If we accept Sophie as Serge’s classical attachment to a Muse (as opposed to his father’s influence with science, however twisted that might be), I think that helps to explain some of the war scenes. At the highest possible level, he knows the battle but he doesn’t know the war (my limited knowledge of The Iliad says that is a comparator). He sees some things in great detail and reports on them, but has no idea why (more Iliad). Where my limited experience falls apart is when he is in prison camp.

At the same time, of course, McCarthy is also playing with his “insect” metaphor — Serge is just a “bug” in the back of a plane, looking at things from high in the atmosphere. If we extend the metaphor to the realist/spiritualist, Western/Oriental conflict, is Serge merely a minor player in some game he doesn’t understand or part of a much grander drama where he doesn’t really know his part (more Homer there, I would say)? All of this then keeps building through London and eventually comes to a resolution (I think McCarthy eventually makes a clear choice) in Egypt. The references here, I think, are the conflicts between the history that drives the situation and the seemingly minor actions that take place in the present.