The Road Stephen Vincent Benét Summary

There are only two characters throughout this story and the main character is a man named John . He is son priest and he is on a journey to becoming a man/priest. John is the protagonist and is a round character. He is dreams of being a man and he feels going east is the way to be a man. John is someone to make his own decisions no matter the consequence. The side character is the father of John whose name is also John. He is a priest and he has much love for his son. He follows the rules and doesn’t have any intent to breaking them. As you read this story you will soon determine that the setting of this story is in the future where it first takes place in a small village, but as the main character goes on his journey …show more content…
Before setting out on his voyage he is told that he is forbidden to go east, however his curiosity got the best of him and he went east. On said journey to become a man he sees the great city that we know as New York City and as he walks through the city he sees a bunch of technology that is unknown to him. They seem similar to the devices they use, however it makes no sense to him how they work. In the story it states “There was a cooking-place but no wood, and though there was a machine to cook food, there was no place to put fire in it.” This shows confusion in his mind as to how it works without the wood they use. The theme of “The waters of Babylon” is that taking in a lot of knowledge quickly can cause harm. As the “gods” were once living there, have all died, but they had so many “magical items” that should have helped them. However, we the reader know what happened to the “gods” because we know the setting. The technology we made was the invention that killed us, so we basically killed ourselves. We don’t know exactly what invention killed us, it could possibly be a nuke or some kind of nuclear bomb that eradicated everyone who lived there. Most likely what we make can not only help us, but also harm