Summary Of The Waters Of Babylon, By The Waters Of Babylon

Technology can be too smart for our own good. Nuclear bombs have killed innocent people and technology will too. In the Waters of Babylon by Stephen Vincent Benét there was a nuclear bomb that went off and destroyed everything but some people did survive. In There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury there was a nuclear bomb that destroyed everything but a smart house. There Will Come Soft Rains was more disturbing than The Waters of Babylon because of the fact that it is about a house that has a brain type computer chip.

Did you know “it is strictly forbidden to cross the river and look upon the place of the gods”-By The Waters Of Babylon. Stephen Vincent Benet wrote “By The Waters Of Babylon”. He introduces the priest and the son of the priest John. In “The Waters Of Babylon” there was a quest to be fulfilled, but no one was brave enough to fulfill that. John felt an internal passion to go on the quest. So at the end he gained knowledge that everyone was afraid of. The author “By The Waters Of Babylon” uses modern society as textual symbols which are spirits and demons, deer, and a door with a broken lock.

were here before us. We must build again." They will learn the ways of the old

In the story “ By the Waters of Babylon” the narrator, John, is a priest who values knowledge greatly. In the story John states: “My knowledge made me happy--it was like a fire in my heart.” (312). Through the interpretation of this line the reader can infer that knowledge is very important to the narrator's culture and society. It is what inspires these quests and drives all of his actions. The narrator assumes that all of the knowledge that has been gained throughout a lifetime is true because he has yet to learn otherwise. In relation to John’s strong feelings about knowledge, He also feels as though he can never get enough. His need and desire for knowledge is described by the following quote: “Nevertheless, my knowledge and my lack of knowledge burned in me – I wished to know more.” (312). John

As both the reader and John begin to understand what this realization on John’s part means Benét’s lesson about truth and knowledge begins to manifest. With the truth of John’s ancestors revealed and how it was discovered that the priests in John’s culture have been proclaiming their knowledge without evidence, the relationship that one cannot have truth without knowledge begins to visualize. Benét doesn’t let this lesson stay one sided though, as if he was trying to portray the priests as only in the wrong, instead Benét writes John’s father to give insight as to why the priests may have lied about what they really knew and didn’t know, and why their ancestors didn’t want the truth to be revealed. John’s father says “Truth is a hard deer to hunt….you may die of the truth” and “He was right-it is better that the truth should come little by little” because John’s father is trying to say that the truth is a dangerous thing (Benét 321). While the truth is important, it can also be damaging if it shouldn’t be taught at the right

The chapter continued to discuss how people experience other cultures when they are removed from their area to a different place. This occurs in the form of culture shock people experience new traditions that are unfamiliar to them when the come to a place that is home to another culture. Human development may also include joining the ideas of various cultures and forming it into a new concept. It puts heavy emphasis on learning other cultures in an unbiased form in order to compare and make observations. This chapter also studies of culture have been able to advance over time and how change is an essential aspect of

Two very good stories are The Chrysalids by John Wyndham and “By The Waters Of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benet. Both these stories are sci-fi and depict what human civilizations will be like after a nuclear holocaust. The result of the holocaust has altered the Hill People and Waknuk people’s morals and religious beliefs. The main difference between the stories is one is viewing the future as positive the other is portraying the future negatively. The Chrysalids was a better story. It portrayed what humans act like. In the following paragraphs many points will be looked upon to prove that The Chrysalids is a better story.

It is evident that every culture is affected by the environment in which said culture evolves. Whether these effects can be observed in the gods differing societies worship, or by the way in which resources are accumulated, the reasons are all the same. How each society and culture interacts with its environment dictates its development and growth. There is no more evident an example of this than the Chesapeake Bay area, pre, mid, and post colonization, using the colony of Jamestown as an model for contact interactions between two distinct cultures, and how these relations can be dictated by the environment.

When drastic times occur and sweep one of everything they own, do they have a plan of action? Will they be prepared for a life without power, resources, and stability? Many times when people are faced with this situation they find themselves unprepared and unable to live in such conditions. They lose the connections with the world, the water they drink is likely to get contaminated, and the scarcity of goods is a threat to themselves and anyone left alive. Everywhere around them there is death and destruction leaving them isolated in their own dystopia. Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon illustrates a nuclear bomb simulation. In such a way, he gives the readers a taste of isolation and survival needs when facing such drastic times.

The story “By The Water Of Babylon”, written by Stephen Vincent Benet, has a plethora of aspects of literary elements that depict the story. The following analyzes the story using the seven elements of fiction.

Culture loss, how many people aren’t as traditional as before. All because they had to change their appearance, weren’t allowed to perform any type of prayers or any traditions they had. The population decreased, traditions weren’t practiced by youngsters, and the adults grew old. It’s not many people that went back to their roots after. For example, there aren’t many Navajos that cure, all because the teachings haven’t

This allowed him to be free from the guilt of going against his faith and succumbing to the temptations of the flesh, or her flesh to be precise. This act of resistance against the norms of society signifies the importance of individual ideas and beliefs to the structuring of society. John forwent the life of luxury in order to live the way he thought was proper and to restore some familiarity in his life. John’s desire to seek out normality in a world that he does not understand reveals a truth that is made evident in Brave New World, i.e. that people will want to seek out “normal” or act in ways that are normal for them. This is significant because it shows that people will act in the ways that they were either raised to act or were taught to act by society. John freed himself from the society he did not understand. His actions show that he was more willing to stick with his religious beliefs rather than participate in actions that he believed to be wrong. The “flawless” culture of Brave New World comes at the cost of a concrete cast system, suppressed freedom and freewill via overreaching government, and the death of deep thought and true

Jal encounters new people, things and places, all of which he has difficulty understanding. In an environment with different mannerisms, mechanisms and rules than that of his own culture, results in Jal having a harder time conforming. For instance, in Jal’s culture people use the bathroom/washroom in the nature where as in more established societies we use a specific room called the ‘bathroom/washroom.’ Since Jal has never experienced a bathroom/washroom before it was hard for him to understand, why it is used, for the purposes it is used for. “How could a room so clean be used for something so dirty that I had always done in the bush? How could anyone use paper to wipe themselves instead of sticks or leaves? But before I could ask, she pushed a metal lever on the side of the white chair and I watched as water roared through it. How did the river reach this room”(Jal, 2009, p.184). Jal’s lack of understanding of the world, and his inability to understand his environment causes him to collect data from what he has learned through his life, he relates what he does not understand to his past and what he has experienced growing up, when Jal suspects the river is in the toilet is is clear he does not know how to interpret his surroundings. He has yet to distinguish between different civilizations and how they live, his lack of knowledge affects his ability to integrate to his new

1-2: Babylon, who had led the world astray is put to trial, stands guilty before God, a testament for those “men apart from God.” The woman’s “alluring and seductive nature” is emphasized as she temps and leads the men of God astray into her evil and idolatrous clutches. The harlots of the ancient world “offered their bodies and sexual services for payment,” enhancing the view that Babylon is a great prostitute who engages with the kings of the earth. Nahum 3:4 and Isaiah 23:17 both allude to a city committing “fornication with [the] nations,.” which then leads to divine judgment, emphasizing that this woman’s great and abhorrent sin in the eyes of the Lord will not go unpunished.

Babylonian civilization is considered as one of the most important civilizations in the ancient world. The Babylonians took and developed everything after the Sumerians civilization especially in the spiritual realm and in the field of building an integrated civilization. The earlier civilizations had big role in the Babylonians civilization period when Babylonians took all the cuneiform writing, mathematical and astronomical knowledge, in addition to that the method of building cities, dams and etc. they improved all of them. The development of knowledge continued by Babylonian where the Sumerians stop, and the Babylonian built an empire for themselves on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the southern part of Sumer (Iraq). "The first Amuriyahian family has ruled over Babylon in the period (1830- 1530 BC), when Babylon was a mini-states at the time." Then the greatest king of Babylonian Hammurabi appeared in the seventeenth century BC. He established a famous group of laws known by (Hammurabi code).Also he was the king who united this petty States and achieved an important architectural movement in the city of Babylon.