By the Waters of Babylon

The phrase "by the waters of Babylon" is an allusion to Psalm 137, in which the Israelites mourn their exile from Jerusalem and weep over their memory of their lost homeland. The waters of Babylon...

John's view of the world changes as he progresses through his journey. When the story first begins, John accepts the world as it has been taught to him. He accepts the rules of his society, and...

"By the Waters of Babylon" has two settings. The entire story takes place in the future, after a nuclear holocaust has destroyed the advanced technological civilization of people like us. The...

This story is recounted in the first person by a young man living in a simple, post-apocalyptic society. His people, the Hill People, appear to make a living by hunting, gathering, and animal...

In this story, the "Place of the Gods" refers to the ruins of New York City. John sees many things that had been produced by the ancients, including both large, structural features, and small,...

The things that John is really seeing are remnants of the once-bustling city of New York. We know that John crosses the Hudson to get to a city with tall buildings, and before even seeing the city...

I would argue that the main theme in "By the Waters of Babylon" is the thirst for knowledge. Unlike other members of the Hill People community, our protagonist, John, is dissatisfied with the rule...

"Ashing" is the name on the base of the statue of one of the "gods" in the Place of the Gods, the forbidden and mysterious goal of the main character in the post-apocalyptic short story written by...

UBTREAS is part of a broken sign that once said SUBTREASURY. John encounters it when he's exploring New York City in Stephen Vincent Benét's "By the Waters of Babylon." When John ventures into New...

The title of the story is an allusion to Psalm 137 from the Bible. By the waters, the waters of BabylonWe sat down and wept,and wept, for thee, Zion. The passage is a lament by the Israelite...

The story's being narrated in the first person means that readers only know what John chooses to tell us or show us. As readers, we are limited to John. We know his thoughts and emotions, but we...

First of all, we have situational irony in the story. This is where there's a gap between what we expect to happen and what actually does happen. In By the Waters of Babylon we are surprised to...

The Place of the Gods was a great city of great "magic" that existed generations ago and that John's people, the "People of the Hills," now revere as sacred. The name of this place, which John's...

The Great Burning was a nuclear war that destroyed the huge city known by John as the Place of the Gods. There are several clues we can use to infer this from the story. First of all, the metal...

The Dead Places and Places of the Gods are cities where humans lived before the apocalypse. There was some kind of apocalyptic event, which is known as the Great Burning. It was probably some kind...

As John crosses the forbidden river of to "the Place of the Gods, with its “bitter waters,” he is actually crossing the Hudson River (“Oudis-sun”); the “god-roads ”he has followed were originally...

There are many conflicts throughout this short story. One of the first conflicts that readers encounter is the conflict that John has within himself. He feels a deep desire and pull to go east,...

It has almost a fable-like mood to it, like someone is telling a tale or a story to small children around the kindergarten rug. Simple language is used, which is consistent with the tribe-like...

The quote from John's father is basically telling John to be careful with the truth. John has learned that the great city that he explored wasn't inhabited by gods. It was inhabited by normal men...

"Eating knowledge too fast" is an excellent metaphorical description of the failings of mankind in the dystopian world of this short story. It brings to mind a picture of someone absolutely...

John uses the Forest People as a standard by which to judge his own group, the Hill People. While humanity seems to have become more primal since the nuclear holocaust that wiped out civilization,...

I've seen support for two possible climax locations in "By the Waters of Babylon." They happen just about at the same time chronologically, so I don't feel that there is much difference between the...

At the beginning of “By the Waters of Babylon,” we do not really know what the Great Burning was in any precise way. However, near the end of the story, we find out that the Great Burning was some...

An allusion is a reference to something famous. It can be a poem, a piece of art, an event or in this case a location. The allusion in this title is the name of an ancient city, Babylon. This city...

John saw a vision of the Dead Place where the gods walked that used to be New York. John’s world is one that exists in a post-apocalyptic version of Earth, after the Great Burning. It is never...

John and his father go to the Dead Places. John's father comes out with a piece of metal and hands it to John. John doesn't die, so he get to become a priest. John learns a lot of stuff. How to...

The great river in the story "By the Waters of Babylon" is the Hudson River. The Hudson River is the river separating parts of New York from New Jersey. Most notably, the river separates...

John is the son of a priest; therefore, John is chosen to receive special treatment and training. As part of his education, John must go on a journey by himself. When I was a man at last, I came...

Very interesting question. One of the things you will definitely want to focus on is how the figurative language used in "By the Waters of Babylon" reflects the speaker and his understanding of the...

I would describe John as young. He refers to himself early in the story as the son of a priest. He thinks of himself, first, as somebody's son. I believe that makes John fairly young. I would...

John learns that the gods "were men -- they went a dark road, but they were men". He realizes how advanced they were, but also how they destroyed each other. This is significant...

Stephen Vincent Benét's short story "By the Waters of Babylon" examines a post-apocalyptic world in which "the hill people," the presumed survivors of some sort of devastating disaster, lead their...

The river that John needs to cross to complete his quest is clearly a source of fear and trepidation for him. When he first comes across the river, his description of it makes clear his awe and...

The three things that John and members of his society have forbidden are named in the very first paragraph of the story. It is forbidden to go east. It is forbidden to go to the Dead Places...

When John returns from the Place of the Gods, he tells his father all about his journey and is anxious to tell the other Hill people. His father, however, convinces him that there is a reason why...

When you first start reading this story, you have no idea what the setting is. All you can really tell (you think) is that it is set in the past -- in a time when people were fairly primitive....

In "By the Waters of Babylon", the Place of the Gods is really what is left of New York City after it was bombed. Man's technology eventually led to the destruction of the modern world,...

John has returned from the Place of the Gods—what we would understand as New York City—having realized that it was built by men, not gods. This revelation excites him as it means his people, too,...

Almost immediately, Benet gives his readers hints as to what is going on in the Dead Place or the Place of the Gods. When he mentions the metal that only a priest can touch because it kills, the...

This is a tough question. The narrator, John, does not give specific names to the locations that he is travelling through. The story takes place in the future, likely after some kind of nuclear...

Rising action is slightly misleading because it is singular. A story's rising action usually refers to a series of events; therefore, rising action is usually comprised of many events that lead up...

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...

The narrative point of view of "By the Waters of Babylon" is first person. Readers get their first bit of evidence of the story's point of view in the first paragraph. The narrator, who we...

To me, this story is about the conflict between truth, as it is found in the stories and legends that shape a culture, and the desire to learn new things, even at the risk of undermining "truth" as...

John's innoeent and somewhat naive perspective in "By the Waters of Babylon" forces reader to eye his journey through the fallen remains of our own modern society through a fresh pair of eyes. John...

On the surface, John's father says very little about the dream, and his words seem to send a mixed message: John should follow his intuition about the dream, yet remember that travelling east is...

Probably my favorite symbolic image from this story is the Place of the Gods. I like this symbolic image because it changes its symbolism at the end of the story. For most of the story, the Place...

In "By the Waters of Babylon", when John enters the Place of the Gods, he notices that "everywhere in it there are god-roads, though most are cracked and broken." This shows...

First, there are clues that John's father is interested in secular learning, and that his private positions on religious matters are not the same as his public positions. This suggests that he may...

John escapes from the wild dogs by running into a tower and slamming the door shut. He tells us that the wild dogs are extremely dangerous, for they hunt in a pack. Without a weapon, one is...