Babel - Entry 6

May 8, 2024 * literature, babel * part 6

Contents

• Analysis/Reflection

In this last portion of the book, the cohort’s story concludes. Robin and Victoire get their hands on guns from a Hermes safe room, send out a distress signal for any remaining Hermes members, and storm Babel. As expected, they take power relatively easily, and make a speech about the true nature of Babel’s role in British colonialism, asking that whoever disagrees, leave.

Following this, a few professors and students stay behind, and they secure Babel and prepare to shut down silverworking to collapse Britain’s functionality, until they listen to their demands of cancelling the Opium trade. In the weeks that follow, they attempt to get by on rations, and Robin grows increasingly radical and violent in his ideas for taking revenge on Britain, wanting to stop more and more silver bar functionalities at a time, without rationally considering its effect on the civilian populace. We see that Robin doesn’t see a point in living anymore, and fully intends to die carrying out this last act. People from the city came to help them out, forming barricades outside Babel, but the confrontation was leading to a standstill, and it didn’t seem like London was ready to make a decision anytime soon. After collapsing London Bridge, Letty shows up to negotiate, but they can’t find a conclusion. Letty states that they’ll die if they stay, but if they agree to leave and give up, they’ll get off with lighter sentences. With the army preparing to attack at dawn, Robin comes up with an idea to destroy Babel, but it would kill whoever’s stuck inside. So, in the end, Victoire leaves after seeing that Robin can’t be drawn away from his suicide path, and she escapes, determined to survive against all odds. Robin starts the explosion, and Babel collapses, killing him alongside it. In the end, we see Victoire’s narration on how she’s determined to survive, and that she’ll grieve for her friends later, boarding a boat to go to America.

Analysis/Reflection

The end surprised me. I enjoyed seeing Robin’s character shift to something more in line to that of his brother’s, but that also signaled his downfall. I think it did a good job of closing upon the idea that violence is at times the only reasonable form of resistance in the face of an oppressive imperial power, but at the same time it clouded that motive with something more personal — a form of revenge against those who killed his friends. Reading about a protagonist who had already decided that he ought to die, and ended the book with suicide, was an interesting stylistic decision, and I like how Victoire was the only one really left alive and free from their original cohort.

The story also ended without Robin ever revealing his birth name, and so his identity was never really reclaimed after it having been stolen from him. This is somewhat poetic, he sacrificed himself, but mostly out of grief and anger, and was never able to reclaim what was lost or really achieve the justice he set out for in the beginning. We also see how quickly the world manages to adapt and readies itself to move on, which is interesting to see, because our contemporary world is also able to adapt from challenges and disasters and move on quickly, especially large-scale things such as COVID-19.

However I feel like the book often left many characters underdeveloped. Letty’s origin story wasn’t too fleshed out, and Ramy and Victoire weren’t explored as deeply as I would have liked for them to be. I wanted to relate to Ramy’s character more, and while I did at some points, I felt like there was so much more that could have been done, and it left me viewing this book as more of a window into the narrative Kuang crafted on imperialistic powers and colonialism, and the oppression of non-white groups, rather than a text through which I could genuinely deeply relate or self-insert into any single character.

Babel’s overarching message is one that it took Robin his entire character arc to conclude: that violence is the only effective catalyst for large-scale systemic change.