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
16 years before, Gemmy wakes on a beach, unsure of where he is or even entirely who he is. His body is frail, mottled with open sores and tiny creatures feeding on them. A group of Aboriginal Australians finds Gemmy, unsure of what sort of creature he may be until they see his stomach and belly button and realize that he is human like them. Gemmy is confused; he had expected to see Willet there, standing above him. The native people give him water and carry his frail frame with them back to their camp. In the evening, he manages to sit upright and crawl toward them. They are stunned into silence, so he grins and makes silly faces as he had once done on the streets back home to earn sympathy. The Aboriginal Australians eventually burst into laughter and toss bits of food to him, which he takes and eats.
The author’s description of Gemmy’s life is fragmented, working slowly backwards over the course of the novel, seemingly reflecting Gemmy’s own fragmented memories as they return to him. The fact that the indigenous people do not immediately realize he is a human being suggests that they are unfamiliar with white people and so are wary. This suggests that xenophobia is not strictly limited to white people but is rather s a common human behavior. However, the reception that the “black” Aboriginal Australians give a white man is markedly kinder than the reception the white settlers give a man they perceive to be black.
Themes
In the morning, when the Aboriginal Australians rise to leave, Gemmy follows after them at a distance, inching closer until he folds himself among the stragglers of the traveling group. When they stop, Gemmy stops with them and establishes himself amongst them, on the outskirts of the group. The people “though wary, made no dispute.” As Gemmy learns the language and ways of this new world—which he discovers is not altogether different from his old world—he loses the language, customs, and even his memories of home, though he had not known very much to begin with. Though occasionally memories of objects or words float through his psyche and cause a sense of loss, he imagines that they must belong to some other person, some other life.
Gemmy’s transition between the world and identity of a Commonwealth citizen and the world and identity of the Aboriginal Australians seems almost fluid, suggesting that in spite of what the settlers believe, there are no true categorical differences between white and black people. Gemmy’s realization that this new world is not so different from his own world again suggests that though appearances and cultures may differ greatly, the essential elements of human society remain the same everywhere.
Themes
Gemmy becomes one of the native Australians. After a time, when they tell the story of his arrival, it seems to him as if they are talking of someone who lived eons ago. Although he is an accepted member of their tribe, many things are restricted from him (including women), which keeps the thin strands of his old life present in him and prevents him from falling entirely into his new identity. At night, he still hears the echo of former words and objects; the word “boots” enters his mind along with a picture of leather and laces that he cannot comprehend. Although the tribespeople tell him that it is because his spirit does not rest, Gemmy imagines that there must be something more tangible to his visions than the spirit world.
Although Gemmy is able to transition from one world to another, the restrictions placed on him as an outsider and a white person suggest that the Aboriginal Australians, though they are more accepting of Gemmy than the settlers will be later, still harbor their own feelings of insularity and xenophobia. Gemmy is accepted among them, but he is still not taken as a total and equal member of their society, suggesting that on some level, they still regard him as a white man, a foreigner, and an other.
Themes
Eventually, news arrives from the south that there are “spirits, white-faced, covered from head to foot in bark and riding four-footed beasts that were taller than a man.” Gemmy is determined to find out what such things could be. Gemmy begins seeing signs of white people: horse dung, which brings to mind a memory of clattering hooves that he cannot quite understand; a child and mother, which gives him a rush of affection; a bearded man with a flannel shirt and an “axe,” the name of which rushes into his head; a woman feeding chickens; and a clothesline hung with shirts that seem to Gemmy like colorful ghosts.
The confused description of white people suggests that the Aboriginal Australians have never come into contact with white people or horses before, other than finding Gemmy on the beach. Thus for both the white settlers and the black Aboriginal Australians, contact with another civilization represents an unknown and potential fear, which again suggests that xenophobia—and the racism it can fuel—are not unique to white society. Notably, however, the Aboriginal people don’t seem eager to harm the white strangers, which shows how individuals and societies can control their reactions to racist impulses.
Themes
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One day Gemmy spies the McIvors’ hut and sneaks up to it in the evening, listening to the voices and trying to remember the words, believing that if he can do so, some part of him will return, and perhaps he can be recognized. The next day, when Gemmy runs towards the fence on which Lachlan, Janet, and Meg had spied him, he is not intending to abandon his tribe. He only wants to close the distance between himself and the children, to prove to himself that he is connected to such people somehow, that all that separates them is the length of the ground. Gemmy climbs atop the fence, gripping with his toes and balancing with his arms, waiting to be struck down by the bullet from Lachlan’s rifle. When Meg gives a shriek, Gemmy loses his balance and falls “on all fours on the other side.”
Although Gemmy’s balancing upon the fence is not detailed much in the first scene, the image will be revisited multiple times throughout the story, symbolizing the divide between the world of the settlers and the world of the Aboriginal Australians, with Gemmy balancing precariously between them. Gemmy’s falling over the fence, rather than intentionally coming down to meet the white children, also symbolizes the manner in which he is unintentionally drawn into the world of the settlers and away from the Aboriginal Australians.
Themes
