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Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Babel, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonization and Racism
Language, Translation, and Power
Race, Gender, and Intersectionality
Violence and Nonviolence
Complicity
Summary
Analysis
Griffin resurfaces midway through the term. He sends a note asking Robin to meet at the Twisted Root. When Robin arrives, he’s surprised to see that Griffin is haggard and apparently hasn’t changed his clothes in several days. Griffin asks Robin to check out books from the library for him. Robin asks if that’s it and asks if they’re going to talk about when Robin was shot during the last robbery. Griffin says there’s not much to talk about, and he’s just glad no one was caught. Robin is furious. He then brings up Anthony and says it seems wrong that Babel doesn’t care about his disappearance. Griffin pauses to think for a long time. Finally, he says it’s not surprising. Students are only important to Babel insofar as they’re of use, he says.
Griffin’s pause at the mention of Anthony’s disappearance mirrors to Victoire’s lack of concern regarding that disappearance, suggesting that they perhaps know something about Anthony that Robin doesn’t. Griffin also underlines the idea that Babel is an exploitative institution that doesn’t value its students, especially students of color, in any meaningful way. Instead, it aims to exploit those students for its own profit and gain. If students cannot increase those profits, then, as far as Babel is concerned, they cease to matter.
Themes
Attempted break-ins at Babel increase dramatically. While there used to be one or two per term, as this term continues, they begin happening almost every week. One day, Robin and his cohort see an angry mob gathered outside Babel. As they try to walk through, someone throws an egg and hits Ramy. When they’re inside, they learn that the angry mob is made up of mill workers. They’ve been put out of work by a match-pair that Professor Playfair just came up with. That match-pair will give Babel enough funds to renovate the lobby.
This passage underlines the fact that Babel doesn’t just exploit its students and isn’t only complicit in the British Empire’s colonization of other countries. In addition to those wrongs, Babel also actively economically disenfranchises working-class people in England. In the novel’s telling, Babel is then responsible for oppressing lower-class people both at home and abroad.
Themes
When the cohort talks to Professor Lovell, he says the mob is just the usual “riffraff” made up of “drunkards.” He says the protests aren’t anything new and says that silver has made many kinds of work more efficient, which has caused tens of thousands of people to lose their jobs. But, Professor Lovell says, instead of protesting and complaining, they should learn new skills and make themselves useful. He says he sometimes receives death threats, but that people like those workers don’t scare him. He adds that the protests will disperse overnight.
Lovell has previously shown that he is virulently racist. This passage shows that he is also classist and has a disdain for people who are less wealthy and privileged than he is. He treats those people with condescension when he says that instead of complaining about losing their livelihoods, they should learn new skills, making it clear that he has no capacity to empathize with others and no awareness of the struggles that other people face.
Themes
But Professor Lovell turns out to be wrong. The protests continue, and general sentiment begins to turn on Babel in the following months. Someone begins publishing a newspaper at Oxford, and it advocates for Radical causes and criticizes Babel. The protests, if anything, seem to grow. One day, a bomb is delivered to Professor Playfair. Rain douses the fuse, which makes the bomb stop functioning, but it sends a chill through everyone at Babel. Robin is surprised at how easy it is to adjust to the unrest, but he learns he can deal with it as long as he turns away when he sees it.
Robin’s reaction to the unrest mirrors much of the Oxford campus’s reaction to the university’s complicity in the ills of the British Empire. Namely, just as Robin turns away from the protests—and refuses to acknowledge the role that he and Babel have played in disenfranchising the people protesting—people on the Oxford campus regularly turn away and refuse to acknowledge the racist colonization that their work supports.
Themes
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At the end of the term, there’s a public announcement, listing fourth-year students who have passed or failed their exams. As Robin, Ramy, Letty, and Victoire watch, they think the public nature of the ceremony is cruel, but they also can’t look away. One student fails the exam and is promptly banished from Babel. Professor Playfair takes the student’s vial of blood from the filing system in Babel and steps on it, ensuring that the student can never enter the tower again.
The public display of success and failure highlights the high stakes at Babel. If one slips up, then one could be banished from the program entirely. The display also paints Babel as a place where academic success is valued so highly that academic success seems to determine someone’s worth as a human being.
Themes
Around that same time, Griffin and Robin meet again at the Twisted Root. Griffin’s forearm is bandaged, and blood seeps through the bandages. Robin is alarmed. Griffin says the Hermes Society is planning to rob an upcoming shipment of silver bound for Babel. He says that he may need to store explosions in Robin’s room, so they have easy access. Robin says that crosses a line for him. Griffin says the explosives will only provide a distraction, and no one will get hurt, but Robin still refuses to take part. He says to agree, he would need more information about the Hermes Society first. Griffin won’t give him more information and says either Robin is in or he’s out. Robin says he’s out. Griffin tells Robin if he tells anyone about the Hermes Society, he knows where Robin lives. Robin knows Griffin isn’t bluffing.
This passage directly introduces the question of when it’s appropriate to use violence to achieve social change, a concern that Robin will explore throughout the rest of the novel. At this point, Griffin is not advocating for violence. He only wants to use the explosives to create a distraction. However, the risk of hurting other people is too much for Robin to stomach, and he quits the Hermes Society as a result of his discomfort with the potential that other people may be harmed. This establishes Robin’s starting point.
Themes
