By the Waters of Babylon

“After that, they gave me the good piece of meat and the warm corner of the fire. My father watched over me—he was glad that I should be a priest. But when I boasted or wept without a reason, he punished me more strictly than my brothers. That was right.”

John holds a position of great importance in his society due to his ability to gather metal. His rank as a priest’s son earns him both material privileges and higher standards for self-discipline. John’s father trains him to control his emotions, which helps the protagonist face his fears during his forbidden journey.

“‘My son,’ he said. ‘Once I had young dreams. If your dreams do not eat you up, you may be a great priest. If they eat you, you are still my son. Now go on your journey.’”

John’s dream of seeing the gods walking about foreshadows his journey to the Place of the Gods. In addition, his father reminds him that it is forbidden to go to the Place of the Gods right before sending him on his journey, suggesting that he suspects his son’s intentions.

“My body hurt but not my heart.” 

Though John experiences the physical stressors of fasting on his body, his spiritual being—represented by his heart—is made stronger by the ritual. John has a complex understanding of himself as more than just a body but someone with both a physical and spiritual existence.

“I shouted and the panther lifted his head from the fawn. It is not easy to kill a panther with one arrow but the arrow went through his eye and into his brain. He died as he tried to spring—he rolled over, tearing at the ground. Then I knew I was meant to go east—I knew that was my journey.”

John's culture places great significance on signs and symbols, and the Hill People consider the white fawn a particularly powerful omen. Seeing the fawn travel east and killing the panther that attacks the young animal convinces him that he must travel east to the Place of the Gods even though this breaks his people’s laws.

“It is better to lose one’s life than one’s spirit, if one is a priest and the son of a priest.”

John says this as he decides to break the law by traveling to the Place of the Gods, which he expects will result in his own death. However, John believes that it is more important to be true to one’s spiritual convictions and beliefs about what is right than it is to do what is safe or convenient. Throughout the story, the writer employs biblical allusions. This excerpt calls to mind Matthew 16:26: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”

“There was no strength in my knowledge any more and I felt small and naked as a new-hatched bird.”

Part of John’s coming of age requires him to shed his old beliefs to accept the truth about his world. To gain true wisdom, John must first admit his own weakness and vulnerability, two traits that are emphasized by the simile comparing him to “a new-hatched bird.”

“It is not true what some of the tales say, that the ground burns forever, for I have been there.”

This short story reckons with the power myths and legends have to inspire unnecessary fear. John’s exploration of the Place of the Gods reveals that reality is far from what his community’s myths led him to believe.

“My hunger for knowledge burned in me—there was so much that I could not understand.”

John is deeply motivated by a thirst for knowledge and truth. Even though he is scared of breaking the law and the potential consequences, his desire to learn continually overpowers his fear.

“When I woke, the sun was low. Looking down from where I lay, I saw a dog sitting on his haunches. […] He was not afraid of me; he looked at me as if I were meat.”

John believes that his journey risks the gods’ wrath, but he faces more tangible dangers as well. The wild dogs that chase him add to the story’s suspense and cause the protagonist to take shelter in the house where he makes his pivotal revelation.

“That was a sight indeed—yes, that was a sight: I could not have seen it in the body— my body would have died. Everywhere went the gods, on foot and in chariots—there were gods beyond number and counting and their chariots blocked the streets. They had turned night to day for their pleasure-they did not sleep with the sun. The noise of their coming and going was the noise of the many waters. It was magic what they could do—it was magic what they did.”

This passage uses the literary technique of defamiliarization. John’s vision brings a fresh perspective to the things he witnesses in New York that may have been mundane to the story’s readers. Even though things like skyscrapers, trains, cars, and streetlights may have been old news to readers in the 1930s, John sees these technological advances as deeply powerful and even magical.

“When gods war with gods, they use weapons we do not know. It was fire falling out of the sky and a mist that poisoned. It was the time of the Great Burning and the Destruction.”

John’s vision concludes with New York’s destruction. The fictional apocalypse that the writer describes draws upon real-world travesties. For example, the “fire falling out of the sky” connects to the bombing of Guernica, and the “mist that poisoned” recalls the mustard gas used in World War I.

“Then I saw the dead god. He was sitting in his chair, by the window, in a room I had not entered before and, for the first moment, I thought that he was alive.”

The discovery of the dead body prompts John’s realization that the gods were only the humans of a bygone age. This knowledge fulfills the protagonist’s quest for enlightenment and vanquishes his fear. He completes his heroic journey by returning home and sharing what he has learned.

“Perhaps, in the old days, they ate knowledge too fast.” 

John says this after his father advises him to reveal his story to the other Hill People slowly rather than all at once. He acknowledges that knowledge is powerful but also understands that it is better to learn slowly with true understanding rather than quickly. His vision of the city’s destruction taught him that knowledge can be used for evil as much as it can be used for good.