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
In the mid-nineteenth century, partway through the settlement of Queensland, Australia, three white children are playing in a clearing, pretending to hunt wolves. Only the boy, Lachlan Beattie, is actually engaged with the fantasy. The two girls gasp, and Lachlan can see a "black” indigenous man in the distance who has emerged from the trees, balancing himself on the fence before falling off. At first the children fear a raid, but they soon realize it is only one man, skinny and strange-looking with a blue cloth tied around his waist. Lachlan raises the stick he has been pretending is his rifle and aims at the man, who throws his arms in the air and pleads in shaky English, “Do not shoot, I am a B-b-british object!”
This introduction immediately establishes racism and xenophobia as central elements of the story by creating tension between the Commonwealth children and what they presume is an Aboriginal Australian—though the narration and the settlers only ever refer to them as “black people.” Lachlan’s raising of a pretend rifle also introduces his fantasies of power and control, which nod to both his gendered concept of himself as well as his delusions of grandeur, which he will later need to overcome. Additionally, the key symbol of the fence hints at the importance of land ownership within the settlement.
Themes
What the children had thought was a black man is actually a white man with filthy blond hair and skin darkened by the sun. However, he speaks the Aboriginal Australians’ language, which unnerves Lachlan since he cannot understand it. Lachlan shouts at the man, who begins crawling on all fours in the dirt, and a sense of power and domination fills Lachlan’s young heart. Lachlan shouts another order and begins marching the man back towards the settlement to show the girls’ father, still pointing his stick as if it were a rifle. The man has a hobbling limp; one of his legs is shorter than the other.
The children’s confusion over whether this man is white or black, Commonwealth settler or Aboriginal Australian, immediately suggests that the concept of race is not as strictly categorical as many characters in the story will presume. Additionally, Lachlan’s fear of a language he cannot understand also suggests that such racism is tied in with xenophobia, the fear of language or people that are unknown and foreign.
Themes
Within an hour, the other settlers have arrived to see the strange man. The settlement is sparse and isolated, with a number of family-owned properties, a single store, a bare post office, and a shack that acts as a pub. They are twelve miles from the nearest town, which is itself quite small. The settlers look on, wondering if the odd man is mute, though they realize he can’t be, since he spoke some English words. Lachlan feels briefly insecure, being only a small twelve-year-old child, but he quickly recovers, feeling empowered by this hostage he has captured and hoping that the feeling of power does not leave him.
The settlement is established as isolated and sparse, suggesting that the settlers themselves are exposed and vulnerable to misfortune and violence, with no one near enough to offer aid. Although this isolation does not justify the settlers’ xenophobia or racism, it does explain their insular and fearful dispositions, which will play a major role in the latter half of the story. Notably, Lachlan senses that his newfound power may leave him, demonstrating even now, he knows on some level that it is merely a façade.
Themes
Janet McIvor, one of the two girls, reflects on how strangely her cousin Lachlan suddenly behaves, as if he were a powerful man and not a mere child like the rest. Her mother Ellen frets over Lachlan running about “like an actor on a stage” until her father Jock, Lachlan’s uncle, cuffs him upside the head, shaking him from his fantasy of power. Janet remarks that she and her sister Meg found the man just as much as Lachlan did, but no one is interested in their perspectives. They continue to observe the man, odd and hobbling, with the “baffled, half-expectant look of a mongrel that has been often whipped but still turns to the world, out of some foolish fund of expectancy.”
Throughout the story, Janet will both feel oppressed by her own gender and its narrowly-defined role in the mid-1800s and annoyed at men’s social posturing and delusions of power, as hinted at here. This contrast between women’s cool-headedness and simple resolve and men’s need to self-aggrandize appears constantly throughout the novel, setting the baseline from which both Janet’s and Lachlan’s characters must grow.
Themes
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The man came from lands to the north that are unexplored, foreign, and hostile. His presence reminds the settlers that all around them, even among the settlement at night, tribes of Aboriginal Australians roam, crossing over borders and boundaries. Such borders can be enforced by a shotgun by day, but by night they become meaningless, mere features of the vast landscape that has always been there. At night, there’s no indication that the Lands Office in Brisbane, hundreds of miles away, dedicated each parcel of land to a certain family as their exclusive property. So the settlers do their best during their days to strip the land of “every vestige of the native,” to turn it civilized and cultivate it into a copy of their homelands.
The settlers’ own recognition that their borders mean very little at night and are easily crossed by traveling Aboriginal Australians suggests that such property lines are themselves rather meaningless, based on the flimsy authority of an office hundreds of miles away. By challenging the notion of settler-owned property, the author also challenges the concept of colonialism itself, since the seizure and development of lands is the fundamental basis of colonialism.
Themes
Gemmy Fairley, as the “black white man” calls himself, manages to sign and summon the occasional English word. Over the course of the afternoon, the settlers form an idea of where he seems to have come from. As far as they can tell, Gemmy lived with the Aboriginal Australians for 16 years, before which he was aboard a ship until he was thrown overboard. Lachlan is particularly adept at interpreting Gemmy’s signs, and the man begins deferring more and more often to the boy. The excitement of it all—compared to the daily drudgery of the settlement—gives the whole encounter a “carnival” atmosphere; the young children especially enjoy it. Lachlan feels his sense of power return as he becomes the interpreter between the adults and the strange man.
Although Lachlan is no longer holding Gemmy as his hostage or exerting his willpower to dominate another person, Lachlan still feels empowered by proving himself useful and vital to the community. This suggests that Lachlan’s fantasies of power are not necessarily based on violence itself, but rather on the act of taking charge and being admired by his community. This fits with Lachlan’s ideas about gender that come up later, because he believes that, as a man, he ought to be the center of attention to whom everyone turns.
Themes
Gemmy passes the blue rag from his waist to the adults and they examine it, noting that it seems to be part of a salt-stained sailor’s jacket, before Jock McIvor hands it back to him. Jim Sweetman, a former blacksmith and respected figure among the settlers, is ashamed at the spectacle the settlers are making of the man, who is hardly clothed and dancing about like a “plain savage, or marionette or imbecile.”
This section briefly introduces Jim Sweetman, who will function as the primary voice of reason and temperance outside of the McIvor family. Jim Sweetman’s shame at Gemmy’s state of undress suggests that he is a modest man propriety, less prone than others to gawk at a man for his own amusement.
Themes
Gemmy starts pointing to features of his body and shouting their names in uncertain English, his proximity to the white settlers seemingly restoring his faculties for the language. Gemmy pulls a hammer away from a surprised young man with a harelip—Hector Gosper—who is embittered when the other settlers laugh at him, since he is “very sensitive of his standing.” After Gemmy has pantomimed hammer and nail and remembered the names for both, he hands the hammer back to Hector, who strikes him in the chin and calls him a racial slur.
Hector’s shame at being laughed at and sensitivity about his “standing” suggest that posturing and concern for one’s appearance in the community is not limited to Lachlan, but rather seems to be a trait common to men in the settlement. This insecure male concern with social position and image will later contrast with the self-confidence and independence of the female characters. Additionally, Hector’s use of a racial slur against Gemmy—who is actually white—shows both how toxic racism can be and how the lines between races are essentially arbitrary.
Themes
The next afternoon, Mr. Frazer, a minister and botanist, sits in the schoolhouse with George Abbot (the settlement’s 19-year-old schoolmaster), Gemmy, and Lachlan, though they soon send Lachlan away. Gemmy’s English continues to return to him as Mr. Frazer spends the afternoon interviewing him, getting as wide a grasp of Gemmy’s life as he is able and instructing George to transcribe all that he hears. George resents this and also resents Mr. Frazer generally, feeling that acting as a “mere clerk” is beneath him and will disrupt the image of power and authority that he has tried to foster for himself amongst the settlers and students. However, George “dared not challenge the older man, despised himself for it, and resented the occasion all the more.”
Mr. Frazer and George Abbot are introduced and established immediately as contrasting characters. While Mr. Frazer seems genuinely interested in understanding who Gemmy is and where he came from, George is immediately depicted as petty, obsessed with the same illusions of power and authority as most other men in the settlement. However, the fact that George is too weak-willed to actually challenge Mr. Frazer confirms that his illusions of strength and authority are only that: illusions.
Themes
As George is transcribing the interview into pages of writing, he intentionally misrepresents a phrase every so often as an act of passive rebellion against Mr. Frazer, and feels an impish glee at his betrayal. Frazer does not notice, however, and when they are finished, he hands the seven pages of transcription to Gemmy. Gemmy regards them very seriously, even though he cannot read them, and sniffs them intensely, smelling the black ink. Mr. Frazer stores the pages in his pocket, though Gemmy hopes that they will reappear, for to him they seem magical, containing some of the essence of himself, which he feels has been lost to him. He is grateful to Mr. Frazer for wanting to know about his life, but imagines that if he could steal the pages back and sit with them, the whole of himself might return; Willet, the rats, all of it.
The pages containing Gemmy’s life story symbolize his connection to white civilization, in that they are the only record of his life as an ethnically European man. On the one hand, this seems positive, as the pages reflect that someone has taken the time to know him as a person, not just as a vagabond or a curiosity. On the other hand, the greatest abuses of Gemmy’s life have come at the hands of white men, and by the end of his time with the settlers he will feel as if the pages, to which he attributes a mystical power, are in some way draining his spirit and keeping alive the demons of his early childhood. However, in the moment, Gemmy is thankful that the pages have been written and imagines they might restore the parts of his life he has forgotten.
Themes
