institutional pressure. However, the army interprets private loyalty as public betrayal: Alec is ordered to lead Jerry's firing squad, and his refusal — shooting Jerry himself to spare him the humiliation — becomes both the most loyal and the most defiant act in the novel.

Johnston presents the entire story as Alec's memoir written in his prison cell on the eve of his execution. This retrospective format ensures that loyalty is constantly weighed against its consequences, never idealized. The friendship fails to save either man; it simply remains the only thing Alec believes is worth being loyal to.

Identity

In Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon, identity is constantly under threat — shaped by class, loyalty, and the harsh realities of war, yet remaining intensely personal in ways that resist outside influences.

From the start, Alec Moore's sense of self is fragmented. He narrates his story from a military prison cell while awaiting execution, viewing his life as a failed quest to uncover his true identity beneath the roles imposed on him by others. His Anglo-Irish Protestant background gives him a social identity that feels alien: his mother projects an aristocratic coldness onto him, treating it as an inheritance, while his gentle, ineffective father embodies a retreat into personal pleasure that Alec both admires and despises. Neither of these models feels right for him.

His friendship with Jerry Crowe, the son of a Catholic tenant farmer, becomes the novel's main exploration of identity. Their bond, formed in childhood through shared rides and silences, transcends societal boundaries. For Alec, Jerry represents an authenticity he struggles to claim for himself; for Jerry, Alec is both a friend and a symbol of the class that owns his family's land. Johnston avoids romanticizing their disparity: each young man sees a version of the other that is partly colored by their own projections.

On the Western Front, the class distinctions fade — uniforms erase the visible markers of rank — yet this setting amplifies the identity crisis. Alec's position among officers reveals their casual cruelty, a trait he cannot embrace; his loyalty to Jerry further alienates him. When he ultimately chooses to help Jerry desert instead of following military orders, it’s less an act of heroism and more a fleeting moment where his inner and outer selves align — a brief coherence that the firing squad will soon obliterate.

Loss and Grief

In Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon?, loss and grief aren’t expressed through overt mourning; instead, they are woven into the novel's retrospective structure. Alec Moore narrates from a military prison cell, awaiting execution, which means that each memory he shares is already tinged with the inevitability of loss. The elegiac tone is set even before any events unfold.

The friendship between Alec and Jerry Crowe forms the emotional heart of the novel, and its unraveling becomes the main source of grief. Their connection, developed in the fields of an Anglo-Irish estate, transcends class divisions that both families try to uphold. Alec's distant, socially ambitious mother forbids their friendship because she instinctively understands its significance to him. Her ban is a form of anticipatory grief, a practice run for the greater severance that is bound to happen.

The Western Front transforms loss into a tangible environment. Men vanish with alarming regularity — swallowed by mud, silence, or bureaucratic casualty reports — and Johnston depicts this not through dramatic battle scenes but through the monotonous cycle of absence. Jerry’s disappearance into no-man's-land in search of his missing father deepens the grief across generations: a son risking everything to find a father who is almost certainly gone.

The novel’s most gut-wrenching moment occurs at the end, when Alec is ordered to carry out Jerry's execution. This act merges friendship, duty, and mourning into one instant, positioning Alec as both the executor and the primary mourner of this loss. His steady, first-person narration throughout avoids any sense of closure, implying that some grief simply must be borne, unresolved, until the end of one’s life.

Social Class and Inequality

In Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon?, social class isn't just a backdrop; it's the driving force that decides who survives and who doesn't. The novel's key friendship between Alec Moore, the son of Anglo-Irish gentry, and Jerry Crowe, a tenant farmer's son, is rooted in a connection the adult world disapproves of. Their childhood bond forms in the fields and bogs of the Moore estate — a place where class lines temporarily blur — yet the very landscape reinforces inequality: Alec lives in the Big House while Jerry's family struggles to make a living from the land beneath it.

Alec's mother, Alicia, serves as the novel's most relentless enforcer of class distinctions. Her disdain for Jerry has nothing to do with his character; it's solely about his background. She manipulates Alec's enlistment partly to end the friendship, using the war as a tool of social separation. The army, in turn, mirrors civilian class structures in uniform: Alec is automatically made an officer, while Jerry serves as a private. The physical and symbolic gap between officers' quarters and enlisted men's barracks reflects the distance between the Big House and the cottage.

The tragedy unfolds when Jerry deserts to find his missing father and is sentenced to death. Alec, as an officer, is ordered to carry out the execution — a moment that starkly illustrates how privilege wields power over the underprivileged. Alec's final act of shooting Jerry himself, to save him from a botched firing squad, serves as both an act of mercy and a harsh critique: the most personal violence in the novel is one that the class system made unavoidable.

War and Its Consequences

Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon employs the First World War not merely as a backdrop but as a driving force—the war doesn’t merely catalyze the central tragedy; it dismantles every social illusion that could have prevented it. The war’s effects resonate on multiple levels, and Johnston skillfully illustrates how each one erodes something irreplaceable.

The clearest indicator of war's devastation is the friendship between Alec Moore and Jerry Crowe. Their connection, built in the fields and stables of the Anglo-Irish estate, withstands class differences and parental disapproval—until the army envelops both men and reinstates the very hierarchy their friendship had quietly resisted. The officer's uniform that Alec dons becomes a tool for war’s cruelest outcome: he is commanded to supervise Jerry's execution for desertion, transforming the one relationship that brought meaning to his life into the act that ultimately takes it.

Johnston presents the war's ramifications through Alec's retrospective narration from a cell, where he awaits his own execution for shooting Jerry instead of allowing the firing squad to do so. This structural choice—telling the story entirely in the past tense from a terminal present—casts a shadow over every small moment of their friendship, hinting at what the war will ultimately make of it. The nursery rhyme in the title, with its unanswerable question about distance and darkness, runs throughout the novel as a motif for how war obliterates futures: the narrative insists that no one ever arrives anywhere safely.

Even the landscape plays a role. The Irish fields that once symbolized potential transform into the Belgian mud that engulfs both Jerry's bravery and Alec's final act of loyalty, leaving nothing whole.

04·Symbols & motifs

Objects, images, and motifs worth tracking.

  • The Big House

    In Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon?, the Big House — the Anglo-Irish estate where Alec Moore grows up — reflects the crumbling Protestant Ascendancy and the strict class divisions that shape and ultimately ruin the novel's central friendship. The house embodies inherited privilege, emotional distance, and a society already in decline before the First World War delivers its final blow. Alec's life within its walls is marked by isolation, driven by his mother's obsessive awareness of class, turning the Big House into both a physical prison and a symbol of a social system that prioritizes appearances over genuine human connection.

    Evidence

    The Big House carries a heavy symbolism from the start: Alec's mother, a powerful Anglo-Irish landlord, prevents him from befriending Jerry Crowe simply because Jerry is the son of a Catholic tenant. This enforces the estate's strict, unspoken social barriers. The house's cold, formal rooms stand in stark contrast to the open fields and bog where Alec and Jerry ride and share their thoughts freely, highlighting how the Ascendancy world stifles warmth and authenticity. When Alec heads off to the Western Front, the estate fades from view, but its hierarchies follow him: he's commissioned as an officer while Jerry is left to serve as a soldier, mirroring the Big House's social structure even in the trenches. The last image of Alec waiting for execution in a military cell reflects his childhood confinement within the estate, suggesting that the Big House's influence is unavoidable — a decaying order that ultimately devours its own sons.

  • The Fishing Rod

    In Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon, the fishing rod represents the delicate friendship between Alec Moore and Jerry Crowe, highlighting the fleeting freedoms that come with it. Fishing is the one activity that breaks down the strict social barriers between the Anglo-Irish gentry boy and the son of the Irish stable-hand. The rod serves as a symbol of a life free from duty, class expectations, and the horrors of war — a private realm of equality and trust that neither the grand rooms of Moore House nor the battlefields of the Western Front can recreate. Its presence underscores each moment of true human connection in the novel, making its absence in the war chapters feel even more heartbreaking.

    Evidence

    The boys form a deep bond at the river, where Alec and Jerry secretly fish, away from Alec's mother Alicia, who disapproves. These moments showcase the rod as a symbol of their forbidden yet vital equality. When Alec thinks back to their time on the riverbank, those memories bring a warmth and simplicity that are missing from the rest of his story. Later, as Alec waits in his cell for execution, he finds solace in replaying those fishing mornings. The rod represents all the innocence and reality that war has taken away. Jerry's decision to leave in search of his missing father reflects the same loyalty and emotional honesty they shared by the river. When Alec ultimately shoots Jerry as an act of mercy — their final intimate moment — it mirrors the quiet, deliberate care of a fisherman, completing the symbol's tragic journey from life-affirming freedom to a final, sorrowful grace.

  • The Horse

    In Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon, horses represent the delicate yet rebellious connection between Alec Moore and Jerry Crowe — a friendship that challenges the strict class divisions of early twentieth-century Anglo-Irish society. For the privileged Alec, horses symbolize an escape from his stifling home life and his distant, manipulative mother. For Jerry, the son of a tenant farmer, they signify hard work and survival. The boys' shared passion for riding fosters a rare sense of equality and trust between them, turning the horse into a symbol of what human relationships might look like without the interference of social hierarchies. However, the horse also carries a sense of sorrow: the beauty and freedom it represents are ultimately crushed, just like their friendship, by the forces of war and class.

    Evidence

    The significance of horses emerges early when young Alec and Jerry sneak away to ride together in the fields. Their relaxed bond on horseback stands in stark contrast to the strict formality of Alec's life at Moore House. Alec's mother outright forbids this friendship, aware that their shared riding threatens the class distinctions she fiercely wants to uphold. When both young men find themselves in the trenches of World War I, the horse takes on a poignant role again: Jerry's main reason for enlisting is his desire to work with the cavalry horses, holding onto the one skill and passion that gave his life meaning. His ability with horses helps him stay connected to Alec, even amid the harsh military hierarchy. The eventual collapse of this world—Jerry's execution and Alec's impending fate—casts a shadow over every previous riding scene, marking the horse as a symbol of a beautiful freedom that both Anglo-Irish society and the war ultimately destroy.

  • The Nursery Rhyme / Babylon

    In Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon?, the nursery rhyme "How many miles to Babylon?" symbolizes false hope, entrapment, and the struggle for escape. Babylon — a city known for its legendary beauty and biblical downfall — stands for the freedom that Alec and Jerry desperately want: freedom from class constraints, from war, and from the identities their society has forced upon them. The rhyme's circular, childlike rhythm highlights the bitter irony that the "candle-light" meant to guide them home will never shine. It casts the entire novel as a doomed journey, reminding readers that the ultimate destination — safety, dignity, and true human connection — is always "three score miles and ten" away, forever out of reach for young men caught in a war they did not choose.

    Evidence

    Johnston places the nursery rhyme at the core of the novel by using it as the epigraph, signaling right away that the story is a journey with no safe destination. Alec, narrating from his prison cell as he awaits execution, reflects on his friendship with Jerry Crowe as a quest for that elusive Babylon — a place beyond class divisions where their bond could thrive without constraints. Their stolen moments riding horses on the Moore estate and sharing conversations across the social divide represent the novel's closest glimpse of Babylon, yet even these moments are clouded by the awareness that the outside world won’t allow it. When Alec is ordered to shoot Jerry — his only true friend — the rhyme's promise of return by "candle-light" shatters completely. The execution cell transforms into the anti-Babylon: a space of total closure. Johnston's use of the rhyme thus turns a children's verse into a poignant elegy for a generation instructed to march toward glory but met instead with mud, futility, and death.

  • The Trenches

    In Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon, the trenches of the Western Front represent the complete destruction of human identity, class, and potential. What starts as a strict social divide between Anglo-Irish officer Alec Moore and Irish enlisted man Jerry Crowe is flattened by the mud, darkness, and mechanized slaughter of the trenches. This underground realm strips away the illusions of honor and heroism that motivated both men to fight, revealing the conflict as a senseless machine that devours individuals regardless of their rank or background. Therefore, the trenches symbolize the ultimate loss of self—a space where loyalty, friendship, and personal agency become insignificant due to the brutality of institutional violence.

    Evidence

    Alec tells his story from a cell where he awaits his fate after shooting Jerry to save him from a firing squad — an act of mercy rooted in their shared experience in the trenches. In the dugout scenes, the two men meet secretly at night, with their class differences fading away in the dark underground, a stark contrast to the world above. When Jerry decides to desert in search of his father, it's the suffocating hopelessness of the trench that drives him to his breaking point. Alec's superiors, especially the unfeeling Major Glendinning, exploit the trench hierarchy to maintain class power even in the face of shared suffering, ordering Alec to execute Jerry. The bleak description of the trenches — waterlogged, infested with rats, and reeking of decay — reflects the moral decay Alec sees in the war itself. His opening line, written from his cell, underscores that the trench environment has already sealed everyone's fate before the story even begins.

05·Key quotes

The lines worth pulling for an essay.

“He was the only person who had ever treated me as if I were a human being.”

This line is delivered by Alec Moore, the Anglo-Irish narrator and main character of Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon? (1974). Alec reflects on his friendship with Jerry Crowe, a young man from the peasant class living on his family's estate in County Wicklow. Their bond challenges the strict class and social divisions of early twentieth-century Ireland. The quote appears as Alec thinks about the rare and meaningful nature of Jerry's companionship: unlike his cold, overbearing mother or the distant figures in his social circle, Jerry accepts Alec simply for who he is. This line is key to Johnston's examination of class, identity, and human connection. It reveals the emotional emptiness of the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy, whose privileged members are ironically dehumanized by their own social systems. The friendship between Alec and Jerry, which even survives the horrors of World War I, serves as the novel's moral center—highlighting the power of genuine human connections that rise above inherited social structures. The quote also adds to the tragedy of the novel’s conclusion, emphasizing what Alec loses when that unique relationship is shattered by war and military command.

Alec Moore · to reader (first-person narration)

“How many miles to Babylon? Three score miles and ten. Can I get there by candlelight? Yes, and back again.”

This haunting nursery-rhyme refrain, threaded throughout Jennifer Johnston's 1974 novel How Many Miles to Babylon?, is recited by Alec Moore, a young Anglo-Irish officer in the trenches of World War I. The old children's verse, based on a traditional English nursery rhyme, serves as a structural and thematic anchor for the novel. Alec first hears it in his childhood, and it reappears at crucial moments of foreboding and reflection, highlighting the story's focus on innocence shattered by war and class differences. "Babylon" becomes a complex symbol: the legendary lost city, the unattainable paradise of youth and friendship, and the grim battlefields of the Western Front. The question "Can I get there by candlelight?" reflects life's fragility — a candle's brief, flickering flame echoing the fleeting lives of young soldiers. The response, "Yes, and back again," carries bitter irony, as Alec, waiting for execution in a military prison, understands there is no way back. The rhyme captures Johnston's poignant meditation on class, loyalty, and the senseless loss of a generation.

Alec Moore (narrator) · Recurs throughout the novel as a leitmotif; prominently framed at the opening and closing of the narrative

“We were friends. That was all. It was enough.”

This quiet yet powerful statement comes from Alec Moore, the Anglo-Irish narrator of Jennifer Johnston's 1974 novel How Many Miles to Babylon?. Alec reflects on his relationship with Jerry Crowe, a lower-class Irish soldier he befriends despite the rigid class and social barriers of early twentieth-century Ireland and the First World War. This line appears near the novel's frame narrative, where Alec, imprisoned and awaiting execution for shooting Jerry in an act of mercy, looks back on the true nature of their bond. Johnston removes any need for justification or explanation — friendship, in its purest form, is shown as a complete truth in itself. Thematically, this quote captures the novel's central tragedy: that a friendship so simple and genuine could be shattered by larger forces — class prejudice, colonial politics, the machinery of war — that overshadow the two individuals. The concise nature of the three sentences reflects Johnston's minimalist prose style and highlights how much is lost when society disregards the most basic human connections. It stands as one of Irish literature's most moving reflections on friendship, class, and the human cost of war.

Alec Moore · Frame narrative — Alec's retrospective reflection while imprisoned awaiting execution

“I had no country, only a house, a field, and a friend.”

This line is spoken by Alexander Moore, the narrator and main character in Jennifer Johnston's 1974 novel How Many Miles to Babylon?. It appears early on as Alexander reflects on his lonely upbringing in a Big House estate in County Wicklow, Ireland, just before the First World War. Raised by a distant father and a cold, controlling mother, Alexander struggles to find a sense of belonging—caught between Irish and British identities. His emotional life revolves around three things: the estate he inhabits, the land he cherishes, and Jerry Crowe, the son of a Catholic tenant farmer who becomes his closest—and forbidden—friend. This quote is key to the novel's themes of class, identity, and the challenges faced by the Anglo-Irish. Alexander's lack of national identity hints at the tragedy to come: sent to the front lines of World War I without a country to defend, he fights for reasons that are not truly his own. The line also highlights the novel's critique of the Big House tradition and the hollowness of privilege, while emphasizing personal loyalty—his friendship with Jerry—as the only real value in his life.

Alexander Moore (narrator) · Early reflective narration; Alexander recalls his childhood and the foundations of his friendship with Jerry Crowe

“They will shoot me at dawn and I will not cry out. That much I can do for Jerry.”

This closing line is delivered by Alec Moore, the Anglo-Irish narrator and main character of Jennifer Johnston's 1974 novel How Many Miles to Babylon?. The story unfolds as a reflective first-person narrative penned by Alec from his prison cell, where he awaits execution by firing squad for a merciful act—shooting his friend Jerry Crowe, a fellow soldier from a lower social class, who was sentenced to death for desertion during World War I. This line appears at the novel's conclusion, as Alec resolves to confront his own death with quiet dignity. Its thematic significance is profound: it captures the novel's core themes of class, friendship, loyalty, and the senseless brutality of war. While Alec cannot save Jerry or challenge the rigid social and military hierarchies that have led to their destruction, he can maintain control over one small aspect—his own composure in his final moments. The restraint in "I will not cry out" and the heartfelt sentiment of "That much I can do for Jerry" encapsulate Johnston's critique of a system that sacrifices human connections on the altar of class prejudice and institutional violence.

Alec Moore · Final chapter (closing lines) · Prison cell, final chapter — Alec awaiting execution at dawn

“I am going to be shot at dawn. I have been awake all night and I find that I am not afraid.”

This opening line is delivered by Alec Moore, the Anglo-Irish protagonist and narrator of Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon? (1974). It appears right at the beginning of the novel, as Alec waits in a military prison cell for his execution at dawn. He has been sentenced for shooting his friend Jerry Crowe, a fellow soldier, to spare him from the more brutal fate of a firing squad, which was ordered by court martial for desertion during World War I.

The line carries significant thematic weight for several reasons. First, it sets the stage for the novel's reflective, confessional style: everything that follows is Alec's memory of how he ended up in this situation. Second, his calm assertion — "I find that I am not afraid" — conveys a subtle defiance against the dehumanizing forces of war and class. Alec, a Protestant Anglo-Irish officer, and Jerry, a Catholic working-class soldier, illustrate the profound social divides within Irish society; their unexpected friendship and Alec's ultimate act of mercy rise above those divides. The line also encapsulates the novel's central irony: the war, which was meant to impart meaning and a sense of manhood, ends up destroying both young men, regardless of their bravery or innocence.

Alec Moore · Opening / Chapter 1 · Opening line — Alec in his prison cell awaiting execution at dawn

“The war was something that happened to other people, until it happened to us.”

This line comes from Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon? (1974), a novel set during World War I that explores the tragic friendship between Alec Moore, a young Anglo-Irish officer, and Jerry Crowe, a soldier from a lower social class. Alec narrates this quote in a reflective first-person voice while he waits in his prison cell for execution. It highlights the psychological distance that privilege and class create — for Alec and his Anglo-Irish gentry background, the war initially seemed abstract, a distant affair affecting "other people," especially the poor and working class who had fewer options. But once the war turns personal — through enlistment, loss, and moral dilemmas — that comfortable detachment is shattered. Thematically, this line is crucial to Johnston's critique of class, innocence, and complicity: it reveals how the Anglo-Irish elite insulated themselves from harsh realities until history forced them to face them. It also hints at the novel's tragic trajectory, where Alec's sheltered existence is irreparably altered by the brutal realities of war.

Alec Moore (narrator) · Retrospective prison-cell narration

“Class is something they brand you with, like cattle. You can never quite escape the mark.”

This quote is from Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon? (1974), a novel set during World War I that examines the strict class divisions within Irish society. The speaker, Alec Moore, is the Anglo-Irish narrator and protagonist, who reflects on the unyielding social hierarchy that has influenced his life and his doomed friendship with Jerry Crowe, a young man from a peasant background. The branding metaphor is strikingly vivid: just as cattle are marked by their owners, humans are marked at birth by their social class — a mark that follows them even into the battlefields of war. The quote encapsulates one of the novel's key themes: that class isn’t just a societal construct but a form of violence, an identity imposed from the outside that cannot be discarded through goodwill, friendship, or shared hardship. Alec and Jerry's relationship, which is tender and sincere, ultimately falls apart not because of the war itself but due to the class structures that the war only intensifies. Johnston employs Alec's clear and reflective voice to criticize a society that brands its members and then punishes them for attempting to cross the boundaries those brands create.

Alec Moore · Alec's retrospective narration on class and social identity

“She had always wanted a son who would be a reflection of herself, and I had failed her.”

This line is spoken by Alexander Moore, the Anglo-Irish narrator and protagonist of Jennifer Johnston's How Many Miles to Babylon? (1974). It comes early in the novel while Alexander reflects on his difficult relationship with his cold, domineering mother as he awaits execution in a World War I military prison. The quote captures the core conflict of Alexander's home life: his mother sees him as a means to fulfill her own aristocratic ambitions and social status, while his gentle, introspective nature — including his love for music and his friendship with Jerry Crowe from a different social class — deeply disappoints her. Thematically, this line sets the stage for Johnston's critique of the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy, whose strict class values and emotional suppression stifle individual identity. Ironically, Alexander's perceived "failure" in his mother's eyes is simply a reflection of his humanity. This remark also hints at the novel's tragic storyline: denied a true sense of self at home, Alexander lacks agency in the war machine, becoming a casualty of familial, colonial, and military forces that have never truly recognized him as an individual.

Alexander Moore (narrator) · to reader (interior reflection) · Early retrospective narration; Alexander reflects on his childhood and relationship with his mother from his prison cell

06·Study tools

Discussion, essay, and quiz prompts.

Discussion questions3 items ·

  • Discussion Questions: How Many Miles to Babylon? by Jennifer Johnston

    1. Friendship across class divides: Alec and Jerry come from very different social backgrounds, yet they form a strong bond. What does their friendship reveal about the rigid class structures in early twentieth-century Irish society? Do you think their friendship could have endured outside the context of war?
    1. Identity and belonging: Alec grapples with his sense of identity — caught between his cold, domineering mother and his more compassionate father, and later between his officer status and his loyalty to Jerry. How does Johnston use Alec's internal struggle to explore themes of belonging and self-determination?
    1. The role of mothers and fathers: Compare the influence of Alec's mother and father on his values and decisions. How do these parental figures represent broader ideological forces — such as class ambition versus human compassion?
    1. War and futility: Johnston presents World War I as senseless and dehumanizing. How does the novel's structure — starting with Alec awaiting execution — shape the reader's experience of the war narrative? What impact does this framing device have on your understanding of the story?
    1. Loyalty and moral courage: Alec ultimately faces execution for an act of loyalty to Jerry. Do you view his choice as an act of moral courage or as a failure to navigate an unjust system? Could he have made different choices?
    1. Irish identity and the war: The novel is set against the backdrop of Irish involvement in a British-led war. How does Johnston intertwine questions of Irish national identity into the personal story of Alec and Jerry? Why might this context be important?
    1. Voice and narrative perspective: The novel is told entirely from Alec's first-person perspective. What are the benefits and drawbacks of this narrative choice? What insights might we be missing by not hearing Jerry's voice directly?

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  • Discussion Questions: How Many Miles to Babylon? by Jennifer Johnston

    1. Friendship across class lines: Alec and Jerry develop an unexpected friendship despite their starkly different social backgrounds. What does their bond reveal about the rigid class structures in early twentieth-century Ireland and Britain? Can they achieve true equality given their differing circumstances?
    1. War and identity: How does World War I shape—or unravel—the sense of self for both Alec and Jerry? In what ways does the war challenge the illusions each character had about their lives?
    1. Parental influence and control: Alec's mother has a powerful and cold influence over him. How does her manipulation contribute to the novel’s tragedy? To what degree is she accountable for the story's outcome?
    1. Duty vs. loyalty: Alec ultimately faces a choice between his duty as an officer and his loyalty to Jerry. Do you think he makes the correct decision? What does the novel imply about the nature of moral obligation during wartime?
    1. Narrative framing: The story is presented in hindsight by Alec as he awaits execution. How does this framing impact the reader's experience of the narrative? What effect does knowing the ending from the start have on the story?
    1. Silence and communication: Both Alec and Jerry find it difficult to communicate honestly—with each other, their families, and authority figures. How does the theme of silence operate throughout the novel, and what are its implications?
    1. Irish identity and the First World War: The novel prompts questions about why Irish men participated in a British war. How does Johnston use the experiences of Alec and Jerry to delve into the complexities of Irish national identity during this time?

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  • Discussion Questions: How Many Miles to Babylon? by Jennifer Johnston

    Consider these questions as you reflect on the novel. Be ready to share your thoughts and hear your classmates' perspectives.

    1. Friendship Across Class Lines: Alec and Jerry come from very different social backgrounds, yet they develop a strong bond. What does their friendship reveal about human connection? How does their relationship either challenge or support the strict class divisions of early twentieth-century Ireland?
    1. War and Identity: In what ways does World War I shape or reveal the identities of Alec and Jerry? How does the war strip away the social personas that each character maintains?
    1. Parental Influence and Control: Alec's mother has a strong, almost stifling impact on his life. What role does her character play in the novel? What message does Johnston seem to convey about the harmful effects of parental ambition and control?
    1. Duty vs. Loyalty: Alec faces a heartbreaking conflict between his duties as an officer and his loyalty to Jerry. Do you believe he makes the right decision? What insights does the novel offer about the boundaries of duty?
    1. The Title's Significance: The title comes from a children's nursery rhyme: "How many miles to Babylon? / Three score miles and ten. / Can I get there by candlelight? / Yes, and back again." How does this rhyme connect with the novel's themes and events? What could "Babylon" symbolize for Alec and Jerry?
    1. Narrative Frame: The novel begins with Alec awaiting his execution. How does this framing influence your reading of the story? What effect does Johnston create by revealing the ending's outcome right from the start?
    1. Irish Identity and the War: Many Irishmen who served in WWI found themselves in a complex political situation. How does Johnston address the tension between Irish national identity and serving in the British Army?

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Essay prompts3 items ·

  • Essay Prompt: How Many Miles to Babylon? by Jennifer Johnston

    Prompt:

    In How Many Miles to Babylon?, Jennifer Johnston explores the unexpected friendship between Alec Moore and Jerry Crowe to highlight the strict class divisions of early twentieth-century Irish society. Write a well-structured essay in which you argue how Johnston utilizes this cross-class relationship to critique the social and political systems that ultimately lead to the downfall of both characters. In your essay, be sure to:

    • Analyze how Alec's and Jerry's different backgrounds influence their identities and decisions throughout the novel.
    • Examine the role of World War I as a backdrop that both reflects and intensifies the class tensions present in Irish society.
    • Discuss how Johnston employs narrative structure — particularly Alec's reflective voice from his prison cell — to frame themes of inevitability, guilt, and complicity.
    • Support your argument with specific textual evidence, including dialogue, imagery, and key plot moments.

    Suggested length: 800–1,200 words Assessment focus: Argument development, textual analysis, thematic insight, and use of evidence.

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  • Essay Prompt: How Many Miles to Babylon? by Jennifer Johnston

    Prompt:

    In How Many Miles to Babylon?, Jennifer Johnston explores the unexpected friendship between Alec Moore and Jerry Crowe to reveal the strict class divisions present in early twentieth-century Irish society. Write a well-organized essay arguing how Johnston uses this cross-class relationship to critique the social and political structures that ultimately lead to the demise of both characters. In your essay, make sure to:

    • Analyze how Alec's and Jerry's differing backgrounds influence their identities and their friendship.
    • Examine Alec's mother as a symbol of class rigidity and social control.
    • Discuss how the backdrop of World War I acts as an extension — rather than a cause — of the social forces already influencing Ireland.
    • Support your argument with specific textual evidence, such as dialogue, imagery, and narrative structure.

    Suggested length: 4–6 paragraphs (approximately 600–900 words)

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  • Essay Prompt: How Many Miles to Babylon? by Jennifer Johnston

    Prompt:

    In How Many Miles to Babylon?, Jennifer Johnston explores the unlikely friendship between Alec Moore and Jerry Crowe to reveal the strict class divisions present in early twentieth-century Irish society. Write a well-structured essay arguing how Johnston uses this cross-class relationship to critique the social and political systems that ultimately lead to the downfall of both characters. In your essay, make sure to discuss:

    • How Alec and Jerry's friendship either challenges or reinforces class boundaries
    • The role of Alec's mother as a representation of social repression and control
    • How the context of World War I serves as a parallel to — or an extension of — the class conflict at home
    • The importance of the novel's framing narrative (Alec writing from his prison cell) and what it implies about agency, fate, and complicity

    Support your argument with specific examples and analysis from the text.

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Quiz questions2 items ·

  • In Jennifer Johnston's novel How Many Miles to Babylon?, how are the two main characters, Alec Moore and Jerry Crowe, related before they enlist to fight in World War I?

    A) They are cousins raised in the same household B) They are childhood friends from different social classes C) They are brothers who were separated at birth D) They are former schoolmates who meet again at the front

    Correct Answer: B) They are childhood friends from different social classes

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  • *Quiz Question: How Many Miles to Babylon? by Jennifer Johnston*

    Which of the following best describes how the story is framed in How Many Miles to Babylon?

    A) The narrative is presented in the third person by an all-knowing narrator who knows both Alec and Jerry equally well. B) The narrative is presented in the first person by Alec Moore, who recounts his thoughts from a prison cell while waiting for execution. C) The narrative is presented in alternating first-person chapters, shifting between Alec's and Jerry's viewpoints. D) The narrative is presented in third person limited, concentrating solely on Jerry Crowe's experiences in the trenches.

    Correct Answer: B

    Explanation: Jennifer Johnston's novel begins with Alec Moore writing from a military prison cell, facing execution by firing squad. The entire story is his reflective first-person account, looking back on his friendship with Jerry Crowe and the circumstances that led to his imprisonment.

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Teacher handout2 items ·

  • Teacher Handout: How Many Miles to Babylon? by Jennifer Johnston

    Mini-Lecture: Context & Overview

    Author: Jennifer Johnston (Irish novelist, b. 1930) Published: 1974 Genre: Literary Fiction / War Novel / Coming-of-Age

    How Many Miles to Babylon? takes place during World War I and delves into themes of class conflict, friendship, loyalty, and the senselessness of war. The story is told by Alec Moore, a young Anglo-Irish officer facing execution, as he reflects on his unexpected friendship with Jerry Crowe, a soldier from a lower social class. The title references a traditional English nursery rhyme, emphasizing innocence, distance, and the impossibility of returning to a previous state.

    Key Vocabulary

    | Term | Definition | |---|---| | Anglo-Irish | Descendants of English Protestant settlers in Ireland, often linked to the "Big House" tradition and a waning ruling class. | | Bildungsroman | A coming-of-age story that follows the moral and psychological development of a protagonist. | | Futility | The quality of having no useful outcome; a central theme in WWI literature (cf. Wilfred Owen). | | Class conflict | Social tensions arising from differences in economic status, privilege, and power dynamics. | | Frame narrative | A story within another story; in this case, Alec tells his story from his prison cell, reflecting on past events. | | Dramatic irony | When the audience knows something that a character does not — the reader learns Alec's fate early on. | | Allegory | A narrative with deeper symbolic meaning; the friendship between Alec and Jerry can be seen as an allegory for Anglo-Irish relations. |

    Scaffolded Reading Prompts

    Use these prompts to help students engage with the text at three levels of thinking:

    🔵 Level 1 — Recall & Comprehension

    1. Who is telling the story, and what is his situation at the beginning of the novel?
    2. How do Alec and Jerry first encounter each other, and what challenges do they face in their friendship?
    3. What aspirations does Alec's mother have for him, and how do these clash with his own wishes?

    🟡 Level 2 — Analysis & Interpretation

    1. How does Johnston employ the frame narrative to evoke a sense of inevitability and tragedy?
    2. In what ways does the friendship between Alec and Jerry challenge or reinforce the class divisions in their society?
    3. Analyze Johnston's use of the Irish landscape as a symbol of freedom in contrast to the trenches of the Western Front. What does this contrast imply?

    🔴 Level 3 — Evaluation & Synthesis

    1. To what extent is How Many Miles to Babylon? about the failure of the individual against social and political forces beyond their control?
    2. Compare Johnston's depiction of WWI with another text you have studied. How do both authors use the war to explore broader human concerns?
    3. The title derives from a nursery rhyme ending "I cannot get there by candlelight." What does this suggest about the novel's main themes of hope, futility, and lost innocence?

    Discussion Starter (Whole Class)

    > "Can a genuine friendship thrive across a significant class divide, or will society inevitably find a way to undermine it?"

    Encourage students to reflect on this question in relation to the novel and their own insights about social structures today.

    Suggested Paired Texts

    • Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
    • All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
    • Regeneration – Pat Barker
    • Poetry of Wilfred Owen (especially Dulce et Decorum Est, Anthem for Doomed Youth)

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  • Teacher Handout: How Many Miles to Babylon? by Jennifer Johnston

    Mini-Lecture: Context & Overview

    Author: Jennifer Johnston (Irish novelist, b. 1930) Published: 1974 Genre: Literary Fiction / War Novel / Coming-of-Age

    How Many Miles to Babylon? is set during World War I and tells the story of two young Irishmen — Alec Moore, an Anglo-Irish Protestant from a privileged background, and Jerry Crowe, a Catholic from a struggling rural family. Despite their starkly different social classes, they form a deep and unexpected friendship. The novel is a retrospective first-person narrative: Alec writes from a military prison cell, awaiting execution, and looks back on the events that led him to this point.

    Key Themes

    | Theme | Brief Description | |---|---| | Class & Social Division | The strict Anglo-Irish class system influences every relationship in the story. | | Friendship & Loyalty | Alec and Jerry's friendship crosses social divides — but at a significant cost. | | War & Futility | Johnston presents WWI as senseless and dehumanizing, reflecting the sentiments of the War Poets. | | Identity & Belonging | Both protagonists feel like outsiders — Alec in his own class, Jerry in the military. | | Duty vs. Conscience | Characters face repeated choices between obligation and personal ethics. | | Anglo-Irish Relations | The novel explores the complicated relationship between Ireland and Britain. |

    Key Characters

    • Alec Moore – Narrator; a sensitive, isolated Anglo-Irish youth. Torn between his overbearing mother, absent father, and allegiance to Jerry.
    • Jerry Crowe – Kind, down-to-earth, and resourceful. Represents the Catholic Irish peasantry. His fate becomes a key moral issue in the story.
    • Alec's Mother (Leonora) – Cold, controlling, and highly class-conscious. A representation of the declining Anglo-Irish Ascendancy.
    • Alec's Father – Passive and emotionally detached; contrasts sharply with Leonora.
    • Major Glendinning – Embodies military authority and the harsh, impersonal nature of war.

    Vocabulary to Pre-Teach

    | Term | Definition | |---|---| | Anglo-Irish Ascendancy | The Protestant landowning class that held power in Ireland under British rule. | | Retrospective narrative | A story narrated by someone reflecting on past experiences. | | Dramatic irony | A situation where the reader knows something that a character does not — in this case, Alec's fate is revealed early on. | | Futility | The quality of being pointless; a central theme in Johnston's depiction of war. | | Dehumanisation | The process of stripping individuals of their humanity, often portrayed in war literature. | | Foil | A character whose contrasting traits emphasize the qualities of another character. |

    Scaffolded Discussion Prompts

    Level 1 – Recall

    1. Who tells the story, and where is he when he narrates it?
    2. How do Alec and Jerry first meet, and what challenges do they face in their friendship?

    Level 2 – Analysis

    1. How does Johnston use Alec's prison writing as a framing device to build tension throughout the novel?
    2. In what ways does Alec's mother embody the values of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy? Support your answer with examples from the text.

    Level 3 – Evaluation

    1. To what degree is How Many Miles to Babylon? a story about the failure of loyalty — both personal and political?
    2. Johnston is often seen as writing an "anti-war novel." How effectively does she express the futility and waste of World War I?

    Connections & Wider Reading

    • War Poetry: Explore works by Wilfred Owen (Dulce et Decorum Est) and Siegfried Sassoon — compare their views on WWI.
    • Irish Literary Context: Look at Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way or Eoin MacNeill's writings on Irish identity for comparison.
    • Class & Society: Compare class dynamics with those in The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) or Birdsong (Faulks).
    • Title Reference: The title refers to a children's counting rhyme ("How many miles to Babylon? / Three score miles and ten…"), hinting at distance, unreachable goals, and the innocence lost due to war.

    Prepared for classroom use. Encourage students to annotate for themes, character development, and narrative techniques as they read.

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