The Tower of Babel

The Book of Genesis tells of a time after the Great Flood, when all the peoples of the Earth spoke one language. One day, the people decided to build a tower so tall that it would reach right up into the heavens. Realizing what they were up to, and not liking it one bit, God confounded everybody's speech so that the people couldn't understand one another any more. That is: He gave everyone different languages, and didn't supply any translators. Gee, thanks God.

The narrative of the Tower of Babel is an important allegorical element in Seize the Day. To Wilhelm, New York City is Babel. Just to talk to your fellow man, "[y]ou had to translate and translate, explain and explain, back and forth, and it was the punishment of hell itself not to understand or be understood, not to know the crazy from the sane, the wise from the fools, the young from the old or the sick from the well." (5.36)

Although Wilhelm is sometimes able to feel that he is part of "a larger body" of humankind (5.37), more often than not he feels totally isolated from every other person he knows—even the people he desperately wants to feel close to, like his father and his sons.

Although Wilhelm spends most of his days feeling isolated from everyone else in New York City, he vividly remembers one ecstatic moment when he felt connected to everyone else around him. One afternoon, while "going through an underground corridor" "beneath Times Square" (5.37), Wilhelm suddenly experiences a moment of intense interconnectedness:

And in the dark tunnel, in the haste, heat, and darkness which disfigure and make freaks and fragments of nose and eyes and teeth, all of a sudden, unsought, a general love for all these imperfect and lurid-looking people burst out in Wilhelm's breast. He loved them. One and all, he passionately loved them. They were his brothers and sisters. He was imperfect and disfigured himself, but what difference did that make if he was united with them by this blaze of love? (5.38)

The novel's narrator, channeling Wilhelm's thoughts, makes it clear that this sense of connection is radically different from Wilhelm's usual feeling that New York City is like the city of Babel. Wilhelm thinks:

So what did it matter how many languages there were, or how hard it was to describe a glass of water? (5.39).

Symbolically, this "larger body" of humankind is the mirror image of the chaos and confusion of Babel—the shadow side of the disconnected, alienating hustle and bustle of New York City at a busy time of night or day. Although the feeling doesn't last very long, Wilhelm really values it, and he struggles to remember it later, when the world feels cold and lonely again.