By the Waters of Babylon - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

"By the Waters of Babylon" is a post-apocalyptic short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

by Stephen Vincent Benét

Stephen Vincent Benét

Stephen Vincent Benét was an American author, poet, short story writer, and novelist. Benét is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body , for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for two short stories, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and "By...

first published July 31, 1937, in The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...

as "The Place of the Gods". It was republished in 1943 in The Pocket Book of Science Fiction, and was adapted in 1971 into a one-act play by Brainerd Duffield.

Plot summary

Set in a future following the destruction of industrial civilization, the story is narrated by a young man who is the son of a priest

Priest

A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...

. The priests of John’s people are inquisitive people associated with the divine. They are the only ones who can handle metal

Metal

A metal , is an element, compound, or alloy that is a good conductor of both electricity and heat. Metals are usually malleable and shiny, that is they reflect most of incident light...

collected from the homes (called the "Dead Places") of long-dead people whom they believe to be gods. The plot follows John’s self-assigned mission to get to the Place of the Gods. His father allows him to go on a spiritual journey, but does not know he is going to this forbidden place.

John journeys through the forest for eight days and crosses the river Ou-dis-sun. Once John gets to the Place of the Gods, he feels the energy and magic there. He sees a statue of a "god" — in point of fact, a human — that says "ASHING" on its base. He also sees a building marked "UBTREAS". After being chased by dogs and sleeping in someone's apartment, John sees a dead god. Upon viewing the visage, he has an epiphany that the gods were humans whose power overwhelmed their good judgment. After John returns to his tribe, he speaks of the place "New York". His father tells him not to, for sometimes too much truth is a bad thing, that it must be told little by little. The story ends with John stating his conviction that, once he becomes the head priest, "We must build again."

Analysis

The opening of the story is ambiguous as to location; it might be in the Middle East or North Africa; others surmise that the story is based somewhere in the Northeastern United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

In the story, John talks about how he must cross mountains, the Appalachian Mountains

Appalachian Mountains

The Appalachian Mountains #Whether the stressed vowel is or ,#Whether the "ch" is pronounced as a fricative or an affricate , and#Whether the final vowel is the monophthong or the diphthong .), often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians...

. John travels East from the mountains to the great river, Ou-dis-sun, the Hudson River

Hudson River

The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...

. John looks down at the river from a series of great cliffs, which may be presumed to be the New Jersey Palisades

New Jersey Palisades

The Palisades, also called the New Jersey Palisades or the Hudson Palisades are a line of steep cliffs along the west side of the lower Hudson River in northeastern New Jersey and southern New York in the United States. The cliffs stretch north from Jersey City approximately 20 mi to near...

. After building a raft and floating down the river, John gets to the Place of the Gods with the great ruins. At the Place of the Gods, John comes across the remains of a statue with the word "ASHING" which could be a statue of George wASHINGton

George Washington

George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...

, and finds a ruined building named "UBTREAS" (the United States Sub-Treasury building on Wall Street

Wall Street

Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...

which is better known as the Federal Hall National Memorial

Federal Hall

Federal Hall, built in 1700 as New York's City Hall, later served as the first capitol building of the United States of America under the Constitution, and was the site of George Washington's inauguration as the first President of the United States. It was also where the United States Bill of...

). John walks through a building with stars on the ceiling and tunnels. This could be Grand Central Terminal

Grand Central Terminal

Grand Central Terminal —often incorrectly called Grand Central Station, or shortened to simply Grand Central—is a terminal station at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States...

. After running from dogs, John stays in a place called the Biltmore, which would be the New York Biltmore Hotel

New York Biltmore Hotel

The New York Biltmore Hotel was a luxury hotel in New York City. It was one of three palatial hotels built as part of the Terminal City development...

.

John also has visions.

Benét wrote the story in response to the April 25, 1937 bombing of Guernica

Bombing of Guernica

The bombing of Guernica was an aerial attack on the Basque town of Guernica, Spain, causing widespread destruction and civilian deaths, during the Spanish Civil War...

, in which Fascist military forces destroyed the majority of the Basque

Basque Country (autonomous community)

The Basque Country is an autonomous community of northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa, also called Historical Territories....

town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

.
This story took place before the public knowledge of nuclear weapons, but Benét's description of "The Great Burning" is similar to later descriptions of the effects of the atomic bombings at Nagasaki

Nagasaki

is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. Nagasaki was founded by the Portuguese in the second half of the 16th century on the site of a small fishing village, formerly part of Nishisonogi District...

and Hiroshima

Hiroshima

is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...

. His "deadly mist", and "fire falling from the mist" seem eerily prescient of the descriptions of the aftermath of nuclear blasts. The story was written in 1937, two years before the Manhattan Project

Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...

started, and six years before there was widespread public knowledge of the project.

Influence on later writing

In 1954 Edgar Pangborn

Edgar Pangborn

Edgar Pangborn was an American mystery, historical, and science fiction author.-Life:Edgar Pangborn was born in New York City on February 25, 1909, to Harry Levi Pangborn, an attorney and dictionary editor, and Georgia Wood Pangborn, a noted writer of supernatural fiction...

wrote "The Music Master of Babylon", a post-apocalyptic story told from the point of view of a pianist living alone in a ruined New York City, and after decades of total isolation encountering two youths from a new culture which had arisen in the world, who come exploring the ruined city.

Pangborn depicted a different world than that of Benét. But, he referred to Benét's story in his title and many details. Pangborn returned to that devastated world in many of his later writings, such as the novel Davy

Davy (novel)

Davy is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Edgar Pangborn, nominated for the 1965 Hugo Award. It is set in the Northeastern United States some centuries after an atomic war ended high-technology civilization, with some scenes on an unnamed Atlantic island.The novel is a...

Plot summary

Analysis

Influence on later writing

See also