Previous
Chapter 7
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
In November, Robin assists in five more thefts by the Hermes Society. Each one goes smoothly, though Robin wishes he could know more about what he’s doing. He realizes that he’s basing his actions on trusting Griffin and on the vague sense that he’s fighting against the empire. Despite his doubts, Robin keeps helping with the thefts. During the “Hilary term” (the academic term that runs from January to March), Griffin contacts Robin again. Griffin tells Robin that he’s doing a good job, and everyone at the Hermes Society is pleased with him. Robin asks for more information about the Society, but Griffin says Robin still needs to wait.
Griffin’s lack of information about the Hermes Society presents the possibility that Robin, while he genuinely wants to fight against the British Empire, is unintentionally abetting an organization that may also be questionable. Griffin keeps that information close because the stakes are high, and he doesn’t want to compromise the Society, but the novel also suggests that he may be someone who enjoys being in control. Keeping Robin in the dark is one way to achieve that control.
Themes
Robin asks Griffin what will happen in the future. It doesn’t seem sustainable, Robin says, to keep robbing from Babel while going to school at Oxford and then working at Babel. Griffin says that most people at the Hermes Society end up doing what he did: they fake their own deaths. Robin isn’t sure what to make of that answer. He loves Oxford and doesn’t want to leave. He can envision a life for himself, made possible through Oxford, in which he enjoys well-paid fellowships and endless opportunities to do research. Griffin can tell that Robin is feeling conflicted and tries to cheer Robin up.
Griffin confirms that he faked his own death in order to participate more freely in the Hermes Society. The tension that Robin feels between his personal enjoyment of Oxford and his recognition that he’s complicit in injustice by studying at the institution reasserts itself in this passage. Through that conflict, the novel poses the question of whether it is possible, or morally permissible, to shut one’s eyes to injustice so that one can live a more comfortable life.
Themes
As the term continues, Robin tries to determine how he should feel about Oxford and the Hermes Society. At Oxford, Babel is the most prestigious part of the University, so he and his cohort enjoy a certain amount of prestige. At the same time, though, it becomes clear that there are other ways in which they do not belong. Pubs won’t serve Ramy if he’s alone. Letty and Victoire can’t check out books from the library without a male student present. And while Babel is prestigious, that prestige doesn’t necessarily make its students popular. They’re all too busy to have much of a social life outside of one another. Instead, people like Elton Pendennis are royalty on campus. He and his friends are rich students who seem to do nothing but party. Part of Robin wants Elton’s life. Then, Robin thinks, he would always be welcome in England.
Robin’s experience at Oxford sends him the clear message that the people who enjoy the most privilege on campus, and in England in general, are wealthy, White men, while Robin and his friends experience different forms of discrimination and oppression. Notably, the novel points out again that the racism that Ramy and Robin experience is different. While Robin can order at pubs alone and be served, Ramy is discriminated against based on the color of his skin, and waiters refuse to serve him. At the same time, Letty and Victoire both face discrimination based on their gender that Ramy and Robin don’t experience.
Themes
Robin is surprised when he finds a piece of stationery in his room from Elton. The letter invites Robin for drinks the following Friday. Letty tries to discourage Robin from going because the boys are bad influences, but Robin decides to go anyway. At the party, Robin sees one of his neighbors from Magpie Lane, Colin. Elton greets Robin with a kind of glamorous nonchalance. He then says that he plans to be a poet and recites one of his poems to the party.
The novel has previously established that Colin, a boy who lives in the same house as Robin and Ramy, is racist and status-obsessed. With that in mind, his presence at the party is a sign that while Robin has been invited to the party, that does not necessarily mean he will be welcomed by all who are present.
Themes
Get the entire Babel LitChart as a printable PDF.
After Elton’s recitation, the party is silent, and Robin realizes that they’re waiting for his response. Robin understands then that he’s been invited so that the people at the party can try and convince themselves that they’re intellectually on par with people who study at Babel, like Robin. Robin thinks the poem is terrible and doesn’t praise it. He gets into an argument with Elton, surprising others at the party. In general, no one talks back to Elton. Robin realizes that the boys and the party are a waste of his time, and he leaves.
Elton’s lack of talent, and the way that students other than Robin defer to him, shows that Elton’s privilege is hollow. It is based on nothing but his wealth and Whiteness. While Robin previously, on some level, wanted to have Elton’s life, once he sees Elton for who he is and understands how unearned his privilege is, Robin decides he doesn’t want anything to do with Elton or Elton’s friends.
Themes
The next morning, Robin recounts the party to Victoire, Ramy, and Letty. Victoire and Ramy laugh uproariously, especially when Robin recites the lines from Elton’s poem that he remembers. Letty, though, storms off. Victoire explains that Letty had a brother, Lincoln, who died shortly before Letty came to Oxford. He had attended Oxford too but had been more like Elton than like the people who study at Babel. He drank too much one night and was run over by a carriage, which killed him.
The backstory about Letty’s brother shows why she reacted how she did to Robin’s news about Elton’s party, and it also shows the kind of family that Letty comes from. While Robin, Ramy, and Victoire come from families where no one before them went to Oxford, Letty comes from a family with an Oxford legacy, signaling that she comes from a life of more privilege than her friends.
Themes
Letty took the entrance exams for Babel just after Lincoln died. Now, Victoire says, Letty faces the pressure of being a woman at Oxford while feeling anxious that everyone there wishes she were her brother. Robin and Ramy feel sorry for occasionally making fun of Letty. By their next day of classes, though, things between the group have been smoothed over. In class, Professor Playfair continues to discuss the theory of translation. He says that a translation is often judged based on its fidelity to the original text. But that idea of fidelity is based on a misunderstanding, Playfair says. Instead, he says, no translation can be perfect, which means that all translation involves an act of betrayal.
Not only does Letty face the discrimination that comes with being a woman at Oxford, but she also feels like she is constantly compared to her brother. Notably, Robin and Ramy’s response to hearing about Letty’s brother is to act with empathy towards her. Professor Playfair’s choice to characterize translation as betrayal subtly implies that fully accurate translation—and by extension, real understanding between people and cultures—is perhaps impossible.
Themes
