By The Waters Of Babylon Analysis

In the story “By the Waters of Babylon” written by Stephen Vincent Benét, the culture of the world they live in has changed due to a huge disaster. This catastrophic event can be closely related to things that have happened in real life, such as the United States dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. Two other things it can relate to is the radiation leak in Chernobyl, Ukraine and the Fukushima accident involving a radiation leak as well. When these historic disasters happened, much of the culture in those places was changed or left behind, leaving room for new culture to take its place. This is much like how the culture changed in the story, it changed because of one terrifying event. This event was the “Great Burning”, during this story the Great Burning was described as a war among the Gods. After all of these events the culture of the remaining area was changed, however even with cultural changes, the original culture will return and stay true to its roots. One main event that shocked the world during WWII was the first use of the atomic bomb, this atomic bomb was made by the U.S. and was dropped on Japan to end the second world war. This bomb changed the way the Japanese lived, their original culture was buried beneath the U.S. culture that Japan was adopting. This quote shows

The accident at Fukushima was really similar to Chernobyl and changed the world’s culture as well. The safety of nuclear plants culture also changed as it did in Chernobyl, the people were not able to go back into the area because of radiation which means they lost some culture there. This quote “The last three years have brought some important changes to that culture, he says, most significantly the creation of a new, much more independent Nuclear Regulation Authority.” shows this. This relates to the story by the priest keeping the knowledge of things like this to themselves so that everyone can stay