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Mr. Herbert
Willet is a drunken rat-catcher who keeps Gemmy as a servant and kind of surrogate son for several years in England when Gemmy is just a child. Willet is horrible and abusive, but since he is the only person Gemmy knows and he offers Gemmy his only sense of identity—Gemmy recalls that he was not a boy until Willet found him and turned him into “Willet’s boy”—Gemmy views him with an almost god-like reverence. Since Gemmy does not know any other life than the miserable one he lives with Willet, he is reasonably content for several years. However, one evening, on a resentful whim, Gemmy sets fire to their room while Willet is passed out drunk. Though Gemmy only meant to scare Willet, he cannot wake him and the fire spreads, forcing Gemmy to leave Willet behind, presumably to be burned to death.
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Willet Character Timeline in Remembering Babylon
The timeline below shows where the character Willet appears in Remembering Babylon. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...could steal the pages back and sit with them, the whole of himself might return; Willet, the rats, all of it.
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Chapter 2
...realize that he is human like them. Gemmy is confused; he had expected to see Willet there, standing above him. The native people give him water and carry his frail frame...
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Chapter 16
...the machines until, at five or six years old, he was taken away and became “Willet’s boy.”
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...different life and produced different demons; the kind that live in rooms.” Gemmy dreams of Willet, who is the first human he can remember and who turns Gemmy from a maggot...
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Willet is a rat-catcher, using Gemmy, some ferrets, and a dog as the tools of his...
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One night when Gemmy is 11 or 12 years old, after Willet has fallen asleep, drunk, Gemmy lights the little room they live in on fire out...
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Though Gemmy expects Willet to find him and wake him, he is instead woken by a sailor, and Gemmy...
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