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
Although the Aboriginal men who visit Gemmy do not bring him a stone as Andy said, they do offer him a reminder of the life and the world he left behind when he joined the white people in their settlement. As they sit together, communing and wandering together through the spirit world, Gemmy realizes that his time with the white settlers has made him weak, separated as he is from the wilderness that he considers “his mother.” Gemmy’s visitors offer him the gift of remembrance, concerned that Gemmy is falling back “into the thinner world of wraiths and demons that he had escaped, though never completely, in his days with them.” Having offered Gemmy the chance to commune, to feel the presence of the land and be reinvigorated by its strength, the two Aboriginal men leave.
For Gemmy, this seems to be the first time he considers he may have made a mistake in joining the white settlers, that even though he looks like them, he may have been better off leaving such a life behind. Once again, the narrative refers to the Aboriginal Australians’ spirit world, this time positing that it is in some sense more real or substantial than that white settlers’ world. Yet again, the brief glimpse given of the Aboriginal Australians’ spirit world reiterates how different their perception of the world is from the settlers’.
Themes
Andy arrives minutes later and Gemmy feels as if the air is immediately “infected” by his presence, by the hollow and restless look in Andy’s eyes, the “emptiness” that makes him mad. Gemmy knows how to handle Andy—by simply ignoring him until Andy loses his steam—as he knows how to handle most of the men in the village. He has learned to see each man through their own eyes and deal with them “as they dealt with themselves.” All the men of the settlement often harass or cajole Gemmy, but he can handle it and they always insist that they “meant no harm.” However, his dreams are truly oppressive, summoning distant memories of men who beat, harassed, and abused him as a boy.
The instant deadening effect that Andy’s presence has on Gemmy suggests that the white settlers’ society is itself toxic in some way, perhaps because of their preoccupation with power or their need to dominate and recreate the landscape. The sickening effect that Gemmy feels in the presence of white men such as Andy is likely furthered by his history of abuse at the hands of other white men, men who were insecure about their own sense of power.
Themes
Gemmy awakes from one such dream with another’s hand pressed over his mouth, believing it to be only an extension of the dream, but fearing that, perhaps, the demons in his dreams have discovered how to step into the real world. Rough hands pull Gemmy out of the darkness and force a bag over his head. They drag Gemmy out into the open, where he can hear the whispers of a whole group of men, and he is pushed back and forth, beaten, and knocked off his feet multiple times. As they continue to jostle him, Gemmy feels water around his legs and when he falls again, his head is forced underwater and his arms are pinned back. Amidst the splashing and the gasps, Gemmy hears Jock’s voice. His attackers flee, and the sack is pulled from his head.
Once again, the settlers who fear the Aboriginal Australians and imagine them to violent and savage ironically commit egregious acts of violence themselves, contradicting any notion that white people are superior for being more civilized or peaceable. This irony further suggests that the white settlers’ racism towards the Aboriginal Australians is essentially xenophobic, based in their own fear of a people, language, and way of life which they do not even attempt to understand.
Themes
