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Chapter 21
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
Anthony leads Robin, Victoire, Ramy, and Letty to the chapel. He then uses a passcode to open a secret door behind a frieze, which leads to secret tunnels. In the tunnels, Anthony asks if Professor Lovell is dead, and Ramy responds that Robin killed him. The group then tells Anthony that England is planning to invade China. Anthony says that the Hermes Society had their suspicions. Robin says that he has Professor Lovell’s papers outlining how England has been planning the attack, and Anthony says he’ll send someone to Robin’s room to get them.
The Hermes Society’s use of secret passages in and around the Oxford campus, coupled with the clandestine nature of the group, suggests that while English society is saturated with racism and those complicit in the Empire’s most brutal crimes, there are also people fighting against those crimes just below the surface, often in places one might least expect.
Themes
As they continue, Letty asks Anthony why he joined the Hermes Society. She says that she remembers him liking Babel. Ramy becomes annoyed with Letty, but Anthony tries to explain. He says that before slavery was abolished, he was enslaved. When slavery was abolished, the person who previously owned him wanted to move to the U.S., where slavery had not yet been abolished, and bring Anthony with him. Anthony ran away and found refuge at Oxford. Anthony says that Oxford treated him well, but only because the university deemed him useful. Anthony says that there are no “kind masters” because all masters aim to exploit others. He says that if he stayed at Oxford, he would simply become someone who exploited others while not caring that he did so.
Letty again shows her inability to understand the systemic nature of the racism, exploitation, and oppression that the Hermes Society opposes. Anthony responds by trying to describe those systems of racism and oppression. In Anthony’s telling, people who hold power over others are only interested in maintaining that power. In that sense, the issue isn’t only that Ramy, Robin, Victoire, and Anthony have experienced racist exploitation, discrimination, and oppression but that the entire system of Babel and the British Empire is designed to perpetuate that racism and exploitation and subject untold numbers of people to it.
Themes
Through the tunnels, Anthony brings the group to a building called the Old Library. Other members of the Hermes Society are there. Robin recognizes them all as current or former students. They discuss colonialism and then discuss attrition in the Hermes Society. Anthony points out their silver-work studio. Griffin arrives later. When Griffin sees Robin, he says that he heard Robin killed Professor Lovell. He congratulates Robin for doing so and says he didn’t think Robin had it in him. Robin wants to punch Griffin.
The remark about attrition in the Hermes Society points to how difficult and dangerous the Society’s work can be. Griffin’s comment about Robin killing Lovell shows again that Griffin doesn’t seem to have qualms about using violence to support the goals of the Hermes Society. Instead, he celebrates the fact that Robin killed Lovell, implicitly contending that Lovell deserved to die.
Themes
Now that Griffin has arrived, everyone in the Hermes Society discusses their plans going forward. Anthony says they plan to convince Parliament and the public not to send Britain to war against China. If England goes to war and wins, then the country will have an almost limitless supply of silver. If England doesn’t go to war, then the supply of silver will be greatly diminished, and the country’s power will decrease. Ramy asks if they plan to essentially be lobbyists, and Anthony says that’s exactly right. Griffin advocates for a more violent approach, but no one else agrees with him.
Notably, Griffin is on a kind of island in his advocacy for using violence as a tactic to support the aims of the Hermes Society. For the most part, the Society intends to use nonviolent means to achieve its goals. It remains to be seen, though, whether the nonviolent tactics that the Hermes Society uses will prove to be effective and what lessons members of the Society will take from those tactics’ efficacy or lack thereof.
Themes
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Griffin then asks Robin to speak with him privately. Once they’re alone, Griffin hands Robin a gun and begins to teach him how to shoot it. Robin is reluctant and then he asks Griffin why he killed Evie in cold blood. Griffin says that’s not what happened. Instead, Griffin says, Evie had engaged in a plan to capture Griffin and take down the Hermes Society. At the last possible moment, Griffin found out. He had only wanted to scare Evie but accidentally killed her. Griffin then explains why he advocates for violence. He says that he thinks decolonization must involve a violent process because “violence is the only language” the Empire understands because their “system of extraction is inherently violent.”
Griffin explains his theory that violence is a necessary tactic when opposing the British Empire. In Griffin’s argument, the British Empire’s use of military force to compel compliance from people in colonized societies is likened to a kind of language. If people attempt to protest that military force through nonviolence, the British Empire won’t understand because the Empire doesn’t “speak” the language of nonviolence. Instead, according to Griffin, the Empire’s power is predicated on violence, and unless one challenges that power through violent means, the Empire’s control will persist.
Themes
