Preview

Summary Of By The Waters Of Babylon By Stephen Vincent Benet

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
579 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Summary Of By The Waters Of Babylon By Stephen Vincent Benet
By the Waters of Babylon” was written by Stephen Vincent Benet in July of 1937. That same year, just months before, a bombing happened on April 28, 1937. Both of these works of writing dealing with great destruction, destruction of whole cities. One is a true story and one is a fictional story but, they both have some similarities between them.
“By the Waters of Babylon” deal with a Priest son who is making his journey to become a priest himself. The dead lands are places no one goes except for the priest and his son to collect metals. John went in to find metals, but what he found was so much more than that. He had found a city covered in ash and completely destroyed. It was the city of New York after a bombing. It is a post-apocalyptic short story that is not true, but it does share events and details with an event that had happened a few months earlier. April 28, 1937
…show more content…
Even though one is fact and one is fiction they both deal with the same events. Bombing and destruction. In “By the Waters of Babylon”, the city of New York is in absolute ruins. You cannot tell much by looking at it. The death count was many, as the character John could see bodies on the pavement walking through the streets. The bombing of Guernica however, was a true story about a town that was bombed, machine-gunned, and set on fire because they wouldn’t surrender. The death count was never added up, but there were burned, shot, and dismantled bodies as far as the eye can see. You would have been able to tell that there was once a Basque capital once standing where it once was. The bombing was on April 28, 1937 and “By the Waters of Babylon” was written in July of 1937. Just months after the bombing occurred. Many believe that it is not coincidence that these two works of writing came out months apart. Many believe that “By the Waters of Babylon was written to showcase the bombing that happened just a few months

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Angel Gabriel in about 538 BC gives the Prophecy of seventy weeks in this text. The establishment of the kingdom of the Messiah would be in 69 weeks after the commanding of the restoration and building of Jerusalem. The word Shebua or week in the Hebrew language meant weeks, but all scholars come to an agreement that it meant four hundred and eighty three years, which is sixty-nine multiplied by seven. The Commencing of counting according to the text is in the year 458 BC, which is the seventh year of the King Artaxerxes of Persia. The king, during this year, issued an order that Ezra begin his journey to Jerusalem on the first day of the first month. According to current calendars, it would be 8th of April[1].…

    • 2440 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Summary Of Eden Rise

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Reading this book was really interesting and very intriguing with the civil right movement. Eden Rise is a book that shook Tom Mckee family, town, to the core of the racial issue that was going on in there city. Granite this book is a fiction novel but, In 1965 Alabama was at really fighting with a lot of racial issue in Selma, Montgomery,and Birmingham. But in the summer of 1965 Tom Mckee a son of prominent white family from the small black belt town of the Eden Rise in west-central Alabama, who in May of 1965 returned home from his freshmen year at Duke University. Tom Mckee gave a ride to two black Duke students going to Alabama to work at a summer Freedom School, they stop at a gas station to fill the car up and use the bathroom. Tom went inside to get a snack and seen this heavyset old white guy say “what y’all doing here? Are y’all freedom writers?” Tom reply back no sir we just passing through. Tom looked over his shoulder and seen a double-barrel shotgun leading against the wall. Tom walked back to the car and told them we need to leave this is not a good place to stop. Jackie tried to tell Alma what Tom told her in a low voice but Alma push Jackie out the way and said the “The Hell With that,” out loud. Alma went inside of the store and, Tom was trying to pump the gas fast as he can. While he was pumping the gas he heard Alma shouting inside the store. Alma was yelling “You can’t run a damn Jim Crow store no longer!” Jackie looked at Tom and said I better go get her, well…

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Watch out for that shark! This is one of many thoughts you might have while reading Michael P. Spradlin’s book, Into The Killing Seas. In this book you will get a glimpse of what is was like for the 1196 men that were aboard the USS Indianapolis. The author describes these tragic events in history very well through the eyes of a fictional young boy. The accurate portrayal of these real life events will help you get a good look at one of the worst disasters in U.S naval…

    • 90 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    John H. Walton’s Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible is broken up into fourteen chapters. Those fourteen chapters are each part of one of five sections. This book also contains over twenty historical images. Before the introduction, the author gives readers a full appendix of all images used in this published work. The author then gives his acknowledgements followed by a list of abbreviations.…

    • 4630 Words
    • 19 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In Rebecca Kanner’s Sinners and the Sea and Yasmina Reza’s The God of Carnage the human capacity to commit violence is emphasized. Kanner portrays violence during the time of Noah time before and during the flood. The sinners of the town of Sorum, as well as some members of Noah’s family, commit acts of violence toward one another. Reza portrays violence with the same intensity as Kanner, but with a limited cast of characters. The difference between the two portrayals of violence is that Kanner uses evil as a transformative force, while Reza depicts evil as an end. Kanner is hopeful that evil restores the good, while Reza believes that evil does not bring positive outcomes.…

    • 1601 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    One often wonders if they would be able to survive in a time of crisis, some spend a bunch of time and money preparing for a crisis. Survival of the fittest refers to natural selection which is “the idea that species that acquire adaptations that are favorable for their environment will pass down those adaptations to their offspring” (Scoville 1). Survival of the fittest means “the best physical specimen of the species and only those in the best shape and best health will survive in nature” (Scoville 1). In Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon survival of the fittest comes into play in time of crisis; Randy Bragg, Edgar Quisenberry and Preacher Henry find this out the hard way after The Day. The Day is a day on which a nuclear war was started between the Soviet Union and the United States. The Soviet Union dropped a huge amount of bombs all over the United States laying waste to many towns .…

    • 1789 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Through his narrator in East of Eden, John Steinbeck says that there is only "one story in the world", that of good and evil (Steinbeck 412). The original story of good and evil can be traced back to the biblical tale of Cain and Abel, from which Steinbeck picked his title and formed many central characters around. In his novel East of Eden, John Steinbeck explores the constant collision between good and evil and forms a parallel between his story and that of Cain and Abel.…

    • 1528 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    McCullough, David. The Johnstown Flood: The Incredible story behind one of the Most Devastating Disasters America has ever known. New York: Simon & Schuster Inc, 1968. Paperback.…

    • 454 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    People who report on events use many different ways to report on that event. Authors who cover events use either an objective or subjective point of view to describe an event such as a natural disaster. Both “The Story of an Eyewitness,” by Jack London, and “Letter From New Orleans: Leaving Desire,” by Jon Lee Anderson, both describe the effects of a natural disaster from an objective or subjective point of view. “Story of an Eyewitness” focuses on the initial earthquake and fires following it, while “Letter From New Orleans: Leaving Desire” focuses on the floods following the hurricane. Jack London wrote about the 1906 earthquake that took place in San Francisco, Jon Lee Anderson told about the flooding in New Orleans following Hurricane…

    • 261 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alas, Babylon

    • 551 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The novel Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank is a satirical piece about the eminence of war and the resilience of humanity. The story told in this novel, in the words of Thomas Payne, “produces panics [that], in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before.” This concept is demonstrated time and time again throughout the entirety of the book. The first example of this is when the brothers meet to discuss the possibility of war. Due to Mark Bragg’s , brother to the main character Randy Bragg, panic he is able to allow the family time to prepare for what is about to come. It causes Randy to worry a great deal as well, but that is insignificant when compared to the several lives that were saved because of it. Another panic that proves to be of more use, than harm is when Randy panics over how to try and save his family, he goes above the call of duty and saves his community by having them all pool their resources and efforts to make the best of their situation. As such the community at River Road becomes the best suited to survive in perhaps the whole surrounding area. If it were not for Randy panicking and enlisting the help of others as well as warning them, none of them would have survived half as well, or perhaps even survived.…

    • 551 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    "The 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing." Ballad of Birmingham. www.balladofbirmingham.com. Web. 14 Nov 2012. <http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/randall/birmingham.htm>.…

    • 1333 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Babylonia and the Hittites

    • 4232 Words
    • 17 Pages

    Babylonia (pronounced babilahnia) was an ancient empire that existed in the Near East in southern Mesopotamia between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. Throughout much of their history their main rival for supremacy were their neighbors, the Assyrians. It was the Babylonians, under King Nebuchadnezzar II, who destroyed Jerusalem, the capital of the Kingdom of Judah, and carried God’s covenant people into captivity in 587 BC.…

    • 4232 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Kitto, H. D. F., and Edith Hall. Antigone ; Oedipus the King ; Electra. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.…

    • 1283 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The two stories show the weaknesses in mans’ technology. In both instances man was drastically hurt by a technological war. In “There Will Come Soft Rains” man is eliminated altogether. Both stories take place in a futuristic United States. “By the Water of Babylon” in New York and “There Will Come Soft Rains” in California. The significance of this is the technological superiority of the United States to the rest of the world and in the future technology destroys people.…

    • 305 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays