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By the Waters of Babylon
Dramatic irony occurs when readers of a story know something that the characters do not. In "By the Waters of Babylon," we realize when John takes his journey to the Place of the Gods that he has...
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By the Waters of Babylon
There is definitely dramatic irony in "By the Waters of Babylon." Dramatic irony is a device that authors use to create situations where audiences know more about a situation than the characters...
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By the Waters of Babylon
"By the Waters of Babylon" is a wonderful story. It often shocks readers to find out that the story is taking place far into a hypothetical future. What is fun to examine is that the shock at the...
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By the Waters of Babylon
External conflict: John's external conflict is getting to the Place of the Gods. He has a dream that tells he must go there, but obstacles stand in his way. First, as his father reminds him,...
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By the Waters of Babylon
When John, the story's narrator, speaks of the high towers of the gods, he is referring to New York City's skyscrapers. He states: Everywhere there are the ruins of the high towers of the gods....
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By the Waters of Babylon
To me, when John's father says this, he is referring to the idea that truth can be harmful to people whose faith contradicts those truths. In other words, if you have a faith that says one thing,...
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By the Waters of Babylon
John faced several challenges in his journey to find the truth. The first was the superstitions of his own people. They had made the "Place of the Gods" a forbidden land and John must face down...
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By the Waters of Babylon
Central to the understanding of the theme of this short story is the point of view selected by the author. This masterful dystopian short story is used a lot in English teaching to give an...
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By the Waters of Babylon
I don't think that a reader can definitively prove that John is a Native American in the "Indian" sense of the definition—by that I mean according to the stereotypical, reductive representations of...
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By the Waters of Babylon
Stephen Vincent Benet's first-person narrator has lived his whole life in a tightly constrained environment. His knowledge of the world outside its boundaries is very limited. He has no memory of...
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By the Waters of Babylon
In “By the Waters of Babylon,” the poet creates a mysterious aura by using a first-person narrator who offers his individual vision of the ruined city. The suspense builds as they speak first about...
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By the Waters of Babylon
Dashes and hyphens break up a text. They cause us to stop or pause as we are reading—and at the same time, they connect thoughts. In this story, Benet uses hyphens and dashes to add emphasis and...
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By the Waters of Babylon
The narrator uses fire as a metaphor for knowledge; he explains how his thirst for knowledge is something that makes him happy and sets his heart and soul on "fire." He is passionate about learning...
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By the Waters of Babylon
Signs and dreams are very important in the ritual-oriented society depicted in "By the Waters of Babylon" by Stephen Vincent Benét. The priests make many of their actions seem more magical than...
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By the Waters of Babylon
As we find, the being John's people think of as "gods" are, in fact, human beings from our society. However, we learn that they long ago wiped themselves out. When John gets permission to travel to...
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By the Waters of Babylon
Ideally, this question needs to be more specific because John states that he is not afraid a number of different times in the story. In general, John says that he is no longer afraid of something...
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By the Waters of Babylon
I believe that this question is asking about what causes irony within the story "By the Waters of Babylon." This short story makes solid usage of dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is a literary device...
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By the Waters of Babylon
Suspense is created for readers throughout the story. A large piece of that is the narrative point of view. John is our story's narrator, and he narrates from the first person perspective. He is...
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By the Waters of Babylon
"By the Waters of Babylon" is a short story written by Stephen Vincent Benét, published in 1937. The story, reminiscent of the post-apocalyptic and speculative fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin, tells...
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By the Waters of Babylon
John returns to his people from the Place of the Gods profoundly changed by the experience. He now knows that the beings he thought were gods are—or were—actually simply humans just like him. As...
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By the Waters of Babylon
I would start your narration with why John was allowed to go east in the first place. In fact, John had a dream about going east, but he was still forbidden to go east. What convinced him to go...
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By the Waters of Babylon
Early in the story, readers are told that it is forbidden to go east. We are not exactly sure why traveling east is forbidden, but the rule is stressed to the point that John's desire to go east is...
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By the Waters of Babylon
At the end of the short story “By the Waters of Babylon,” John, the protagonist, decides that the gods were not actually gods. Instead, he decides that they were men. For most of the story, John...
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By the Waters of Babylon
To understand this quotation, we must look at what is going on in the story up to this point. John, the main character, essentially goes on a quest. Because he is a member of a primitive...
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By the Waters of Babylon
The short answer to your question is this: John is planning to become a priest. In this story, John is the main character. He is the one who, as an adult, violates the law and goes across the...
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By the Waters of Babylon
I think that you are probably asking about the sorts of things that John sees when he is in the Place of the Gods. Specifically, these are the things that he sees when he spends the night in what...
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By the Waters of Babylon
This citation is an allusion to a Biblical passage in the Old Testament, Psalm 137, in which the Israelites lament their being estranged from their homeland and taken into captivity in a hostile...
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By the Waters of Babylon
Once John has crossed the river and reached the City of the Gods, he is free to have a look at this place which none of his people have ever visited because of the strong taboos surrounding it. The...
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By the Waters of Babylon
The opening paragraph to the story tells readers what is forbidden to John and to other members of his society. The reader is told that it is forbidden for anybody to go east. It is also...
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By the Waters of Babylon
John longed for knowledge beyond his community. John’s community is aware that there was once another, more civilized society before the apocalyptic event. Those people have become gods, and...
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By the Waters of Babylon
Warning number one could be a warning against losing knowledge. The story takes place in the future, but all of society's current learning and technology has been lost; therefore, John and his...
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By the Waters of Babylon
In John's society, so reminiscent of ancient and tribal societies that were precursors to our modern era, as a priest, he wants to go on a "spirit walk" to find knowledge, and as an initiation into...
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By the Waters of Babylon
In John, Benet creates a character who is both brave and cautious. He is full of curiosity for the "Place of the Gods," but also heeds the traditions of his elders and the wisdom of his...
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By the Waters of Babylon
The Dead Place is New York after some type of cataclysmic event. Maybe a bombing, since this was written close to WWII.The young would-be priest gazes over the ruins—with their broken bridges and...
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By the Waters of Babylon
Along his journey, he gathers strength and courage as he fights off wild animals, hides from the Forest tribes, and makes decisions on his own. Before, he was beholden to the rules and rites of...
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By the Waters of Babylon
Part of the secret of this story's greatness is the fact that it is told to us using the first person point of view, which means we are not given the setting of the story straight away, but rather...
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By the Waters of Babylon
John realizes that the “gods” are just humans who were killed by the Great Burning. There was some kind of catastrophic apocalyptic event in John’s world that turned New York City into a wasteland....
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By the Waters of Babylon
In "By the Waters of Babylon," Stephen Vincent Benet counts on the audience being intelligent enough to figure out what has happened to the city of the gods, and to recognize the fragments of...
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By the Waters of Babylon
Dynamic characters are typically characters that change throughout the story, are full of depth and are well-rounded and full in their characterization and role in the story itself. They tend to...
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By the Waters of Babylon
I like the second sentence of the story for a good quote. It is forbidden to go to any of the Dead Places except to search for metal and then he who touches the metal must be a priest or the son...
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By the Waters of Babylon
The answer to this question can be found in the final paragraphs of the story. The first thing that happens is he rejoins his father, and then John prays and is purified. John's father is quite...
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By the Waters of Babylon
In this story, the exact details of "the great burning" aren't given, but there are quite a few details and clues that, if you fill in the gaps, you can piece things together. You have to use...
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By the Waters of Babylon
John believes that it is his destiny to go to the Place of the Gods to gain knowledge. The preparation rituals he goes through with his father and the other priests prepare John for his Rite of...
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By the Waters of Babylon
At the end of this story, John brings back all of the things that he learned on his journey. The ending is all-important, because it reveals what happened to the people who died generations ago,...
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By the Waters of Babylon
In "By the Waters of Babylon", John seeks knowledge in the Place of the Gods. While on his way, he first tries to determine whether or not his is a "good" journey. When he...
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By the Waters of Babylon
"They got their food from enchanted boxes and jars.' These enchanted boxes were refrigerators, and cabinets, the drink was in bottles and made his head swim. This was probably a liquor of...
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By the Waters of Babylon
The metal collected by the priests symbolizes the fears and superstitions of John's people. It was believed by the members of his village that if one touched metal, he/she would die unless that...
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By the Waters of Babylon
The classic hero would have had a goal or quest to perform in order to earn the honor from the people in his or her village. There would be preparation, fasting and praying and then the send-off...
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By the Waters of Babylon
The author never fully answers this questions but by implication, the priests must have learned some way to make the metal less dangerous. It is obvious how the metal became dangerous during...
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By the Waters of Babylon
The story opens in the forests of New York. The narrator then travels through the forest, following the old highways originally created for the residents of New York. When he gets to New York City,...
