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Chapter 24
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 and Victoire run from Oxford. Robin suggests that they escape through the canal, but Victoire says that will lead straight to the police station. Robin then suggests they go hide in the surrounding hills, but Victoire says they’ll be looking for them there. She says she knows of a safe house in the heart of the city that Anthony showed her. Robin thinks about Oxford. He realizes the mistake that he, Ramy, and Victoire all made was thinking that the university wouldn’t betray them. He thinks that they were foolish to believe they could turn the tide of history through pamphlets and lobbying alone. He then tells Victoire that he thinks Griffin was right and that in order to win, they’ll have to seize Babel tower.
While Robin is the novel’s protagonist, Victoire is often portrayed as the most competent and forward-thinking of the group of friends. That came into play when they were covering up Lovell’s death, and Victoire developed most of the plans that they used. In this passage, Victoire again takes charge and comes up with the plan that she and Robin end up using. As previous chapters foreshadowed, experiencing violence directed against the Hermes Society has in fact led Robin to change how he feels about using violence to support the Hermes Society’s goals.
Themes
