While Butler claims specific literary influence from the Old Testament prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Daniel, and the New Testament writer Luke, he has read a considerable range of English and American literature. The focus on human perceptions and human responses to war in Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage (1895), in Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), and other such novels stand as worthy general precedents to the sensitive dealing with human fears and desires in The Alleys of Eden.