Babel

by R.F. Kuang

Amherst similarly refused to kowtow to the Jiaqing Emperor and was subsequently refused admission to Peking at all.

Imagine wanting something from somone but refuse to respect their status, culture, or traditions

‘The problem is that the Chinese have convinced themselves that they’re the most superior nation in the world,’

Lol and Britain hasn't?

The Chinese treat women very badly. They have no conception of chivalry. They hold their women in low esteem and, in some cases, don’t even permit them to leave the house. You’ll be better off if they think you’re young men. You’ll learn that Chinese society remains quite backwards and unjust.’ ‘I wonder what that’s like,’ Victoire said drily, accepting the cap.

The hypocrisy is physically painful

That’s unjust seizure of British property, I tell you. Surely that’s grounds for war.

If they came to English with goods that have been banned and it was confiscated, it would not be considered wrongfully taking a foreign countries goods and grouds for war, they would say its their rigt because its their land and they make the rules. Its so crazy to know that there are actually like this so blinded by their own prejudice they genuinely cant process the notion that they aren't the only ones entitled to protecting their land and assets.

‘Mr Baylis, I’m a Chinaman.’ Mr Baylis, for once, fell silent. His eyes roved over Robin’s face, as if trying to detect the truth of this statement in his features. Then, to Robin’s great surprise, he burst out laughing. ‘No, you’re not.’ He leaned back and clasped his hands over his chest, still guffawing. ‘Good Lord. That’s hilarious. No, you’re not.’ Professor Lovell said nothing.

I don't even know how to articulate why but my heart just broke for Robin. This makes me think of when I go to visit my family in Zambia and people there call me white, not even as an insult but as if it's a good thing because we've been so conditioned to covet lighter skin, as if its a good thing to be disconnected from your culture against your will.

They’re hopeless, I told you, all of them – a whole country, and not a single competent English speaker among them.’

Id love to see this guy attempt to learn any Chinese language and pronounce everything correctly all the time

‘Would you let someone come in and tell you what words in your own language mean?

‘They want what they want, and they won’t settle for anything less. They don’t respect you, or your government. You are obstacles to be resolved, one way or another.’ ‘Disappointing. For all their talk of rights and dignity.’ ‘I think those principles only apply to those they find human.’

‘What now?’

IM SO FUCKING SCARED RIGHT NOW

What he couldn’t wrap his mind around was what a truly fleeting moment the actual killing had been – no more than a split second of impulsive hatred, a single uttered phrase, a single throw.

Gives "words have power" a whole new meaning

‘We are all implicated now,’ Ramy hissed. ‘We cleaned that room. We hid the body for you. To protect you. We’ve all lied a dozen times now; we are accessories in this crime, and if you go to the hangman, you doom us all. Do you understand?’ Chastened, he hung his head and nodded. ‘Good,’ said Ramy. ‘Now back to bed.’

I saw someone say that Robin is an unreliable narrator and exaggerates his relationship with his cohort because he craves family and connection. It is all I can think about as the three help him, but only do so because either way they would be implicated (barring Letty), and it's the only way to protect themselves.. I do agree that he is an unreliable narrator, which is what adds a lot of the tension to the story, as we're trapped by his experiences throughout the story, but I don't think he exaggerates their relationships any more than anyone else would. He is incapable of seeing all of the intricacies of all the dynamics between one another, but he is also moved and motivated by the real companionship that exists between them.

Letty’s bad spells were the hardest to deal with. For Letty, alone among them, did not understand why Ramy and Victoire had come so readily to Robin’s defence. She assumed they’d protected Robin because they were friends.

How could they tell her she was being delusional? That it was insane to imagine that the British legal system was truly neutral, that they would receive a fair trial, that people who looked like Robin, Ramy, and Victoire might kill a white Oxford professor, throw his body overboard, lie about it for weeks, and then walk away unscathed? That the fact that she clearly believed all this was only evidence of the starkly different worlds they lived in?

they knew she was unable to act in any way other than how she felt. So it did feel cathartic, seeing her break down like this, knowing that at last she understood how they all felt. It was a relief to see that in her they still had an ally.

I recognize the catharsis in her finally beginning to grasp onto the issues they have been desperately trying to get her to understand. But at the end of the day, she still can't acknowledge or even fundamentally accept the reality of what they are telling her.

My point exactly

‘So we keep telling them the same thing,’ said Victoire. ‘He’s holed up in his house, he’s grievously ill, which is why he’s not answering letters or taking visitors, and he told us to come back without him.

This feels like an egregiously bad idea. Am I just dumb or is the best plan not to pretend he was on a later ship and say he was lost at sea? Which now that I'm thinking more probably wont work because there wouldn't be any record of said ship. Either way, pretending he's essentially there with them feels like a terrible move and it's giving me anxiety.

Professor Playfair took a step closer and bent his head conspiratorially towards Robin’s ear. ‘You know,’ he whispered, ‘our friends at Hermes would like very much to know where he is.’

Im gonna fucking throw up

‘There are no kind masters, Letty,’ Anthony continued. ‘It doesn’t matter how lenient, how gracious, how invested in your education they make out to be. Masters are masters in the end.’

Figures emerged from within the shelves. Robin recognized them all – they were all former students or current graduate fellows he’d seen lurking around the tower.

I wonder what criteria recruits need to meet before they're fully allowed in like Anthony. Obviously, Griffin was essentilly never going to fully trust Robin because he could tell Robin wasn't sure of anything to begin with. But Griffin was already needing to fake his death in his thrid year. Ramy and Victoire were literally doing the stealing unlike Robin, how long would it have been for them to be fully embrced if everything hadn't happened? What did these other students do differently that allowed them such membership first?

‘Appeal to their human nature and sympathy for the oppressed,’ said Letty. ‘Ha,’ said Ramy. ‘Ha, ha, ha.’

Ramy is so fucking funny, I love him so much.

‘Because they don’t care,’ said Robin. ‘It’s a war happening in a foreign land that they can’t even imagine. It’s too distant for them to care.’ ‘What makes you so sure of that?’ asked Cathy. ‘Because I didn’t,’ said Robin. ‘I didn’t, even though I’d been told time and time again how awful things were. It took witnessing it happening, in person, for me to realize all the abstractions were real. And even then, I tried my very hardest to look away. It’s hard to accept what you don’t want to see.’

‘You want me to translate things for white people,’ said Robin.

I've always used the terminology "making things more palatable," but I love the notion of such topics being translated in a separate 'white' language for their understanding.

‘I think I’ll take a stroll round the front,’ said Letty. ‘The yard feels a bit . . . a bit penned in.’ ‘Keep to the block, then,’ said Anthony. ‘Don’t be seen.’ ‘Yes – yes, of course.’

I don't trust her for shit

Seconds later the front door crashed inwards, and Oxford policemen poured inside.

OMFG SHE ACTUALLY FUCKING DID IT. There is no amount of swearing or any possible way for me to articulate what I'm feeling right now. It's one thing to abandon them or go back to the school; it's another thing entirely for her to completely betray them. I'm both completely unshocked and not surprised it ended up this way, but unfortunately disappointed because I stupidly hoped for the best.

‘They won’t hurt anyone, as long as you come quietly. If you don’t resist. They’ve killed the rest, but they’ll take you alive. Unhurt.’

The way she doesn't even give a fuck that the others have been killed. The way all they were trying to do at the moment was literally prevent a war, and she couldn't even let them do that because she is so dependent on her worldview that she's incapable of accepting anything else. I'm bothered by how fucking willfully naive she remains. The mere idea of something threatening her current state of life and ideology, being enough to jeapordize the lives and safety of her 'friends,' all while now acting as an active agent in the empire, suffocating and subjecting them.

One day Robin would ask himself how his shock had turned so easily to rage; why his first reaction was not disbelief at this betrayal but black, consuming hatred.

Beause at the end of the day you always knew she wasn't truly with you even if you tricked yourself into not seeing her true nature, into believing she was with you. Letty is Robin's Evie. She is his true catalyst in this story, not Professor Lovell.

He knew now how it felt to truly want a person dead, to want to tear them apart limb by limb, to hear them scream, to make them hurt.

You and me both

She loved him, she loved him almost like Robin loved him

HOW DID ROBIN LOVE HIM? TELL ME! THIS IS GOING TO BE THE FUCKING DEATH OF ME. What could have been is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.

Sterling Jones was just the same as Letty, except without the shallow sympathy of purported friendship. They both thought this was a matter of individual fortunes instead of systematic oppression, and neither could see outside the perspective of people who looked and spoke just like them.

theoretical rights like freedom and liberty would be debated between those who already enjoyed them, stale concepts that, upon their readers’ graduation ceremonies, would promptly be forgotten.

He wanted it to, for once, feel the pain that had made possible its rarefied existence. ‘I want it to crumble.’ Victoire’s throat pulsed, and he knew she was thinking of Anthony, of gunshots, of the wreckage of the Old Library. ‘I want it to burn.’

Her friends were always going on about the discrimination they faced as foreigners, but why didn’t anyone care that Oxford was equally cruel to women?

"Equally" is a strong word. I love how she can conveniently not acknowledge the fact that that Victoire is both a woman and a foreigner and therefore faces not only the issues Letty does but the issues the boys deal with as well. But intersectional thinking hasn't been invented yet and even if it had Letty lacks the capacity for it.

Of course she could support lobbying for change, as long as it was peaceful, respectable, civilized. But then they were talking about blackmail. About kidnapping, rioting, blowing up a shipyard. This was vindictive, violent, awful.

Bothered by violence until it's against the people who look like her (I wonder why that makes her so uncomfortable), cause she sure as shit didn't seem bothered by it when leading to all the grad students getting killed.

All that wonderful, original research, hidden away in the imperial archives for fear of what it could inspire.

Professor Chakravarti gave a guilty shrug. ‘Might have shown him.’ ‘Anand!’ ‘Oh, what was the harm?’ ‘Well, this, clearly—’

I fucking love Prof Chakravarti. All I can think about is the sound on tiktok "my Shayla!" cause he's amazing and I want to give him a hug

‘Perhaps two dozen to start,’ said Robin. There must have been hundreds of rods in the room. He had the impulse to kick them all down, to just grab one and use it to bat down the others. ‘Don’t we want to be dramatic?’

I am absolutely loving how increasingly unhinged Robin is becoming. Now pushed so far to the brink not only by the innumerable injustices he's witnessed, played a part in, and was complicit in, in such a short amount of time, but also the absolute betrayal of someone he thought he could trust, leading to the death of his loved one. It just showed him that they will never understand or care.

‘I want a spectacle. I want Armageddon. I want them to think that a dozen Magdalen Towers will fall every day until they listen to us.’

Robin had expected only violence, not solidarity, and he wasn’t sure what to do with this show of support. It defied what he had come to expect of the world. He was scared to let it make him hope.

I've been very cynical and pessimistic this whole book so it hasn't shown very much but this does go to show that people can come together in times of need. Obviously, the strikers don't give a fuck about global liberation for people of colour but you take blessings where you can

‘This is not coming from tactics.’ Her voice sharpened. ‘It’s coming from grief.’ He couldn’t turn around. He didn’t want her to see his expression. ‘You said yourself you wanted this place to burn.’ ‘But even more,’ said Victoire, placing a hand on his shoulder, ‘I want us to survive.’

As much as I'm finding this whole thing cathartic, it's so heartbreaking to watch Robin crumbling under the weight of his grief and betrayal. He's completely lost his faith in people, and at this point, I don't even think he's really fighting to stop the war. He's on a self-loathing suicide mission meant to punish those who hurt him, and stopping the war is just a happy coincidence

The Spectator printed a cartoon illustration of emaciated children being crushed to death under the wheels of some nebulous contraption, which they captioned WHITE SLAVES OF THE SILVER REVOLUTION. In the tower, they laughed themselves silly over this comparison, but the general public seemed genuinely horrified.

‘I know it hurts.’ Victoire’s throat pulsed. ‘I know – I know it feels impossible to move on. But your motivating goal cannot be to join Ramy.’ A silence. Robin considered denying this. But there was no point lying to Victoire, or to himself. ‘Doesn’t it kill you?’ His voice broke. ‘Knowing what they’ve done? Seeing their faces? I can’t imagine a world where we coexist with them. Doesn’t it split you apart?’

Violence was the only thing that brought the colonizer to the table; violence was the only option.

In a previous one of my classes we talked about how white feminism was about gaining a seat at a preexisting table while keeping its formation wholly untouched. We said that in order to gain any kind of actual change we need to dismantle the existing table entirely and rebuild it from the ground up, but how do you do that? Lets say you aren't as… determined as Robin is to do absolutely anything to get the outcome you desire, what other options are there? What other routes can be taken if the people already sitting at the table refuse to give up their seats because why would they?

only Robin and Victoire stood in the lobby, watching Professor Chakravarti stride down the front steps towards the barricades.

My Shayla!

‘It was like an exercise in hope,’ she said after a pause. ‘Loving her, I mean. Sometimes I’d think she’d come around. Sometimes I’d look her in the eyes and think that I was looking at a true friend. Then she’d say something, make some off-the-cuff comment, and the whole cycle would begin all over again. It was like pouring sand into a sieve. Nothing stuck.’

‘Imagine that,’ he said. ‘A brown man refuses an English rose. Letty couldn’t bear that. The humiliation.’ He wiped his sleeve against his eyes. ‘So she killed him.’

There was no future without Ramy, without Griffin, without Anthony and Cathy and Ilse and Vimal. As far as he was concerned,

She looked grief-stricken, vulnerable, the wretched heroine of a terrible fairy tale. But that, he reminded himself, was the advantage of the image Letty occupied. In this country, she had the face and colouring that inspired sympathy. Among them, no matter what happened, Letty alone could walk out of here innocent.

‘I want to believe in the future we’re fighting for, but it’s not there, it’s just not there, and I can’t take things day by day when I’m too horrified by the thought of tomorrow. I’m underwater. And I’ve been underwater for so long, and I wanted a way out, but couldn’t find one that didn’t feel like some – some great abdication of responsibility. But this – this is my way out.’

This makes me again question how you dismantle a 'table' for rebuilding without making such sacrifices. The only reason Robin is able to make this sacrifice is because it's not a sacrifice at all for him, it's his craving for self-destruction and depression-induced suicidal thoughts. To topple an empire such as this what can you truly do if you're not as far gone as Robin cause I don't see the others staying in the tower with him when he does this. I see them doing what Letty said because realistically the situation is that hopeless

‘We have to die to get their pity,’ said Victoire. ‘We have to die for them to find us noble. Our deaths are thus great acts of rebellion, a wretched lament that highlights their inhumanity. Our deaths become their battle cry. But I don’t want to die, Robin.’ Her throat hitched. ‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be their Imoinda, their Oroonoko.* I don’t want to be their tragic, lovely lacquer figure. I want to live.’

‘I want to stay.’ Ibrahim cast Juliana an anxious glance. ‘I don’t . . . I don’t want to run.’

Honestly, I have less faith in people than I thought cause I'm being proven wrong here.