Short Story: By The Waters Of The Babylon

Rules of the laws should be followed at all times even if the law provides the north, west, and south as good hunting grounds and prohibits anyone from going to the east. The Dead Places are also off limits for everyone except a priest or the son of a priest. They are allowed to go there when they are in search for metal. After the metal has been discovered, both the man and the metal must be purified. Those are the laws and therefore they must be followed. The strictest law is the prohibition of anyone crossing the great river and looking at the Place of the Gods. It is forbidden because of the demons and spirits that are there. No one dared to go there. Breaking a law would lead to a cruel punishment of course. So they say. Will anyone know

New York City is one of the places that has the most advanced technology in the whole entire world. It would make sense that the author chooses New York as the setting because the presence of technology would help make the story more interesting to read and to interpret. Based on the information we are provided with, we could determine that this story is taking place in the future but we can’t really determine the exact time it takes place. We could also verify that this story takes place after a war because we know that no one lives in the east. One of the main causes that could lead to the east being empty of human life is if there was an atomic destruction such as a bomb being dropped on that area. We could also determine that the story took place during spring. “A long way off, I had seen the water through trees but the trees were thick.” The trees were too thick for him to see, therefore, we know that it wasn’t winter when he went on his quest. “It was very silent and sunny where I had landed—the wind and the rain and the birds that drop seeds had done their work—the grass grew in the cracks of the broken stone. It is a fair island—no wonder the gods built there. If I had come there, a god, I also would have built.” We could also confirm that John wasn’t on his journey during summer or fall because he doesn’t say that there were leaves on the ground and he also says that the rain has helped the grass