Monday, October 5, 2009

The Future Speaks to the Present

“By the Waters of Babylon” is a story set in the future. As with many stories with a similar setting, the author is commenting on or warning the present. Find and explore an example of this.

7 comments:

ctino said...

As shown through "The Waters of Babylon" the future speaks to the present. In this work of writing, the story represents a clear warning of the future. As I stated as my essay thesis, the setting represents how the violent influence on modern technology for war can destroy our society. The story's message is a warning for our strive to improve our war technology in order to kill others. The author displays how hatred can lead to mass destruction.

In this story, the setting displays a post-apocalyptic world where the earth is starting to rebuild itself. The forbidden land of the Gods is really New York City. When the son of a priest sets out on a perilous and forbidden journey, he discovers that the Gods aren't really Gods at all, but men. The Great Destruction of the Gods occurred during a massive war between the men. In the end, all of the technology leads to destruction of the society. The new tribes that inhabit the earth only find remains of this once prosperous world known as Dead Places. The "Gods" are nothing more than legends and myths as a result of hatred and violence. In conclusion, through this fantasy story comes a message or warning to our society of predicted future events

SBedrosian said...

Writing is insight into someone's mind. The author of "The Waters of Babylon" portrayed his thoughts for the human race being wiped out. The few survivors then went back to living like we did at the beginning of time with no knowledge of modern life. The author used his story as a window into his thoughts of our potential future and the fate of our world. His future "insights" are meant to be a warning to the people of the present. The story shows the reader what will happen after the apocalypse if whatever event that puts us in this post-apocalyptic state occurs. THe short story is meant to alert the reader of what is to come so that is can be prevented. A lot of stories are set in the future to be a warning or alert for the present. One of these books is "The Giver" by Lois Lowry. She set the story in the future and showed her audience that if a certain event in the future happens, we may suffer the same penance of the people in her story. They did not have free will. "the Waters of Babylon" shows us that there wont really be any record of us being where we are today. All scientific and mathematical research and everything else out planet has worked for will just been gone without a trace in result of hate taking over our world.

icalo said...

In the story" By the Waters of Babylon" the future speaks to us and warns us about the future. It tells us how hatred and the desire to have power can destroy huge cities and societies. The author is giving the present an idea of what wanting power can do to the world. Countries all over the world will want to have the most power and do anything to have it.

I agree with ctino about her thoughts on how wanting power will lead to getting better technology and weapons of mass destruction. In the story it says that the city was destroyed by a"Great Burning when fire fell out of the sky". This must mean that there were bombs let lose over New York City. This tells us that technology will improve in the future but so will nuclear weapons. The is trying to tell us that we have to make sure our hatred and strive for power doesn't get too out of control otherwise this story will become non-fiction.

mriposta said...

"By the Waters of Babylon" is an example of a story where the future speaks to the present. The author is warning us that wars caused by hatred and advances in technology will lead to the destruction of cities and eventually mankind all together. An example of this is the movie "I Am Legend." In this movie, doctors try to make a vaccine for cancer and instead it mutates into a virus that wipes out all of New York City, except for one person played as Will Smith. The story takes place a few years into the future and is a warning not to get too ahead of ourselves with medical and technological advancements. Maybe cancer wasn't meant to be cured and we should stop trying to fix everything. In the end of the movie Will Smith finds people who have survived the virus living together in a small village. This is like "By the Waters of Babylon" because these people were starting all over.

Celia said...

In the story "By the Waters of Babylon" the author is trying to tell us to not fight. If we keep on getting into wars then we are all going to blow eachother up. The author is trying to give us a warning about what our future will be like if we don't stop fighting. We will basically go back in our knowledge and our technical advances and have to start all over. The characters in the story behaved like old tribes did instead of what most people think of future people. Most people think in the future we will be more advanced in technology, but this story goes against that and says we will be way behind in it if we don't change our ways.

ajustl said...

Stephen Vincent Benet is trying to say that war between man is useless. All you are doing is killing your own kind and eventually, as munitions become increasingly more and more deadly, we will end up killing off almost our entire species. Civilization as we know it will crumble to the point of hunters and gatherers. Survivors of the apocalyptic war will be forced to basically start from scratch. This thought is also displayed by this quote from Albert Einstein, "I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." The thought of man kind eventually becoming selfdestructive has been around for ages and with advances in nuclear technology it is increasingly possible.
The only real solution is peace. Sadly though, war and hate are not something you can just stop, they are in human DNA. If you can find a person that truely loves everything, you have done the impossible. Some people just take their dislikes to the exteme and feel they need to be rid of it. Thus war happens naturally in human society.

Sasha said...

In "By the Waters of Babylon", the protagonist, John, discovers the Land of the Gods, aka present-day New York City, in ruins after a horrible war wiping out all civilization similar to how the dinosaurs were wiped off the face of the earth. Its sad to know that the reason why all the scientific and mathematical knowledge was lost, as SBedrosian said, due to our own hate and carelessness, which is kind of ironic in a way. But unless we find a way to mend our relations with other religions and nations, our children or our children's children might not live to old age, or to see their families grow up. Their lives would be filled with constant war, and eventually that will become too much and the world would have to start over again, relearning things and losing much of the old knowledge.