Previous
Chapter 4
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 his doppelgänger get a table at the back of the Twisted Root. Robin’s doppelgänger says his name is Griffin Lovell. Upon closer inspection, Robin sees that he and Griffin look similar, but they’re not identical. Griffin explains that Professor Lovell is his father just as he’s Robin’s father, which makes Griffin and Robin half-brothers. He says that Professor Lovell has a family with two kids. He doesn’t see that family often, though. Instead, he uses his wife’s riches to fund his travels and then spends his time raising and training his other children, like he did with Robin and Griffin. Professor Lovell’s wife probably doesn’t know what Professor Lovell does, but she also probably wouldn’t care, Griffin says. Their relationship is entirely transactional.
Griffin confirms Robin’s suspicion that he is Professor Lovell’s son. Griffin also explains more about Lovell, including the fact Lovell has a family and a wife. Griffin doesn’t explain, though, why Lovell fathered two children of Chinese descent and then raised and “trained” them in England so they could matriculate at Oxford. It seems likely, at this point, to think that there may be even more information about Lovell’s relationship with Robin that Griffin has not revealed.
Themes
Griffin then explains that he’s part of a clandestine group called the Hermes Society. In that society, they steal silver and redistribute it to people who need it more. Griffin says that the group functions like Robin Hood. He explains that Babel makes much of its money by selling its wares to wealthy Englanders who use it for home decorating. Babel also makes a fortune selling silver to militaries and to people who trade in enslaved people.
Griffin explains that Babel is directly complicit in military violence and the trade of enslaved people. In that way, Robin is implicated in that immoral and unjust system by studying at Babel with the goal of, one day, constructing silver bars that will then be used to enrich Babel.
Themes
Griffin continues and says that Babel collects and then exploits people from foreign cultures, who work at Babel, to fuel England’s power. In that way, the work of Babel is the work of colonialism. Griffin says that the Hermes Society supplies silver to people who are truly in need of it. He then asks Robin to join the society. Robin is compelled by what he’s heard, but he says he needs time to think. Griffin says Robin can have five days to think it over and then he’ll need an answer.
Griffin explains that Babel is not just complicit in the crimes of the people who buy silver from the institute but is also complicit in the British Empire’s colonization of other countries. Through that colonization, the Empire violently exploits and oppresses people from less wealthy countries around the globe. Again, Griffin explains that by studying at and supporting Babel, Robin is complicit in the British Empire’s crimes—even if he’s also a victim. Lovell has certainly exploited Robin, which he can do thanks to England’s colonial presence in China.
Themes
