By the Waters of Babylon
The waters of Babylon were the Tigris and the Euphrates, site of some of humankind's earliest civilizations. Here, in this quotation, they represent exile from the homeland of Israel. The river in our story is the Hudson, running past the ruined city of New York. The hero of the story, John, is the descendant of a tribe of people who, long before, had survived a nuclear holocaust. How long ago that happened is left unspecified, but it was long enough that radiation poisoning has left the ground, long enough that the Hudson River's name has become corrupted into the Ou-dis-sun by people who know only a little of reading and writing. Long enough that all they cannot understand is labeled "magic."
In him, as in the ancient Jewish exiles, is an unquenchable desire to once again go home to the Place of the Gods. This is the story of John, the son of a priest, who is facing the prospect of undergoing his rite of passage into tribal manhood. Their laws, like the prohibition against traveling East, have taken on a religious significance with the original basis for them forgotten. Only a few of their number, those appointed priests, can still read and write. By adhering to the limitations of the first-person view point, he enables us to walk beside the young man. This is a piece of writing which can be seen as many things: early speculative or science fiction, a story of adventure, a rite of passage, a mystery tale, or a powerful warning against war in this world of ours so crammed with weapons of mass destruction. He is not a physical captive, but his laws forbid such a journey. John should be easily understood by any teenager who dreams big dreams, who aches to do something different and impressive, aches for his or her life to somehow have special meaning. The author, Stephen Vincent Benet, has done a remarkable job of making a future society come alive in the teenager John. He believes with all his heart that breaking those prohibitions would be punished by death. Some of the old books have survived, but they are badly understood. And yet This is a true hero story in the classic sense. ar that no one now alive in the story has had contact with those who lived at the time of the Great Burning. His courage on his journey opens the way once more to another kind of life for all his people. He has something of the poet in him, but all his comparisons are in keeping with the kind of life he has led.
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,
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Acceptance Essays
