How Many Miles to Babylon
As with many of the characters in Johnston's novels, Alexander Moore is a young man who is trying to escape the responsibilities and limitations of the class into which he has been born by forging a relationship with someone from the opposite side of the great social, religious and political divide.
Through the character of Alec, Johnston offers a picture of life in the Big House before its fall. The only child of a bleak marriage, Alec was brought up in the Big House of an Anglo Irish estate outside Dublin. It is an isolated and lonely existence and is made all the more unbearable when Alec is forced to discontinue his friendship with Jerry Crowe.
He finds himself confined to the world of his sparring parents; an ineffectual but genuine father and a cold, manipulative yet beautiful mother. The awful tension between two people at war with one another and the effects of these hostilities on their son is convincingly captured in the first part of the novel. By her own admission this may be due in part to Johnston's own experience of the break-up of her parent's marriage when she was a child and her own divorce from her first husband. As Alec faces his execution, he makes it clear that it is the combination of the expectations placed on him by his social class and his mother's rejection of him that have led to his impending death.
Alec's life has been marked by indecision and cowardice and ironically, it is the one brave and decisive act of his life that both saves him and marks his end. Alec runs away from the social and personal isolation of life at home only to find it follows him to the trenches of Flanders. His friendship with Jerry isolates both of them and its warmth seems to be at odds with the coldness of war.
Through the characters of Alec and Jerry, Johnstonseems to be suggesting that it is their Irishness that sets them apart and allows them to maintain their humanity in the face of the dehumanisation of war. In asserting his own humanity above his role as an "officer and a gentleman", Alec raises himself above the horror of war and redeems himself. The tragedy remains, however, that his redemption costs him his life.
As with many of the characters in Johnston's novels, Alexander Moore is a young man who is trying to escape the responsibilities and limitations of the class into which he has been born by forging a relationship with someone from the opposite side of the great social, religious and political divide.
Through the character of Alec, Johnston offers a picture of life in the Big House before its fall. The only child of a bleak marriage, Alec was brought up in the Big House of an Anglo Irish estate outside Dublin. It is an isolated and lonely existence and is made all the more unbearable when Alec is forced to discontinue his friendship with Jerry Crowe.
He finds himself confined to the world of his sparring parents; an ineffectual but genuine father and a cold, manipulative yet beautiful mother. The awful tension between two people at war with one another and the effects of these hostilities on their son is convincingly captured in the first part of the novel. By her own admission this may be due in part to Johnston's own experience of the break-up of her parent's marriage when she was a child and her own divorce from her first husband. As Alec faces his execution, he makes it clear that it is the combination of the expectations placed on him by his social class and his mother's rejection of him that have led to his impending death.
Alec's life has been marked by indecision and cowardice and ironically, it is the one brave and decisive act of his life that both saves him and marks his end. Alec runs away from the social and personal isolation of life at home only to find it follows him to the trenches of Flanders. His friendship with Jerry isolates both of them and its warmth seems to be at odds with the coldness of war.
Through the characters of Alec and Jerry, Johnstonseems to be suggesting that it is their Irishness that sets them apart and allows them to maintain their humanity in the face of the dehumanisation of war. In asserting his own humanity above his role as an "officer and a gentleman", Alec raises himself above the horror of war and redeems himself. The tragedy remains, however, that his redemption costs him his life.