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
Mrs. Hutchence and Leona move Gemmy into a small, sparse room—though cheerfully painted—and Leona tends to the injuries he sustained during the attack. However, Gemmy feels panicky and restless in the room, both because of the sense of enclosure and the smell of a small chest, made from foreign wood, which gives him the feeling of “his spirit being touched and interfered with.” The scent draws him back into distant memories, his “maggot stage,” when as a tiny child he and many other toddlers lived on the floor of a timber mill. He was kept there to sweep sawdust, surviving by eating the oily grime that collected at the base of the machines until, at five or six years old, he was taken away and became “Willet’s boy.”
After living in the bush with Aboriginal Australians and under an open lean-to with the McIvors, four walls seem rather like a cage to Gemmy. This markedly contrasts with George’s earlier reaction to stepping into such a room, which reminded him pleasantly of civilization, suggesting that Gemmy belongs to a different world, one in which human boundaries lack meaning. Gemmy’s definition of his own earliest memories as his “maggot stage” suggests not only horrific trauma and abuse, but also dehumanization so thorough that he does not even recall himself as a human toddler or child.
Themes
The room in Mrs. Hutchence’s house sets Gemmy into a different kind of sleep, “a sleep that belonged to a different life and produced different demons; the kind that live in rooms.” Gemmy dreams of Willet, who is the first human he can remember and who turns Gemmy from a maggot into a boy. Everything in Gemmy’s world, including himself, belongs to Willet and exists to serve Willet. “He is Willet’s boy, as the boots are Willet’s boots.” Willet alternates between beating Gemmy or giving him “slobbery kisses.” Gemmy cannot imagine that any other life exists.
That Gemmy finally recognizes himself as a “boy” when he belongs to Willett suggests that Gemmy places an inordinate amount of value on belonging, either to a place or a person. This revelation of Gemmy’s past and glimpse into his sense of self sheds light on his relationship to the McIvors, who also give him a sense of belonging.
Themes
Willet is a rat-catcher, using Gemmy, some ferrets, and a dog as the tools of his trade. Willet is also a collector of stolen and discarded keys, and Gemmy often wonders what they open. He often dreams of stealing one of the keys, finding the box that it opens, and hiding in it until Willet finds the box and claims him. They work together, six days a week, flushing rats out of Regent’s Park’s ponds, and Gemmy finds small joys amidst the crowds of people. Seeing all the other “street urchins,” Gemmy is grateful to belong to someone. Gemmy has to handle rats often during the day, so his arms and ears are riddled with bite marks and sores, and at night he dreams of being consumed by them.
That Willet occupies a nearly god-like position in Gemmy’s mind, despite his lowly social position, further suggests the weight that Gemmy places on belonging to someone, especially in the way that it offers him a sense of identity. In a perverse way, Gemmy’s journey from maggot to Willett’s boy and onward represents a manner of growing up, of moving from a non-person (in his own mind) to a human being with a name and a “family,” even if that family member is brutal and abusive. Gemmy’s story hints at how even the tiny communities of individual families can become toxic when they’re too insular.
Themes
One night when Gemmy is 11 or 12 years old, after Willet has fallen asleep, drunk, Gemmy lights the little room they live in on fire out of a sudden desire to assert himself and his buried “resentments.” Though Gemmy tries to wake Willet to show him what he has done, Willet is still unconscious and the fire spreads. Gemmy, in a panic, climbs out the window and runs until he no longer recognizes any of the streets, climbing a rope and tumbling into a lidless crate where he decides to take shelter.
Although Willett occupies a god-like position in Gemmy’s mind and is the closest thing Gemmy has to a father figure, Gemmy’s sudden act of violence proves that some part of him understands the injustice of the cruelty with which Willett treats him. It seems, though, that Gemmy did not actually mean to murder the man, only to show him he could act in retaliation.
Themes
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Though Gemmy expects Willet to find him and wake him, he is instead woken by a sailor, and Gemmy discovers that he fell asleep aboard a ship that is now sailing through the ocean. Gemmy spends the next two years of his life on ships, moving from one to the next as crews and captains tire of his presence, until one crew simply throws him overboard.
Suffering and rejection are the only consistent elements of Gemmy’s young life. That he survives such abuses at all suggests an extraordinary, even heroic level of resilience and ability to endure various hardships.
Themes
Gemmy is thus returned to the present, sickened and tormented in Mrs. Hutchence’s little room. He thinks often of the McIvors, whom he misses terribly even though he sees Janet often, and of the pages that George and Mr. Frazer wrote about Gemmy’s life. In time, Gemmy becomes convinced that the pages are the keys to his suffering, to releasing the demons of his past that were magically contained in the letters written on the paper. He decides that he must retrieve them.
Though the pages symbolically represent Gemmy’s life and connection to white society, Gemmy believes they hold an actual magic power as well. There is a tragic irony in the reader’s knowledge that merely possessing pages of writing cannot truly have any power over Gemmy’s demons or return the parts of himself that he feels are not whole, particularly since he cannot read.
Themes
