In ancient Babylon, the construction of the Tower of Babylon is forced to halt. It has hit the “Vault of Heaven” made of granite above the tower. However, the tower, which is meant to reach Heaven and the Babylonians’ God, Yahweh, has to be finished. Therefore, recruited to dig into the “Vault of Heaven,”  Hillalum the miner joins the construction to break the vault. When he finally digs through the “vault of Heaven” and gets out, he finds himself still in the same world. He realizes that the sky and earth are in fact connected. In the science fiction shorty story, The Tower of Babylon, author Ted Chiang uses the symbol of the Tower of Babylon, a third-person limited perspective, and the image of baptism to present readers with the romantic journey of human beings striving for truth in a realistic and indifferent universe. 

Chiang’s use of the Tower of Babylon as a biblical symbol helps to emphasize humans’ romantic approach to seeking truth through hard work and firm beliefs. According to Foster, instead of being “reducible to a single statement,” the subject referred to by a symbol “will more probably involve a range of possible meanings and interpretations” (Foster, 105). This explanation is especially true for the use of the symbol of the Tower of Babylon in this story. Originally from Genesis in the Old Testament, the Tower of Babylon represents human arrogance in challenging God. Eventually, in the Old Testament, God punished humans by destroying the construction of the tower. However, in this story, the author bestows a different meaning to this symbol. In Chiang’s depiction, readers are able to notice the human belief in seeking the truth. For example, the very purpose of the tower is  “that men might ascend to see the works of Yahweh, and that Yahweh might descend to see the works of men” (3). In this sense, humans are seen by Chiang not as subordinate to God, as they often are in the Old Testament, but as reciprocally related. It’s not enough for humans to unilaterally “ascend” to Yahweh; Yahweh should sometimes “descend” to humans as well (3). Chiang's praise of human belief is also reflected in his incessant portrayal of the Tower’s grandeur. At the beginning of the story, the Tower appears as “a single column that must have been as large around as an entire temple, yet it rises so high it shrank into invisibility” (1). This initial depiction gives readers a first impression of the Tower’s enormous size. Later, as the protagonist, Hillalum, starts climbing the Tower, readers are presented with how “the surface [of the ramp of the Tower] is paved with brick, with two grooves worn deep by centuries of wheels” (5). There are dwellers living on the Tower, waiting to enter heaven after the construction is finished. These depictions suggest the intense effort put forth by humans for generations in reaching Yahweh. Through the symbol of the Tower of Babylon, the author thoroughly and vividly shows the romanticism of humans striving to seek truth regardless of effort and time. 

In contrast to the romanticism of humans, however, there is an indifferent objective world that readers interpret through the story's third-person limited narration. This narrating method reveals only the protagonist's actions and thoughts. Thus, it limits the readers' understanding, filtering it through the perspective of Hillalum, a human being just like them. In this way, Chiang makes Yahweh formidable and indifferent, while he makes people tiny and powerless. For example, when Hillalum sees the vault upon him midway through climbing the tower, he feels “an oppressive weight,” and “often he would wake to find himself sweating and his fingers cramped, trying to clutch the brick floor” (10). Here, Hillalum and the reader experience the overwhelming nature of the vault of heaven. Later, as people dig through the vault and the flood comes in, Hillalum thinks Yahweh has finally placed punishment upon them and imagines “the Mighty One drinks deep in the waters of heaven, ready to swallow the sinners” (14). Indifferently and consistently, the flood keeps coming in, which seems natural and mechanical. But there is one problem: it is lethal to humans. While humans might suffer from the rules of Yahweh, the world still functions no matter what. Humans are tiny facing nature. However, it is not fair to say that this story belittles humans. In fact, by contrasting Yahweh’s disinterestedness with the humans’ romantic ideal of building the Tower, Chiang again praises humans. Before people dig into the vault, Chiang has the priests give thanks to Yahweh that “they are permitted to see so much and [beg] forgiveness for their desire to see more” (10). Chiang's emphasis on this detail conveys to the reader that, although the Babylonians are pious believers of Yahweh, although they might get Yahweh angry, although they are tiny, they are passionate in seeking ultimate truth.

Finally, the author uses Hillalum’s miraculous survival to represent the rebirth of humanity after their romantic journey. In literature, drowning can often be interpreted as rebirth: “the death and birth through the medium of water” (Foster, 163). In the story, Hallalum is reborn in his escape from drowning after the flood is unleashed. To get out of the cavern he finds himself in, he crawls, “having no idea of how much time passed, not caring that he would never be able to retrace his steps” (15). This scene highly corresponds to Plato’s cave theory in which a man is freed from the cave that imprisons him and struggles to get out of it before he understands the true world outside. Hillalum, crawling like a newborn baby, finally makes it out of the cave and understands the construction of the world, like Plato’s philosopher. Hillalum’s struggle to get out of the cave and his final revelation represents not only his rebirth but also the rebirth of humankind. In the end, Hillalum understands that, “through their endeavor, men would glimpse the unimaginable artistry of Yahweh's work, in seeing how ingeniously the world had been constructed. [...] Thus would men know their place” (16). In another word, Yahweh has already predicted humans’ endeavor of seeking the truth, and he has designed the world in the way that humans will find his hidden design. Here, baptism symbolically reconciles human romanticism with Yahweh, the seemingly indifferent God who predicates and encourages humans to seek the truth. The romantic journey of humans thus comes to an end. The past selves of humans are drowned in the flood, and reborn humans understand their place in the world after witnessing the true construction of the world. 

Endeavoring, piousness, and romanticism; cruelty, indifference, and realism -- Ted Chiang envisions a world created by Yahweh in which humans finally know their place under the divinity of Him. Through the story, the readers are presented with the theme of human romanticism searching for truth within an indifferent, even cruel world. While humans in the story understand their place after witnessing Yahweh’s construction of the world, the humans in this current world face a rather bewildering situation. Will our Tower of Babylon ever hit the vault of heaven, or will it keep growing higher and higher without end? Will our search for the ultimate truth conclude, or will we keep endlessly exploring the infinity of our thoughts and the physical world? These are the questions that we need to have in our mind when we build our own Tower of Babylon in our own romantic search for truth, no matter whether there will be a Yahweh awaiting us.                                                                         

Works Cited

Chiang, Ted. The Tower of Babylon.

Foster, T. C. How to read literature like a professor: a lively and entertaining guide to reading between the lines. Harper Perennial, 2014. Print.