Remembering Babylon

by

David Malouf

Lachlan Beattie Character Analysis

Lachlan is Ellen McIvor’s nephew, but he lives with the McIvor family as one of their children. After emigrating from Scotland to Australia when he is nine years old, Lachlan is among the first people to meet Gemmy, taking him hostage by pretending that the stick he is carrying is a rifle. As a child, Lachlan harbors delusions of grandeur and a belief in his own power—particularly over Janet, since she is a girl—which his “capture” of Gemmy only reinforces. For the first months after Gemmy’s arrival, Lachlan brings the man everywhere with him, at first because he believes it makes him seem powerful and later because Gemmy has become his companion. Although Lachlan’s delusions of power and prestige exemplify the social posturing of the settlement’s men, his notions begin to waver after the McIvor family is put at odds with the other setters over Gemmy’s presence. After Gemmy is attacked in the night by other settlers, Lachlan’s view of himself and the world is shaken, in part because Janet was present for the event while he was sleeping like a child. The attack also reveals the wickedness of the grown men of the settlement, suggesting an evil in the world that Lachlan had never accounted for. These realizations mark Lachlan’s coming of age and the moment that his delusions of grandeur fall away to be replaced by a sobering realization of his human limitations. Lachlan pushes away from Gemmy in a bid to seek out his own adulthood, but when Gemmy disappears, Lachlan is haunted for years by guilt over rejecting his loyal friend and companion. As an adult, Lachlan eventually tracks down what may or may not be Gemmy’s remains, choosing to believe that the bones are Gemmy’s so that he can move on with his life. Eventually, Lachlan becomes a prominent politician.

Lachlan Beattie Quotes in Remembering Babylon

The Remembering Babylon quotes below are all either spoken by Lachlan Beattie or refer to Lachlan Beattie. 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:
Chapter 5 Quotes

The struggle between them was fierce. Till Lachlan came, [Janet] had been used to going her own way, unconditioned and free. She had no limit to herself. Now she resented his easy assumption that he was superior, should take the lead in all their doings, and that she must naturally yield to him.

Related Characters: Lachlan Beattie, Janet McIvor
Page Number: 55
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

[Ellen] lived in the demands of the moment, in the girls, in Lachlan, and was too high-spirited, too independent, to care whether other women approved of her.

Related Characters: Lachlan Beattie, Janet McIvor, Jock McIvor, Ellen McIvor
Page Number: 77
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:

Something had been destroyed in [Jock] that could not be put right. [Lachlan] watched his uncle drift back after a time to his friends, to Barney Mason, Jim Sweetman, but the days of unselfconscious trust in his standing among them, and the belief that to be thought well of by such fellows was the first thing in the world, were gone.

Related Characters: Lachlan Beattie, Jock McIvor, Barney Mason, Jim Sweetman
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

Sir George, [Mr. Frazer] decides, exudes a magnificent air of unreality that includes everything he looks upon. He has got close enough to feel its disintegrating effect in every part of him.

Related Characters: Lachlan Beattie, Mr. Frazer, Sir George
Page Number: 169
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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Lachlan Beattie Quotes in Remembering Babylon

The Remembering Babylon quotes below are all either spoken by Lachlan Beattie or refer to Lachlan Beattie. 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:
Chapter 5 Quotes

The struggle between them was fierce. Till Lachlan came, [Janet] had been used to going her own way, unconditioned and free. She had no limit to herself. Now she resented his easy assumption that he was superior, should take the lead in all their doings, and that she must naturally yield to him.

Related Characters: Lachlan Beattie, Janet McIvor
Page Number: 55
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

[Ellen] lived in the demands of the moment, in the girls, in Lachlan, and was too high-spirited, too independent, to care whether other women approved of her.

Related Characters: Lachlan Beattie, Janet McIvor, Jock McIvor, Ellen McIvor
Page Number: 77
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:

Something had been destroyed in [Jock] that could not be put right. [Lachlan] watched his uncle drift back after a time to his friends, to Barney Mason, Jim Sweetman, but the days of unselfconscious trust in his standing among them, and the belief that to be thought well of by such fellows was the first thing in the world, were gone.

Related Characters: Lachlan Beattie, Jock McIvor, Barney Mason, Jim Sweetman
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

Sir George, [Mr. Frazer] decides, exudes a magnificent air of unreality that includes everything he looks upon. He has got close enough to feel its disintegrating effect in every part of him.

Related Characters: Lachlan Beattie, Mr. Frazer, Sir George
Page Number: 169
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: