Is there a work of literature that uses the Tower of Babel as an allusion?

Question

An allusion is a reference to an outside work.

So is there anything that refers to the Tower of Babel in anything (book, poetry, song, etc.)?

10 points!!!!!

Answer 1

I'd say the most famous one is the silent movie Metropolis.

My favorite would be Neal Stephensen's Snow Crash which uses the Tower of Babel myth as a plot device.

Some people would even attempt to point at Frankenstein and the endless Frankenstein influenced works, as a version of the reaching for the stars and failing because of hubris theme.  Although, I find this same theme in enough greek stories to find it a bit of a stretch.

Answer 2

I am doing a school report on this same question as we speak, but I'm having a hard time finding anything.

There is Fahrenheit 451 where Ray Bradbury incorporates the allusion into his novel to show the images of a crazy disrupted world

 "You've been locked up here for years with a regular damned Tower of Babel. Snap out of it! The people in those books never lived. Come on now!"

and there's something in Paradise lost, and also obviously in the movie Babel, but that's about it

Answer 3

That's funny. I just finished reading Robert Pennock's Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism. It's mainly an argument against intelligent design and part of the evidence uses evolutionary linguistics against the story of the tower of babel.