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Chapter 9
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
Jock hears the news within the hour from several different sources. Barney comes to him in “exasperation” looking rather “miserable,” and Jock pities him. The distance between them has been steadily growing, and this event, putting Gemmy at odds with the settlement, seems as if it will only make things worse. Jock feels sad and lonely contemplating this. When Jock promises to speak to Gemmy about it, Barney mentions the stone, fearful even of the concept of it. Jock regards this as absurd superstition and is “sickened” that the settlers have sunk so far into their fear. Ned Corcoran approaches, making accusations, and Jock loses his temper defending Gemmy—which the other settlers see as a “disturbing confirmation of change.”
Jock’s angry defense of Gemmy marks a critical moment in his personal growth and a departure from the norms of the settlement. Although Jock was formerly preoccupied with maintaining a good standing among his friends and neighbors, his defense of Gemmy suggests that he is putting his commitment to Gemmy, his family, and his sense of ethics before the will of his small community, which is beginning to act like a mob. Jock’s loneliness suggests that by standing up for what he believes in, he is alienating himself from his insular community.
Themes
Jock wonders if he has changed, if the time that Gemmy has spent with his family has spurred some new development in himself. He feels as if he has only ever seen the world through the eyes of others, eyes that demanded he be socially respectable amongst his peers. Now, looking through his own eyes, his “singular self” as he walks his property, the land seems beautiful, full of color and complexity, teeming with insects and birds and life. There is an “easy pleasure” to the world that Jock has never known before. But as pleasurable as this is, it is also “disturbing,” since he knows that such feelings lie outside the boundaries of “what was common.”
Jock’s newfound pleasure in the earth, in Australia’s color and sounds and wildlife and nature, suggests that the change he is undertaking is a positive one, and if anything, his preoccupation with being seen as respectable held him back from the simple joy of living. This is an important step in Jock’s development both as a man and as an adult, when he begins to let go of the need to be seen as powerful and recognizes that there is more to life than social standing.
Themes
Ellen notices the change in Jock, and though at first she worries about the soured relationships with their neighbors and Jock’s withdrawal from his friends, the “sense of being wronged drew them together.” Jock takes a renewed interest in understanding his wife beyond the day-to-day work that she does, gazing at her intensely as if they had just begun courtship. They take to walking to the ridge together in the evenings and looking at the land.
Jock and Ellen are drawn together by adversity; his newfound interest in his wife suggests that letting go of his obsession with being perceived as powerful has freed his attention to focus on his love for his partner. This further depicts Jock’s character change as difficult, but healthy.
Themes
Jock asks Ellen if she longs for home, implicitly asking if they made a mistake in coming to Australia. Ellen internally considers the struggle each day is here, though more than the labor it is the sheer size and vast loneliness of the country that oppresses her. She finds it strange that none have lived here before, that there are no graves to precede their own, and that they will be the first dead. What Ellen misses most, however, is the two children who died when they lived in the Downs.
Ellen’s feeling about being the first people to die in this place is understandable on the one hand, but on the other shows a lack of awareness or consideration of the Aboriginal people who have walked those lands for generations, Ellen’s perspective suggests that even good and decent settlers struggle to consider the Aboriginal Australians as people in the same manner that they view themselves.
Themes
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Ellen tells Jock about a tightrope walker she once saw in Scotland with her father, pantomiming the acrobat’s cautious walk. Jock watches her, entranced, and says that he wishes he had been there to see the wonder in her eyes.
Jock’s careful attention to Ellen and desire to know her as a person, rather than just a wife, again suggests a change in his perception of both himself as a man and Ellen as a woman.
Themes
