What is the connection between the narrator's people and the gods in "By The Waters of Babylon"?

There are two ways in which this question may be answered – in speaking of the spiritual connection between the people and their gods, or in speaking of the physical connection.  The second is obvious:  the people are men, the gods are men.  The story takes place in some undefined post-apocalyptic future, in which, at least in the northeastern United States, civilization has fallen into ruin, and those who remain generations after the doom of...

There are two ways in which this question may be answered – in speaking of the spiritual connection between the people and their gods, or in speaking of the physical connection.  The second is obvious:  the people are men, the gods are men.  The story takes place in some undefined post-apocalyptic future, in which, at least in the northeastern United States, civilization has fallen into ruin, and those who remain generations after the doom of the modern age remember their distant ancestors only in the form of mysterious, magical gods.

The spiritual connection is more difficult to define, for the attitude of the people is not the same as the attitude of the narrator.  The narrator is “a priest, and the son of a priest,” and therefore is allowed by social code to be more intimate with the gods, and have a greater understanding of them by going into the Dead Places and gaining knowledge.  Even for the priests, however, it is forbidden to journey to the East, for that way lies New York City, or, as the hill people call it, the Place of the Gods, a sacred place of great destruction.  This indicates that the people, in general, seem to be fearful of the gods, in the same way one is fearful of disease.  One can imagine New York and all those “gods” who had been killed as if they were under quarantine – the narrator describes touching old bones as “a great sin,” and any priest who ventures into the Dead Places for metal must be purified upon his return.

The narrator’s relationship, in contrast, evolves from one of wariness to one of total understanding – he harbors the same fear, at first, as the rest of his people, but his (very human) thirst for knowledge sends him deep into the heart of the Place of the Gods, where he encounters a preserved body and discovers that the gods are indeed merely men, men who “ate knowledge too fast.”  And so we see that these gods are not to be feared, but their ways – our ways, as a civilization that has developed so, so quickly – perhaps should be feared.  As the narrator’s father says upon his son’s return from New York, “It was not idly that our fathers forbade the Dead Places.”  There is an instinctive sort of misgiving in the hearts of the people that stems partially from misunderstanding, but also partially from self-preservation:  let not the fate of the gods fall also upon us.