By The Waters Of Babylon Theme Essay
The interpretation of the theme – truth in “By the Waters of Babylon”
In the short story “By the Waters of Babylon” the author Stephen Vincent Benét conveys the theme, “truth is a hard deer to hunt, if you eat too much of it at once, you may die of the truth” (Benét, 255). Which is a hyperbolic metaphor that means truth is like knowledge, hard to find. So, if too much of it is eaten at once, death is likely; as in truth is dangerous and hard to regulate among people if it is boundless. When the protagonist John was tired after travelling to the forbidden Place of Gods seeking knowledge, he fell asleep in one of the big dead-houses. He dreamed about the gods when they were alive long ago. He was terrified by the tools and knowledge the gods had and
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Likewise, after John woke up from his dream, he went through the dead-house to find out why the Great Burning happened. He found a dead god in a room that seemed to still have spirit still left in him and realized, “It is a great knowledge, hard to tell and believe. They were men – they went a dark road” (Benét, 254). John ironically discovers that there were no gods or demons, they were just men like himself and he would not die. He finds the truth, that men can also be capable of such knowledge and destruction, very surprising. In addition, the dark roads that the men went is a metaphor to the Great Burning and the destruction caused by their advancement in knowledge even though not everything was carefully thought out. Therefore, the theme “truth is a hard deer to hunt, if you eat too much of it at once, you may die of the truth” (Benét, 255) is evident in the short story “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benét, when John had a vision of unbelievable tools used by gods that posed a threat to Earth and after he realizes that they were no gods, only men responsible for the city and its destruction because truth is hard to grasp
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By The Waters Of Babylon Summary
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