Major Story Spoilers Below
“Power did not lie in the tip of a pen. Power did not work against its own interests. Power could only be brought to heel by acts of defiance it could not ignore. With brute, unflinching force. With violence.”
Kuang, p. 432
Before I even opened Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of The Oxford Translators’ Revolution, I had a sneaking suspicion I was going to enjoy it. As someone who prides herself on how educated I sound when I’m trying to be pretentious, with a soft spot for found families (and RF Kuang), I had an instinct that I would enjoy this book.
I was right, of course.
As the title implies, the book is set at Oxford University in the 1830s. Our protagonists work to become master translators and use silver for the British Empire. In this world, silver has magic by pulling power from what is missed in translation and manipulating language to make the society run. The book critiques social power and mobility while observing the sneaky ways that educators withhold their knowledge from others.
The story follows one young man, Robin Swift, who is brought to England from China at the age of 12 after his mother dies. He is raised by his guardian Professor Lovell and taught Greek and Latin. He enrolls in Oxford where he meets some of his closest friends and cohort - a group made up of the charming Ramy from India, compassionate Victoire born in Haiti raised in France, and headstrong Letty born and raised in Britain. The four become inseparable as they are ostracized from the rest of the student body at Oxford, both due to their studies, race, and gender. Our characters experience a host of racism and sexism throughout the story, as they’re never allowed to forget they’re not welcome, which becomes a big part of the conflict within the story. Eventually, through some betrayal and a secret society, their friendship falls apart. They make one last stand at the Babel institution and end up destroying the tower, changing the sheer fabric of society in one foul swoop.
As far as books go, this one will probably remain one of my favorites. The prose is magnificent, the characters are well developed and realistic, their friendships are believable and there’s an effective underlying tension throughout the whole thing. Kuang bluntly delivers a book that is punchy as it is entertaining and the whole thing is riddled with footnotes that further solidify her authority. It’s a critique of authority while using the same techniques to assert itself. It’s one of my favorite types of stories, one that picks apart the very thing it’s emulating. As a reader, I found this book hugely enjoyable.
So naturally, when I went online to look at how readers are responding to what I consider a masterpiece of a book I was flummoxed by the sheer amount of negative critique it’s gotten. As I looked further, I realized I really shouldn’t have been surprised at all.
Major spoiler alert:
Letty Price — the only white person in the cohort — murders Ramy in front of everyone after betraying the secret society that was going to help them take down the empire. And some pockets of the internet were not impressed.
The choice to make the only sympathetic main white character the twist villain is a bold one and I commend it. It’s an effective subversion of expectations–while remaining in character for Letty. Here’s the thing with Letty — and the type of people Letty represents — when push comes to shove she will protect her country, foreigners be damned. Even Robin admits he understands her: “She would find any flimsy excuse, accept any convoluted alternative logic before she let go of her illusions. He knew, because not so long ago, he’d done the same,” (Kuang, p. 355). This level of empathy and understanding demonstrates Kuang knows exactly what she’s doing.
As Americans, we have grown accustomed to non-white characters being the villain. Following 9/11, there was a spike in American action movies including a Middle Eastern terrorist organization and that’s just in the last 20-some years. White American filmmakers have historically made caricatures out of other cultures, colors, and classes. In Babel, that is flipped. Kuang takes this tradition, this expectation that the white characters will be the heroes and subverts it to demonstrate how American (and other dominant Western) media has treated characters of color historically. Not only does she do this as a response, but Letty’s betrayal aligns with Kuang’s deconstruction of Imperialism.
Imperialism is about proving superiority over other cultures and ways of thinking to continue to build this empire. People are not going to fight for something they don’t believe in, so it’s about making the Empire larger than life, a cause worth dying for. That is what the betrayal is truly about. It’s about the bigger picture, not Letty as an individual. And the book even says this: In a conversation where Letty is asking a Black character why he chose to join the secret rebel society instead of staying with the university, Ramy replies: “‘She thinks it’s about personal happiness … But Letty, we’ve told you, it doesn’t matter how happy we were personally, it’s about the broader injustice–’” (Kuang, p. 379).
In the same sense, this book–and Letty’s betrayal– is not about her on an individual level, but rather how an empire responds to rebellion. Letty herself is a complex character with a lot of nuance, but she represents something larger than herself. She represents how oppressors and colonizers react when they feel the status quo is threatened.
Letty serves as critique for the way that those who benefit from Imperialism are blinded to the injustice of colonization. She continues to believe the empire is eternal and the structure that’s been established is immutable and good. Kuang argues throughout the narrative that the perspective that the empire needs to fall cannot coexist with someone who believes it to be immortal and indestructible. Letty had to be the villain because she is the ultimate obstacle to taking down the immovable forces of the world: a refusal to let go of the status quo.
Ultimately, despite the tragic ending, I think this book is optimistic. Kuang brings us into a world where the actions of a few can topple systems built by and for many. While it does end on a somber note for our characters, there is hope that a few people’s actions can change the course of a history that feels otherwise unchanging.
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