By The Waters Of Babylon Summary

priest of the son of the priest. You also learn that John is the son of a priest

Which would you value more-knowledge, or truth? Stephen Vincent Benét explores this question in his short story “By the Waters of Babylon”. However, Benét doesn’t answer this question exactly, instead “By the Waters of Babylon” focuses more on a singular theme that knowledge and truth are intertwined. Benét brings the reader into a post-apocalyptic world where humans have resorted to a more primitive state after the “Great Burning”(310). Now the only humans left with any knowledge are the Priests, and John happens to be the son of one. John has been exposed to the only remaining knowledge that he’s been told his society has at that the time and now quest for more. This burning desire that John has to know more of

In this essay, I am going to compare and constrast the two stories. One is "By the Waters of Babylon" by Stephen Vincent Benet and the other is "Anthem" by Ayn Rand. In "By the Waters of Babylon", the author basically compares and the house of the gods and the Dead Place. In "Anthem", the characters in the story finds an underground place where no one should go.

The geography of rivers is important to their symbolism in this story. Antonio’s river starts from a lake, a place of no morals; studies prove that infants are selfish beyond belief, and so is water at its birth. His river carries the water to the ocean, the place where all water lands, carrying the blood and salt and debris that it picks up on its long journey. All high rivers go to the ocean, no matter how many lakes they go through. The ocean is where water goes to die, until its spirit, in clean water, is carried through the clouds back into the frigid mountain lakes, where it is born again. This is the cycle of water, and the cycle of life.

In the beginning of the story, John is trapped inside the cave with the rest of his village. The cave prevents people from seeing the truth of their worlds in both stories. Their society “In by the Waters of Babylon,” has very strict rules. They can’t go to the east, go to the Dead Places, or go across the Great River, “These things are forbidden- they have been forbidden since the beginning of time,” John says (Benet, 109).

To start off with, John travelled into a forbidden area and he started seeing much more then he was supposed to see and that is when he started losing fear. In the story it states, “The north and the west and the south are good hunting ground, but it is forbidden to go east. It is forbidden to go to any of the Dead Places except to search for metal […] These are the rules and the laws; they are well made. It is forbidden

Simply Mystifying: A Language Analysis of “By the Water of Babylon” Authors employ various literary devices in order to tell a compelling story. In “By the Waters of Babylon”, Stephen Vincent Benét introduced a medley of language strategies to create an eerie mood throughout the piece. The three most significant language tools used to depict a mysterious setting in “By the Waters of Babylon” were personification, repetition, and similes/metaphors because they transform a symbol of nature into an antagonist, incite John to discover the truth, and expose John’s worldly ignorance. The personification of a river in this story produces mystery because it makes nature seem like the opposing force to John’s goal of finding the truth. When John

At first one might think that the “forest people” are the antagonist. This is because they are at war with the neighbour tributes and they are even hunting people down. As John (the main character of the story) is on his journey he is very concerned that he is going to end up running into the “forest people”. He is worried that the “forest people” will take him or harm him in any way. He even refers to the “forest people” as “people that is less advanced, and more unfortunate than members of his own tribe”. However the “forest people” are just another part of “By the Waters of Babylon”. They shouldn’t be the main focus of the story. People should really be focusing on the end of the story more. This is when John realizes that the gods were

Does knowledge always reveal the truth? In the short story “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benet, the reader is introduced to the narrator, John, who is on his journey to become a priest. John lives in a society where knowledge is only given to people of high rank, like himself. On his journey to become a priest John is given the knowledge he needs to go on his quest, where he eventually reveals the ultimate truth. The knowledge that John receives before his journey is very important to him, and helps him to discover the ultimate truth about the Place of the Gods.

While John is explaining the meaning of the rain ceremony to both Lenina and Bernard, he tells them that both his parents are from outside the reservation and were not from the inside like the rest. Due to John's actual heritage, it damages his reputation and leads him to be excluded from the rest. He says "They disliked me for my complexion. It's always been like that. Always" (117). Due to John's offshore relation, he is rarely allowed to join the reservation and participate in their rituals. He is looked at and thought of differently based solely on his looks. It's lonely in the fact he can't even participate with the community he has grown up in. On the other hand, John learns more about the society where he resides because his alienation from everyone allows him to explore things on his own. He says "The more the boys painted and sang, the harder I read"

He is amazed at how the gods had so much and a lot of knowledge. During the falling action John realizes that gods did not live in the place of the gods and that the gods were human and just like him. He wondered how everything had been destroyed. The resolution is when John travels back home and tells his father about his journey to the Place of the Gods and he tells the truth about how they were not

But when John arrives, he sees that his “brave new world” is far from the savage reservation. He sees that the people in London are enslaved by their controllers, pop Soma to escape the pain and suffering, and dont have close relationships with others and instead have orgies and sleep around. John in short is completely overwhelmed and feels alienated from this

The savages ridicule him because John

John desperately wants others to see what the world is like from his perspective and help them wake up from this bad dream. Although society rejects his opinion, not because they disagree with him, they are unable to comprehend the truth. John at the end

John takes his values from Shakespeare, which serves him throughout the novel. This character affects the novel in a profound manner. The knowledge makes it possible for him to verbalize his emotions and reactions that are too complex. Shakespeare’s works are the base through which John criticizes the values of the World State. The knowledge also provides John with a form of communication that is evidenced in the confrontation between him and Mustapha Mond “…Science? The Savage frowned. He knew the word. But what it exactly signified he could not say. Shakespeare and the old men of the pueblo had never mentioned science, and from Linda he had only gathered the vaguest hints: science was something you made helicopters with, something that caused you to laugh at the Corn Dances, something that prevented you from being wrinkled and losing your teeth. He made a desperate effort to take the Controller’s