On Reading Ted Chiang’s “Tower of Babylon”
Professor Ann Peters of the Stern College English Department inspired my short story era. Taking her Global Short Fiction class made me rethink my hatred for the short story. I felt that depth could be missing from stories that are not novel-length, and that I would not connect with the characters as deeply. Yet, after writing a 15-page paper on two of Arthur C. Clarke’s stories (“The Nine Billion Names of God” and “A Walk in the Dark,” both of which I highly recommend), I wanted to read more. A trip to the local Barnes & Noble and a web search for an amazing science fiction collection had me leaving with “Stories of Your Life and Others” by Ted Chiang.
Wow, what a good pick. I read every word voraciously, jotting down observations and moments of realization. “Hell is the Absence of God,” a story about innocent suffering, made me cry. “Story of Your Life,” the story for which the collection was named, was fascinating, with a story structure that geniously reflects the mental state of the main character and “Seventy-Two Letters,” which draws heavily on the Jewish mysticism of Kabbalah.
Safe to say, I bought his second collection.
But the first story in his first collection, “Tower of Babylon,” compelled me. At the time, I had just finished writing a paper exploring what the sin of the people of the biblical Tower of Babylon was, and I wondered what a literary interpretation could be.
The story, of course, deals with the building of the Tower of Babylon. Set in ancient Babylon, the people believe that there is a vault above the flat Earth that houses Heaven and therefore their god. Hillalum, the protagonist, is one of those people in centuries of tradition who have contributed to building a tower to reach the domain of their deity. He is one of the miners who has to complete the four-month-long trek up the double spiral staircase to chip away at the barrier of the vault and enter into their deity’s domain. Hillalum sees generations of people who have built their lives on the tower's hundreds of floors. Some of the newer generations have never lived on the ground at all.
When they finally reach the top, Hillalum, the chosen miner, sets to work on the granite-like wall of the vault. Afraid of the Flood and afraid that they will unleash another one when they open the vault, the other workers create a stone to block the entrance should water start flowing.
As Hillalum continues his work, their fears come true. He hits a water reservoir and is trapped in the tunnel that is rapidly filling with water. Barely avoiding drowning, he gets to the surface and believes that he is in Heaven. He soon is disappointed to realize that he is back on Earth. He is no worse for wear, their god has not seemed to notice him or punish him, and he is back where he started. He is on the ground, on the surface of the Earth.
At this moment, he comes to a realization. The shape of the Earth is like a cylinder seal. Although the figures on the opposite side of the imprint seem far apart, they are actually standing side by side on the stamp. He comes to this realization and moves on with his life, ready to share what he has discovered with the world.
Were the centuries of man’s endeavor worth nothing? Hillalum ended up back where he started, back on Earth. Humans were so dedicated to this goal that some generations had never set foot on the ground, living their lives on the upper levels of the tower. Does finding yourself back at the beginning indicate that your time was wasted?
Their god, the deity who would be most impacted by a break-in into Heaven, does not make an appearance. He does not seem to care or rebuke the humans. Is this because he knew their efforts were futile from the beginning?
Their god lets them continue because there is always something to learn from each endeavor. Their god lets humanity come to that realization themselves instead of striking the people down for trying to do something forbidden. There is no better deterrent than failure.
The deity striking the tower down and not letting it be built in the first place would mean no progress. The humans would be dogged in their pursuit of the tower. The disapproval would make them dig their heels in more. Compare it to building a tower out of wooden blocks in the same room as a toddler. The toddler will just keep coming and knocking it down once you have built a five-block-high tower, over and over again. No matter how many times you build the tower in that room with the toddler, the tower gets knocked down. No progress is made, yet you keep building the tower.
But what happens when you go to a different room? There, no toddler is present, so that the tower can be built with more than five blocks. Yet, once you put on the sixth block, the tower falls over. Even though you had the chance to raise it, your attempt failed. Why did the block tower fall over? You learn that the bottom of the tower was not structurally sound. Five blocks is all that the base could support. Even if you were told that this would happen before you built it, you would still want to prove it for yourself, because maybe your attempt would yield a different result.
Because you are left in the same place — a block tower of five — does that make all the work that you put in moot?
The definition of insanity, which many people attribute to Albert Einstein, is famously “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” This is building the tower in the same room as the toddler.
Progress is moving to the other room and trying again. Learning means that the tower falls over at block number six. Next time, your tower will not have the same structure. The next endeavor will have a stable bottom and will have sufficient support to build higher and higher.
While Hillalum did not reach Heaven and god, he discovered something new and learned something that he could then share with others.
Although Chiang’s notes that he includes at the end of the anthology don’t relate this as a motive for the story, one of Chiang’s interests as a writer is “finding ways to make philosophical questions storyable.” Chiang does just this in “Tower of Babylon,” forcing the reader to rethink every failure as a next step in learning rather than a step backwards.
Every day, us humans suffer the consequences of our limited knowledge. Our towers get knocked over by hypothetical toddlers and insufficient support all the time. But that enables us to build it even one block higher the next time.
Photo Caption: The cover of Ted Chiang’s Anthology
Photo Credit: Talia Feldman
