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6 February 2011
Tower of Babel Allusions Essay
Throughout time, it is shown that many artists have been inspired by the stories that are carried in the Bible. Some of those artists are like Shakespeare, Ray Bradbury, Fritz Lang, and Alejandro González Iñárritu. These artists are some of the few that used allusions towards the stories of the Bible. An allusion is when an expression brings something to the mind without mentioning it directly. In some of the works of those artists carry the allusion to The Tower of Babel.
In Genesis 11, the story of The Tower of Babel is told. In this story the descendants of Noah are brought together to build a tower that reaches the Heavens. The reason they want to build this tower is to have power like God. So while they built the tower, God watched them and began to realize that they can someday be powerful. With that in mind, he went down with the angels to confuse the people in Shinar and separated them all over the world with different languages so they could not understand one another. That would stop them from trying to regain the possibility of having the power like God. It was called Babel because of that reason and this is how our world has come out to have many different languages.
Allusions are found in many forms of art. One of the arts that hold allusions to a biblical story is literature. Ray Bradbury published one of his most famous works in 1953, Fahrenheit 451. This novel is science fiction and holds the story of a fireman named Montag in a future like city. His job is to start fires, burn books, not put them out. The setting that Montag is placed in is not allowed to get in contact with books because they hold knowledge and their government believes that it gives power. The main character lives this way too until he meets a teenager names Clarisse and an English Professor named Faber. They show Montag the beauty of nature, knowledge, and literature. Further into the...