The Tower

Humans have been building towers for a long time, so it makes sense that they can be chock full of significance. And towers in godless are no exception. For example, Shin sketches both the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and the former twin towers of the World Trade Center. The first is an icon of architectural beauty and its image often represents France itself. The second formerly symbolized international finance and commerce, and now great tragedy and resilience.

What's so big about Jason's tower? Water towers can be landmarks and symbols of community identity. Small towns often emblazon their name or school mascot on their water towers, and it sounds like the St. Andrew Valley tower is no different. Jason tells us it's "the biggest thing in town" (1.53), sits right about in the middle of town, and can be seen "from just about anywhere in St. Andrew Valley" (4.72). What's more, it connects the people of the town:

[…] water from that tower was piped to every home and business for miles around. The water connected all of us. It kept us alive. (1.53)

The water tower unites the hodge-podge gang of Chutengodians—kids that clearly had not previously all hung out together socially.

But then, post midnight mass, this same group of teens fragments. Even the three who had been friends for years—Jason, Shin, and Dan—are alienated from each other. If Jason sees any similarity between the St. Andrew Valley water tower and the Biblical Tower of Babel, he doesn't say so. But we don't think it should go unmentioned. (It's just not our style)—it's just not our style.

Okay, so the story of the Tower of Babel is told in the book of Genesis, Chapter 11. At that time, everyone spoke the same language, and folks—thinking they were all that and a bag of chips—decided to build a city and a tower to the sky, in order to be world famous and remain a united people. God took a look at this and thought the people were getting mighty uppity though, so he decided to confuse their language so they couldn't understand each other, and then they dispersed and spread out all over the world.

While our godless characters retain the ability to speak English, they don't communicate well after they climb that tower: Henry invites his "stooges" into the church and forms the Choots splinter group; Magda can't or won't talk with Jason because she's scared of getting into trouble; Jason doesn't hear from or see Dan until they bump into each other doing community service, at which point Dam tells Jason to "'get lost'" (30.39); and Shin is super ticked-off at Jason, but when they finally have a conversation Shin talks about water towers as demigods or Avatars of the Ocean which "'frequently shift location at night, moving from town to town'" (29.2) "'by employing a form of antigravitronic pulse'" (29.8). Hookay.

Since there are so many Biblical allusions in godless, we should also point out the Asherah poles that kept popping up throughout the nation of Israel, as related in the Hebrew Bible.

Basically these were sacred trees or poles worshipped by the pagan peoples that lived in the region where the Israelites were located. This worship kept creeping into the Israelites lives too, in spite of Judaism's first two commandments—you shall not have any god other than me, and don't even think about making any carved idols or other nonsense for worship.

So for generation upon generation there were disobedient Israelite kings who would construct and worship these Asherah poles, and then obedient kings that would tear them down and burn them. What's our point? We're just saying that Jason rejecting the God of his parents and worshiping the tallest thing in town has got some Biblical overtones.