Previous
Chapter 5
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’s classes start on Tuesday. First up is Professor Playfair’s class on Translation Theory. Playfair lectures on the concept of translation and about the biblical story of Babel. He says that in some accounts, what was lost at Babel was an original language, sometimes referred to as the Adamic language. He says that through translation, they can regain that original language that was lost at Babel. Professor Playfair says what they seek to regain is nothing less than magic.
The students and faculty at Oxford refer to the Translation Institute where they study and work as Babel, based on the biblical story that Playfair describes. In that story, God sought to fracture and divide humans by giving them different languages. The effort of translation would ostensibly be to bridge those divides, but, as Griffin has pointed out, the Translation Institute seems to be exploiting and oppressing people from other cultures rather than advocating for equal cultural exchange.
Themes
The students also have Latin classes three times a week. While Professor Playfair is engaging and entertaining, Robin finds the Latin teacher, Professor Margaret Craft, dull and hard to follow. After the first class, Letty approaches Professor Craft and asks if she would like to talk to the girls who study at Babel about her experiences in a male-dominated environment. Craft shuts down the conversation. She says that women don’t face any discrimination at Babel and that the only things one needs to excel are hard work and talent. Robin overhears the conversation. At lunch afterward, he can tell that Letty has been crying.
Professor Craft is depicted as someone who is perhaps shortsighted about the kind of systemic discrimination that women face on the Oxford campus. Letty and Victoire have both already described facing discrimination, including being forced to live off-campus. That suggests that Babel, and the Babel faculty, may not take the legitimate concerns of their students seriously. Professor Craft may have suffered discrimination due to being a woman, but she clings to the power she has as a Babel professor and is thus unwilling to acknowledge the school’s shortcomings.
Themes
Robin then has individual lessons in Chinese with Professor Anand Chakravarti. Professor Chakravarti doesn’t lecture. Instead, the class is structured like a conversation. As the class progresses, Robin gets the sense that he is not in the class simply as a student. Instead, Robin realizes that Professor Chakravarti treats him like a colleague. Robin thinks it must be because he is the only native Chinese speaker at Babel. Robin then asks Professor Chakravarti if there are any other native speakers. When Robin presses, Professor Chakravarti says there was one before, named Griffin Harley (the surname Griffin chose when Professor Lovell pressed him to pick one). But, Professor Chakravarti adds, Griffin died before his fourth year at Babel. When Robin asks why there aren’t more Chinese students at Babel, Professor Chakravarti says that Lovell thinks that Chinese students who weren’t raised in England wouldn’t acclimatize well.
Robin’s realization that Professor Chakravarti treats him like a colleague because he is fluent in Mandarin shows Robin’s dawning understanding that people who are fluent in languages other than English or other Romance languages are invaluable to Babel. However, even though people from other cultures are necessary for the work Babel does, that doesn’t stop the faculty at Babel, including Professor Lovell, from being racist and excluding potential students on racist grounds, as evidenced by Lovell’s idea that students raised outside of England wouldn’t fit in well at Oxford. The fact that Chakravarti believes that Griffin is dead suggests that there is still more about Griffin that Robin doesn’t know.
Themes
On Saturday, Robin goes to have dinner with Professor Lovell. Mrs. Piper is excited to see Robin. At dinner, Robin finds that now that he’s started at Babel, he can talk more easily with Professor Lovell. The two speak like colleagues. Robin brings up the idea of the original language, referred to as the Adamic language, that Professor Playfair discussed. Professor Lovell says the idea is nonsense. Professor Lovell says that Babel has needed to expand beyond Romance languages as French and Spanish have become more and more similar to English. It’s possible that, at some point in the future, there won’t be any power for the silver bars left in translating between Romance languages because the languages will be so similar. That’s why, Professor Lovell says, they’ve recently branched out to countries like China.
Professor Lovell explains in more depth why native speakers of languages outside of Romance languages are invaluable to Babel. Namely, because the power of the silver bars harnesses what is lost when a word is translated from one language to another, the more similar the two languages are, the less power the silver bar will have when words from those languages are translated. However, while speakers of languages outside of Romance languages are invaluable to Babel, faculty members at Babel, including Professor Lovell, are also racist toward people from other cultures, showing that Babel’s treatment of people who are not White is based on exploitation rather than on seeing people from other cultures as equals.
Themes
Get the entire Babel LitChart as a printable PDF.
Robin presses and asks why countries like India and China, even though they’re providing valuable resources in terms of language and translators to Babel, don’t have the same stocks of silver that England does. Professor Lovell says that it’s simple economics, and those who have the money to buy silver are free to buy it. Robin retorts that it seems like Babel is hoarding knowledge that should be shared. Professor Lovell says Babel serves the English Crown, but Robin says that it seems unjust that Babel is out for itself and for England, and that it doesn’t help foreign scholars or help open translation centers in other parts of the world.
Robin confronts Lovell about Babel’s practice of exploiting people from countries other than England. Robin argues that Babel is exploitative because it’s greedy, when it could approach translation and the construction of silver bars in a way that would be mutually beneficial for all involved. That approach would entail seeing translation as a mode of equal exchange between cultures, rather than Babel’s approach, which insists on trying to maximize profits and power for itself while exploiting and oppressing others.
Themes
Robin then asks Professor Lovell why silver bars hadn’t been used to save his mother. Professor Lovell responds that she was “only just a woman.” Then, the doorbell rings, and in walks Sterling Jones, one of the stars of Babel’s faculty. Sterling and Professor Lovell begin talking and forget about Robin. When Robin leaves, he thinks he’s seen and heard enough. He carves a mark on a tree that Griffin pointed out, signaling that he is ready to join the Hermes Society.
Lovell’s derisive and dismissive comments about Robin’s mother raise questions about Lovell’s role as Robin’s biological father. Namely, this passage reintroduces the question of what exactly Lovell’s relationship with Robin’s mother was and how Lovell ended up becoming Robin’s father. It also speaks to the sexism that seems to pervade Babel alongside the racism.
Themes
