Alas Babylon By: Pat Frank
alexis nguyen B4
Alas Babylon By: Pat Frank
This book shows focuses on leadership in crisis.... Here are some quotes and passages showing places where characters show leadership in crisis
*Randy- "Look at me Ben. It was a wolf, it wasn't a dog any longer. You did just right."
2. After Dan Gunn is beaten by the highwaymen and is able to tell Randy what happened. Randy's reaction speaks volumes about the kind of person he is. This quote shows that Randy cares a lot about his friends, like a good leader should, but he also tries to hide his emotions so that they don't have to worry about it.
*Leaning over the bed, Randy's fingers interlock. He unconsciously squeezed until the tendons on his forearm stood out like taut wires. Randy said, "Don't worry about it."
3. Dan Gunn shows in this quote that even before Randy became the leader he is by the end of the book, people know that he has the ability to be a leader even in the heat of crisis.
*Dan- "You react to crisis in the right way. Some people melt in the heat of crisis and come apart like fat in the pan. Others meet the challenge and harden. I think you're going to harden."
Key Points
- Alas, Babylon shows many different examples of leadership in a crisis.
- Many studies have been conducted on how crisis affects the emergence of leadership
- Leaders are usually people that know the most about the subject
This novel focuses on leadership...
2 Major themes in this novel:
- Survival against the odds and
- Personal rediscovery and redemption
This picture represents one of the themes in this novel.. which is Survival against the odds
*More on the themes of this novel...
Survival: Randy, his household, and his neighbors know that civilization must be rebuilt-there is much in american civilization worth saving-but,to do that, they must first survive. The survival instinct can be found in the gopher soup, salads of local greenery and "weeds," and in the improvisation of needed tools. Even the highwaymen show their need for survival even if in an innapropriate way (through murder and pillage).
*In the story, they had to make due with what materials and resources that they could find and with what they already had.