By The Waters Of Babylon Summary

By The Waters of Babylon: is Knowledge really that important? In the short story “By the Water of Babylon” a young man is a son of a priest who yearns for knowledge and wants to learn more and more. He is then sent out on a quest through a vision and finds something he was definitely not expecting. In the society he lives in idolizes priests, allowing them to omit knowledge, as they have all the knowledge and they are the only ones allowed to go to the “Dead Places”. What he finds out is an incredible discovery and one that he cannot take lightly. The character of the story is only a son of a priest, but he has the freedoms of roaming the dead places. However, he is now at the point where he is now going to be a priest or not, so he has to go to on a quest to find out who he really is. Through visions he finds out where food, water, and where to go. He talked about his hunger and wanting for knowledge like a blazing fire that he needed to full fill, almost like an addiction or necessity like food and water (p 312, lines 43-44). He eventually finds the “places of the Gods” and is scared. He is cared, because it is forbidden to go to the place of Gods, even a priest or normal civilian is not allowed to go in.

What he found was unlike anything the priests in his village had described it, such as an always blazing city, a misty and enchanted fog all around it, and its incredible towers all crumbled. He then finally started to question everything he knew, even what his family and other priests had said about this place. He noticed the towers were still there, no flames were burning, and no fog was on this island New York City, because it is on the island of Manhattan, with many tall skyscrapers. (p 316, line