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Chapter 18
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Remembering Babylon, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism and Xenophobia
Gender and Power
Community and Insularity
Coming of Age
Colonialism and Property
Summary
Analysis
On the day that Lachlan and Gemmy part ways, Gemmy walks down the road toward the schoolhouse, “going to claim back his life” by retrieving the pages George and Mr. Frazer wrote in that afternoon interview so long ago. Gemmy believes that the magic of the writing has “drawn the last of his spirit from him” and the pages are “drawing him to his death.”
Gemmy’s mission to retrieve the pages symbolically reflects his desire to lay his connection to white society—which has done him such harm in the past and created so many demons in his mind—to rest, even though the magical release and return of his spirit that he hopes for is obviously futile.
Themes
Gemmy finds George Abbot alone at the schoolhouse, correcting assignments from his pupils. When George understands that Gemmy wants the pages he had helped transcribe about Gemmy’s life, George realizes that the pages are with Mr. Frazer, and Mr. Frazer is away in Brisbane to meet the Governor. Instead, George offers Gemmy seven of the worksheets he is grading, one at a time, while Gemmy sniffs the ink on each one of them and seems satisfied. Gemmy rises to leave but seems weak, so George goes to fetch him bread and water. When he returns, Gemmy is gone, having taken the papers with him.
The fact that the pages Gemmy receives are not even the true pages but only students’ worksheets increases the ironic tragedy of the scene and reiterates the futility of Gemmy’s hope. However, though the writing on the worksheets has no magical quality, the psychological effect upon Gemmy and symbolic effect in the narrative are the same: Gemmy is taking his connection to white society into his hands so that he can destroy it once and for all.
Themes
George reflects that his reaction to Gemmy now is entirely different than his reaction had been on the day he bitterly helped Mr. Frazer take down Gemmy’s life history. Then, he had believed suffering would inevitably lead to greatness. Now Gemmy, who once seemed such a pathetic specimen, contradicts that notion. George suspects his initial revulsion stemmed in part from the fear that he saw too much of himself in Gemmy, a “naked essential humanity.” Now, he realizes, Gemmy possesses a “naked endurance,” an ability to survive and persevere through abuse from one continent to another. This gives Gemmy, even when he seems “dumb and ox-like, a kind of grandeur that went painfully to the heart.” George leaves the schoolhouse to follow Gemmy, hoping to see him safely home.
Just as Gemmy’s very existence denies any categorical separation between white and black people, his character also contradics George’s prior belief that suffering will harden one’s soul and imbue him with greatness, at least in the manner George had initially expected. In his ability to endure such long and arduous suffering, Gemmy’s very existence speaks to a different sort of grandeur, one which comes not from being recognized for grand accomplishments or dominating others, but for simply surviving such abuse for so long and not returning becoming violent in return. For such a high-minded fellow as George, recognition of Gemmy’s grandeur implies a radical shift in his thinking.
Themes
Gemmy leaves the schoolhouse with the pages in his pocket, feeling free for the first time and thinking that he can go anywhere. His life in the settlement is over, but it will give way to a new life, just as a brushfire encourages new seeds to open and sprout. As Gemmy walks into the bush, rain begins to pour. He pulls the rain-soaked pages out of his pocket, and as he walks they dissolve in his hands, black ink flowing into the puddles on the ground.
The fact that, after severing his ties to white society, Gemmy finally feels free reveals what a spiritual burden living amongst white people truly was for Gemmy, with their constant need to dominate or destroy. As the pages dissolve into nothing, so Gemmy’s life as a white man dissolves as well, which again shows how meaningless racial categories often are.
Themes
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