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Chapter 15
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
Ramy has always been clever and brilliant. As a child, he grew up around elite British families because his father worked as a servant for Sir Horace Wilson in Calcutta. One day, one of Wilson’s guests, who knew Ramy’s father, talked to him about his (Ramy’s father’s) history. He said that Ramy’s father had been born to a well-off family, but his family’s fortune dwindled. Then, Ramy’s father had to look for work as a servant. Ramy watched his father during that conversation. It seemed like he (Ramy’s father) was swallowing something bitter.
This passage provides some information about the impact of the British Empire on Ramy’s family. Namely, as a result of colonization, Ramy’s father ends up working for the White British aristocrat, Sir Horace Wilson. Ramy’s father then has to work in a subservient role and cannot speak up to people like Wilson’s guest, who appears to lecture Ramy’s father about the way that his life turned out.
Themes
Years later, Horace Wilson was appointed the first Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford and wanted to take Ramy with him when he went. He promised to educate Ramy. Ramy’s parents didn’t resist, and Ramy went with Wilson. When he left, Ramy understood his father’s earlier expression. His father had been trying to tell him, Ramy thought, to show people in power what they wanted to see. That way, one could remain in control of the story being told. Ramy put on the act well. He easily navigated English society. But he felt like he was betraying what he truly believed. So, when Anthony asked Ramy during his third year if he would join the Hermes Society, Ramy immediately said yes.
This passage provides the backstory about how and why Ramy chooses to join the Hermes Society. According to Ramy, his father passed along the message that he should superficially appease people in power in order to maintain a deeper kind of control over his own life. While Ramy becomes an expert at providing White people in English society with what they want, he continues to harbor his personal beliefs and enmity toward the British Empire. The Hermes Society then gives Ramy the chance to put those beliefs into action.
Themes
