How Many Miles to Babylon? - Example questions - CCEA

Use these questions to hone your knowledge of How Many Miles to Babylon?, and to practise using your notes and analysis in organised paragraphs that focus on how particular characters, themes or ideas are shown in the novel. There is an example answer in the following section to demonstrate how you can do this.

• How does Johnston explore the theme of friendship in How Many Miles to Babylon?
• Examine how far Alec is shown to have an unhappy childhood in How Many Miles to Babylon?
• To what extent do the characters display a sense of duty in How Many Miles to Babylon?
• In what ways does family matter in How Many Miles to Babylon?
• In what ways is Jerry a sympathetic character in How Many Miles to Babylon?
• Examine how far Alec is presented as typical of his social class in How Many Miles to Babylon?
• How does Johnston present attitudes to war in How Many Miles to Babylon?
• To what extent is wealth associated with unhappiness in How Many Miles to Babylon?

Below is a demonstration of how to use your revision material to answer an example essay question. The answer below is not a full essay, but only an extract of a longer answer showing some of the points that could be made.

Q: Examine how far Alec is shown to have an unhappy childhood in How Many Miles to Babylon?.

A: Jennifer Johnston’s How Many Miles to Babylon? can be considered a Bildungsroman since it traces the protagonist’s journey from childhood to adulthood, and the series of events ending with Alec awaiting execution in a military jail during the First World War. The first person narrative voice gives an immediate account, allowing the reader to access the thoughts and feelings of the narrator directly and experience events of emotional significance from the narrator’s past. In recounting Alec’s childhood, Johnston paints a picture of a lonely, isolated and emotionally stunted atmosphere at home. It is true Alec is from a rich family and has all the material possessions he could want; but he has distant parents, no siblings, no friends or even contact with other children (he is tutored at home rather than attending school) and he is never made to feel wanted or liked by his mother, much less loved. This all undoubtedly suggests that Alec’s childhood was an unhappy one.

Alec spends a lot of his time alone, “isolated from the surrounding children of my own age by the traditional barriers of class and education”. These “barriers” were social rules that separated wealthy Anglo-Irish landowners like Alec’s family from the rest of the population, who were usually much poorer, Catholic and likely to be at least partly politically opposed to families like the Moores because of Ireland’s long history of colonisation and plantation. Johnston uses the past tense in flashback to show that it is really only when he becomes an adult that Alec realises he was lonely as a child: “I suppose now that I come to think of it I had never known anything else.” This suggests that as a child he was lonely constantly, which is a clear indication of an unhappy childhood. His experience of any human relationships is generally limited to his parents' unhappy marriage. The first person account reveals Alec’s internal thoughts about his parents’ relationship – “I had developed the technique of listening to a fine art” – and how it makes him feel as “invisible as a chair or a bowl of flowers”. This simile shows how the arguments and cold interactions between Alec’s parents make him feel more like an object than a person, undermining his humanity and showing him to be off to the side in his family unit, instead of being valued and listened to as a child should be.

This essay could go on to make the following points, backed up by evidence from the novel and analysis/interpretation of that evidence:

• Alec’s distant, often cruel mother makes decisions about his welfare that benefit her, not him; his father is too weak to stand up to her. The result traps Alec at home, in a house he describes as “unwelcoming” and full of “cold light”. His mother does not demonstrate any love for him, strongly implying a loveless and unhappy childhood.
• As Alec gets older his father suggests that “Perhaps the time has come for us to get to know each other a little”, showing that their relationship had been distant when Alec was a small child. This situation was not uncommon – especially among upper class fathers and their children – in the early 20th century, but nonetheless it seems to suggest an unhappy childhood to the modern reader.
• A counterargument could be made that Alec’s father does genuinely care about him, and that his life improves hugely when he begins his friendship with Jerry, leading to many happy childhood times and a relationship he cherishes into adulthood. The fact this is a relationship he is willing to die for shows its importance to him – the essay writer could then decide (based on evidence and interpretation) whether they feel this important friendship actually stopped Alec’s childhood from being unhappy, or whether it was the only thing about his childhood that wasn’t unhappy.