Remembering Babylon

by

David Malouf

Gemmy Fairley Character Analysis

Gemmy is the central protagonist of the story. Although Gemmy is white and spends his first twelve years in England with his abusive father figure Willett, he lives with Aboriginal Australians for 16 years. By the time he meets the McIvors, Gemmy speaks, acts, and even looks like the “black” indigenous people—his skin is darkened by the sun and his blonde hair is dirty. Throughout Gemmy’s life, he is haunted by the “demons” of his painful childhood and is looking for a place to belong and people who will love him. After Gemmy leaves the native Australians to seek out the settlers who look like him, he forms a particular attachment to the first people he meets, Lachlan and Janet and the rest of the McIvor family. Although Gemmy is eager to please, the majority of the white settlers are unsettled by him, since he reminds them of their xenophobic fear of the indigenous Australians who live in the surrounding wilderness. The McIvors slowly form a fondness for and protectiveness of Gemmy, but the derision of the other settlers and the strangeness of white people causes Gemmy’s spirit to be ill at ease with the feeling that he does not belong. This feeling eventually causes Gemmy to leave the settlement to return to the spiritually-attuned life of the Aboriginal Australians, where he lives for several years before being killed in a raid by white colonists. Although Gemmy’s own journey ends in tragedy, his life becomes a catalyst for the growth of several others characters including Jock, Lachlan, and Janet, and his presence also brings the racism of the colonists into full view. Moreover, to Mr. Frazer, Gemmy’s hybrid status as a white person who adapts to the Australian wilderness like a native person represents the future, a model of what all the settlers should someday become. Likewise, George Abbot comes to see Gemmy’s “naked endurance” of suffering, abuse, and evil as a profound expression of “essential humanity,” the most innocent and pure a human being could be.

Gemmy Fairley Quotes in Remembering Babylon

The Remembering Babylon quotes below are all either spoken by Gemmy Fairley or refer to Gemmy Fairley. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Racism and Xenophobia Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

After a time the man began to grunt, then to gabble as if in protest, but when Lachlan put the stick into his spine, moved on faster, producing sounds of such eager submissiveness that the boy’s heart swelled. He had a powerful sense of the springing of his torso from the roots of his belly.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Lachlan Beattie
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:

The smallest among them, their young faces very grave and intent, looked up to see how their parents would take it, and when no protest appeared, wondered if some new set of rules was in operation, and this blackfeller’s arrival among them was to be the start of something.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley
Page Number: 15
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Since [Gemmy] had somehow found his way into the world, his object, like any other creature’s, was to stay in it by any means he could. He had a belly to feed.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:

So when news drifted up from the south of spirits, white-faced, covered from head to foot in bark and riding four-footed beasts that were taller than a man, he was disturbed, and the desire to see these creatures, to discover what they were, plucked at him until he could not rest.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

The man was troubled. Gemmy saw it and was watchful. Jock’s fear of getting on the wrong side of his friends might in the end be more dangerous to him, he thought, than the open hostility he met in the settlement, where he was always under suspicion, and always, even when no one appeared to be watching, under scrutiny.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Jock McIvor, Ellen McIvor
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:

It was the mixture of monstrous strangeness and unwelcome likeness that made Gemmy Fairley so disturbing to them, since at any moment he could show either one face or the other; as if he were always standing there at one of those meetings, but in his case willingly, and the encounter was an embrace.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

When [Gemmy] first came among them he had been unable to tell from their wooden expressions, and the even more wooden gestures, what they had in their heads. They hid what they felt as if they were ashamed of it, or so he had decided; though whether in front of others or before themselves he could not tell.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley
Page Number: 63
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Barney, in his anxious way, was forever out there pacing the line and looking for signs of trespass; except there was no line, and the trespass too might be no more than a shadow on Barney’s thoughts, and how could you deal with that?

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Barney Mason
Page Number: 71
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

At one point, out in the open, [the Aboriginal Australians] paused and looked up, bold as brass, to where he stood, pretty well hidden he had thought, and saw him, he was sure of it; any road, recorded he was there. Then boldly turning their backs on him and with no further interest, in whether or not he was observing, the old one, high-shouldered and floaty, still in front, walked on. The bloody effrontery of it! The cheek! The gall!

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Andy McKillop
Page Number: 94
Explanation and Analysis:

And the stone, once launched, had a life of its own. It flew in all directions, developed a capacity to multiply, accelerate, leave wounds; and the wounds were real even if the stone was not, and would not heal.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Ellen McIvor, Barney Mason, Andy McKillop
Related Symbols: The Stone
Page Number: 102
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

“For God’s sake, man, when did ye ever tak heed o’ what Andy says? We’re no’ scared o’ stones. Ah thought that was the difference between us and them.”

Related Characters: Jock McIvor (speaker), Gemmy Fairley, Barney Mason, Andy McKillop
Related Symbols: The Stone
Page Number: 105
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

They got him to his feet, brushed him down, told him he wasn’t hurt, that he was a good fellow and that they had meant no harm. (It was true. They thought they didn’t.)

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

Laying aside his rifle, [Jock] crawled with [Gemmy] into that musty, dark-smelling place, and did a thing he could not for his life have done a week, perhaps even an hour ago: he sat huddled close to him in the dark, and when he shivered, drew him closer, pulled the old moth-eaten blanket round the two of them.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Jock McIvor
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

[Lachlan] was sorry for it. But it was absurd to have Gemmy always tagging at his heels, and he blushed now to recall a time when he regarded it as a sign of his power. How puffed up he had been with his own importance! What a fool he must have appeared to the very fellows he had meant to impress!

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Lachlan Beattie
Page Number: 158
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

“Grandeur” was the word that came to [George], and he did not reject it. It did not seem too large for what he saw at times in a man [Gemmy] who had been kicked from one side of the world to the other, not even knowing perhaps what part of it he was in, except that he was there in his own skin.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, George Abbot
Page Number: 180
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

[Janet] was surprised, reading his letter, by its courtesy, its tentativeness, its tenderness she might have said, and recalling her own prickly tone felt foolish.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Lachlan Beattie, Janet McIvor
Page Number: 188
Explanation and Analysis:

“I sometimes think that that was all I ever knew of him: what struck me in that moment before I knew him at all. When he was up there [on the fence] before he fell, poor fellow, and became just—there’s nothing clear in my head of what he might have been before that, and afterwards he was just Gemmy, someone we loved.”

Related Characters: Janet McIvor (speaker), Gemmy Fairley, Lachlan Beattie
Related Symbols: The Fence
Page Number: 194
Explanation and Analysis:
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Gemmy Fairley Quotes in Remembering Babylon

The Remembering Babylon quotes below are all either spoken by Gemmy Fairley or refer to Gemmy Fairley. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Racism and Xenophobia Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

After a time the man began to grunt, then to gabble as if in protest, but when Lachlan put the stick into his spine, moved on faster, producing sounds of such eager submissiveness that the boy’s heart swelled. He had a powerful sense of the springing of his torso from the roots of his belly.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Lachlan Beattie
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:

The smallest among them, their young faces very grave and intent, looked up to see how their parents would take it, and when no protest appeared, wondered if some new set of rules was in operation, and this blackfeller’s arrival among them was to be the start of something.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley
Page Number: 15
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Since [Gemmy] had somehow found his way into the world, his object, like any other creature’s, was to stay in it by any means he could. He had a belly to feed.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:

So when news drifted up from the south of spirits, white-faced, covered from head to foot in bark and riding four-footed beasts that were taller than a man, he was disturbed, and the desire to see these creatures, to discover what they were, plucked at him until he could not rest.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

The man was troubled. Gemmy saw it and was watchful. Jock’s fear of getting on the wrong side of his friends might in the end be more dangerous to him, he thought, than the open hostility he met in the settlement, where he was always under suspicion, and always, even when no one appeared to be watching, under scrutiny.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Jock McIvor, Ellen McIvor
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:

It was the mixture of monstrous strangeness and unwelcome likeness that made Gemmy Fairley so disturbing to them, since at any moment he could show either one face or the other; as if he were always standing there at one of those meetings, but in his case willingly, and the encounter was an embrace.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

When [Gemmy] first came among them he had been unable to tell from their wooden expressions, and the even more wooden gestures, what they had in their heads. They hid what they felt as if they were ashamed of it, or so he had decided; though whether in front of others or before themselves he could not tell.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley
Page Number: 63
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Barney, in his anxious way, was forever out there pacing the line and looking for signs of trespass; except there was no line, and the trespass too might be no more than a shadow on Barney’s thoughts, and how could you deal with that?

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Barney Mason
Page Number: 71
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

At one point, out in the open, [the Aboriginal Australians] paused and looked up, bold as brass, to where he stood, pretty well hidden he had thought, and saw him, he was sure of it; any road, recorded he was there. Then boldly turning their backs on him and with no further interest, in whether or not he was observing, the old one, high-shouldered and floaty, still in front, walked on. The bloody effrontery of it! The cheek! The gall!

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Andy McKillop
Page Number: 94
Explanation and Analysis:

And the stone, once launched, had a life of its own. It flew in all directions, developed a capacity to multiply, accelerate, leave wounds; and the wounds were real even if the stone was not, and would not heal.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Ellen McIvor, Barney Mason, Andy McKillop
Related Symbols: The Stone
Page Number: 102
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

“For God’s sake, man, when did ye ever tak heed o’ what Andy says? We’re no’ scared o’ stones. Ah thought that was the difference between us and them.”

Related Characters: Jock McIvor (speaker), Gemmy Fairley, Barney Mason, Andy McKillop
Related Symbols: The Stone
Page Number: 105
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

They got him to his feet, brushed him down, told him he wasn’t hurt, that he was a good fellow and that they had meant no harm. (It was true. They thought they didn’t.)

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

Laying aside his rifle, [Jock] crawled with [Gemmy] into that musty, dark-smelling place, and did a thing he could not for his life have done a week, perhaps even an hour ago: he sat huddled close to him in the dark, and when he shivered, drew him closer, pulled the old moth-eaten blanket round the two of them.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Jock McIvor
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

[Lachlan] was sorry for it. But it was absurd to have Gemmy always tagging at his heels, and he blushed now to recall a time when he regarded it as a sign of his power. How puffed up he had been with his own importance! What a fool he must have appeared to the very fellows he had meant to impress!

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Lachlan Beattie
Page Number: 158
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

“Grandeur” was the word that came to [George], and he did not reject it. It did not seem too large for what he saw at times in a man [Gemmy] who had been kicked from one side of the world to the other, not even knowing perhaps what part of it he was in, except that he was there in his own skin.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, George Abbot
Page Number: 180
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

[Janet] was surprised, reading his letter, by its courtesy, its tentativeness, its tenderness she might have said, and recalling her own prickly tone felt foolish.

Related Characters: Gemmy Fairley, Lachlan Beattie, Janet McIvor
Page Number: 188
Explanation and Analysis:

“I sometimes think that that was all I ever knew of him: what struck me in that moment before I knew him at all. When he was up there [on the fence] before he fell, poor fellow, and became just—there’s nothing clear in my head of what he might have been before that, and afterwards he was just Gemmy, someone we loved.”

Related Characters: Janet McIvor (speaker), Gemmy Fairley, Lachlan Beattie
Related Symbols: The Fence
Page Number: 194
Explanation and Analysis: