Remembering Babylon Themes

Remembering Babylon tells the story of a Commonwealth colonial settlement living in the remote Australian bush (wilderness) near Queensland in the mid-19th century. The white settlers fear the Aboriginal Australians—whom they refer to and regard as “black” in comparison with their own whiteness—and view them as fundamentally different beings from themselves. However, those conceptions are challenged by the arrival of Gemmy, a white man who was raised by an Aboriginal community, speaks their language…

The mid-19th-century settlement in the Australian wilderness is a patriarchal society, governed and operated by men, with women relegated primarily to keeping the home or supporting their husbands. Despite this social system, women in the novel play a critical role, exhibiting strength in the face of men’s weakness. The book contrasts men’s power, which is all about being perceived as strong and dominating, with women’s power, which is based upon their own quiet, internal strength…

In Remembering Babylon, Gemmy’s presence in the settlement and the tension it creates forces several characters—including Lachlan, Jock, and George Abbot—to reexamine what they believe about themselves and the world. For Jock and Lachlan in particular, the realization that the world is less trustworthy than they once imagined and that they are less significant than they might wish is a crucial force in their coming of age, as they step…

As a work of post-colonial literature—literature that counteracts earlier literary depictions of colonialism as noble and just—Remembering Babylon suggests that the Commonwealth settlers’ claims to land lived in by Aboriginal Australians for countless of years are baseless and absurd. Although the settlers in the novel insist that the land belongs to them by right of law, the superficial nature of legal borders suggests that such colonial claims are groundless and artificially constructed; the settlers’…