Previous
Chapter 18
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
Robin is surprised that Victoire, Ramy, and Letty’s first instinct is to help him. Victoire explains that she and Ramy will be implicated in the crime regardless because they are all foreigners on a ship with a dead White man. She says there’s no world in which Robin goes to prison while she and Ramy go free. Letty understands that she is helping her friend. She and Robin both had abusive fathers, and she thinks that Robin must have acted in self-defense. The group begins discussing how they will cover up Lovell’s death.
Victoire’s assessment of the situation—that she and Ramy will be found complicit in Lovell’s death regardless of whether they help Robin or not—underlines the discrimination and racism that saturates English society and impacts Ramy, Victoire, and Robin’s life every day. Letty’s decision to help Robin, on the other hand, reinforces how much she values friendship and shows that she is willing to go to great lengths to help her friends.
Themes
Victoire says they have to hide the body and make sure that no one thinks that anything is amiss with Professor Lovell’s absence. To do that, Victoire suggests that they throw the body overboard and then tell everyone else on the ship that Lovell is dealing with a mysterious illness. Everyone will be so afraid of contagion that they won’t look further into Lovell’s ostensible quarantine. Later that night, they smuggle Lovell’s body to the ship deck in a trunk. They tie a weight to his body and then throw the body overboard.
Victoire’s framing of the issue—that she and Ramy will be found guilty of colluding with Robin whether they help him or not—also suggests that she and Ramy are more or less forced into helping Robin. In those terms, Victoire and Ramy can either help Robin hide the evidence of Lovell’s death or they can be arrested for committing a crime that they were not (initially) involved in. Given that dilemma, Victoire takes an active role in covering up Lovell’s death.
Themes
After that, Robin’s conscience begins to plague him. Over and over, he repeats to himself that he killed his father. He asks Ramy if he is evil. Ramy says that Robin’s not evil and all that he can do now is pray for God’s mercy. Each member of the group takes turns having a mental breakdown. Letty often seeks ways that they could come clean about what has happened and avoid prison, or worse. Each time she proposes a plan, though, Robin, Ramy, and Victoire point out how unrealistic it is.
Notably, neither Robin nor his friends argue outright that killing Lovell was morally defensible. The novel suggests Robin’s actions could be morally justifiable if it could be verified that Robin acted in self-defense, but because Robin himself is unclear about that fact, killing Lovell occupies a more moral grey area. The novel suggests that Robin, if not acting in self-defense, is morally culpable for that death.
Themes
On the ship, they’re able to redirect any attention that anyone might have paid to Professor Lovell. Eventually, the nine-week journey is over, and they arrive back in England. As they leave, the group tells the captain that Professor Lovell has gone ahead to find a doctor. Robin can’t believe that no one stops them from leaving the ship. The group decides to go to Lovell’s house in Hampstead (the house where Robin grew up after leaving China). They plan to return to Oxford after that. There’s nowhere else for them to go, really, and they don’t know what else to do. In the back of his mind, Robin still believes it might still be possible for them to all go back to being students.
Robin’s potentially misplaced hope that he and his friends may be able to go back to being students mirrors his previous conflict between enjoying his studies at Babel and realizing that those studies contributed to the British Empire’s racist and violent colonization of other countries. In both conflicts, Robin wants to enjoy the benefits that come with studying at Babel and push all other complications out of his mind. Ultimately, Robin seems to know in this case that there’s no way that they can return to Babel as if nothing has changed.
Themes
Get the entire Babel LitChart as a printable PDF.
