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Literature Annotations

Malouf, David Remembering Babylon

Genre Novel (200 pp.)

KeywordsAcculturation, Colonialism, Communication, Cross-Cultural Issues, Developing Countries, Empathy, Family Relationships, Human Worth, Individuality, Nature, Power Relations, Scapegoating, Society, Survival

Summary The story takes place in the mid-19th century in a remote settlement of Queensland, Australia. One day as a group of children are playing at the edge of the village, a remarkable figure stumbles out of the bush. This dark, unkempt person (Gemmy) turns out to be a white man who fell from a ship 16 years earlier (when he was a 19 year old sailor) and has lived with an aboriginal tribe ever since. He hardly remembers English, and his culture and sensibility have become those of his adopted people.

At first Gemmy creates a sensation in the settlement and people want to help him, despite his obvious savage mentality (after all, he isn't even embarrassed by nakedness!). He goes to live with the McIvor family, whose daughter, Janet, and nephew, Lachlan Beattie, were among the children who found him. While Mrs. McIvor accepts Gemmy with Christian love, her husband Jock is skeptical.

In fact, it soon becomes clear that there are major tensions in the village regarding Gemmy. Has he really become "one of them" (a black)? Can he be trusted? He seems harmless enough--almost a pleasant imbecile--but perhaps it is all a subterfuge. Perhaps he is in contact with THEM.

Among the European settlers, there are two views of how to handle the blacks. One group believes they should simply be wiped out--every one of them killed--because they are savage, worthless, and couldn't possibly become (real) Christians. A second group has a more romantic view. They think the black people could be "tamed" and become their servants. They envision themselves as owners of large plantations (as in the southern United States) worked by multitudes of happy and harmless black servants.

Representatives of both groups try to win Gemmy's confidence and obtain information regarding the whereabouts and plans of the black tribes. He, however, remains silent about these matters, although pleasant and deferential toward everyone. An uneasy truce holds until one day two aboriginal people are observed visiting with Gemmy on McIvor's property. This creates an uproar, which eventually leads some of the God-fearing whites to commit acts of vandalism and to injure Gemmy.

To preserve the peace, the McIvors send Gemmy to live with Mrs. Hutchence, an eccentric

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woman who lives on the margin of the settlement. However, he soon disappears into the wilderness, but not until he retrieves--and destroys--what he thinks are the seven pieces of paper on which Mr. Frazier, the minister, had written Gemmy's life story soon after he had emerged from the bush.

Commentary

This novel portrays a cultural chasm, rather than a cultural clash. Gemmy, imbued with the mysticism and earth-centeredness of the native Australians with whom he has spent 16 years, is (precisely as the settlers fear) no longer "white." Gemmy cannot identify with the European culture that was once his by heritage. No wonder he can hardly remember how to speak the English language.

The Europeans, secure in their conviction that the aboriginal people are sub-human savages, cannot even consider treating them as persons. Some of the settlers want to eliminate the blacks completely (genocide), while others would prefer simply to rule them. Gemmy slowly comes to the realization that to save himself he must return to his aboriginal "roots." Ironically, this escape doesn't work--an epilogue to the story implies that Gemmy comes to a bad end.

How much goodness is there in the human spirit? This novel primarily explores the casual, unthinking darkness that threatens to engulf us all. Yet, the story also reveals glimmers of light in many individual persons.

Publisher VintageEdition 1993Place Published

London

Annotated by Coulehan, Jack Date of Entry 07/03/98Last Revised 11/30/06  Copyright © 1993 - 2012

New York University

Remembering Babylon- Chapter 1February 13, 2012

The opening chapter of Remembering Babylon orients the reader towards the main ideas and conflicts through Malouf’s manipulation of language, construction of Gemmy and through the manner in which the Whites respond to the ‘Other’. Gemmy is a white man, but has been ‘contaminated’ by his contact with the Indigenous people. As his recollection of his white past grows faint, he becomes eager and seeks a white settlement, establishing his arrival with the words, ‘Do not shoot! I am a B-b-British object.’ The deliberate choice of object rather than subject implies the fact that Gemmy was and still is an object owned by the British however; he is also an Aboriginal object, thus, the lack of a definite belonging foreshadows future conflicts in

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the novel.  Malouf has shaped the language to orient us readers to side with the whites, the colonisers of whom we come from. The children react prejudicially upon seeing Gemmy, calling him as ‘A black!’ dehumanising his identity as a human by referring to him by his physical attributes. We also notice the tension and uncertainty in which the white people have towards the Aboriginals, immediately jumping into conclusions, ‘We’re being raided by blacks. After so many false alarms it had come.’ We notice Gemmy also referred to as ‘it’, showcasing his unworthiness of being human, as well as how foreign he appears to be from the white’s perspective.  Their harsh descriptions of Gemmy orient us readers to have an initial hesitation towards him, a technique used to brainwash us readers into employing the same discriminative mentally embodied by the whites during that time period.

We also notice Malouf’s intentional distribution of power in a manner which would seem unfamiliar to us readers. Through the use of 3rd person point of view, the children have been granted with authority, instead of the adult, Gemmy. This role reversal is critical in establishing Gemmy as being part of the ‘Other’; he is not human, he is weak or rather, a ‘scarecrow that had somehow caught the spark of life’ or a ‘wounded waterbird’ who had escaped the chaotic ‘forbidden’ land where only the uncivilised dwell.  Malouf has once again dehumanised Gemmy in order for us to feel uneasy and view Gemmy from the children’s perspective. Furthermore, Gemmy is described as to being, ‘savage’, ‘fearsome’, and ‘belonged to the Absolute Dark.’ It is here where we come to realise the fear in which the Whites have, the fear of being able to lose their identity like that of Gemmy. All Gemmy wants to do is rekindle the Spirit which lived within him, the spirit which would ultimately make him accepted in society but he is restricted due to his ambiguity of being neither Aboriginal nor White in terms of customs and his exterior. Therefore Gemmy’s quest of regaining his heritage coupled with the White’s fear of the ‘Other’ adjusts us readers to the future conflicts and main ideas. 

Janet’s Ephiphany with the BeesPosted on March 5, 2012

Janet McIvor’s epiphany in chapter 15 presents two key themes that David Malouf develops throughout Remembering Babylon, serving as a rare example of a European settler coming to terms with how Australia’s land is a part of their new life, whilst also presenting a character coming to terms with how their identity includes Australia. Janet has been constructed so far in the novel as an alternative representation to the European settlers, feeling free and unconcerned when roaming the settlement and it’s surrounds, where other characters are fearful, and extremely wary of the natives. Her experience sets her aside from the other settlers, and makes her the first European since Gemmy who has been able to let go of their past self

The character is constructed as even more of a subversion of settler’s representation, when she becomes one with the bees during the chapter, and is able to let go of her past self. All of the other settlers clung to their European identity, through the stories of the past, and by trying to implement European practices upon the new land by maintaining ignorance to possibilities of alternatives that aboriginals and the land could offer them. Janet, conversely now saw the way

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forward, and her old self seemed, “like a charred stump,” as she was able to see the world new, through, “Gemmy’s eyes,” – the only other European who was able to let go of their past, and accept the Aboriginals, and the land.

The bees themselves are not merely bees, but serve here to represent the land, and nature as a whole in claiming Janet, altering forever how she views the world. “It was not the bees themselves who had claimed her; they had been only little furry winged agents of it,” demonstrates this, how Janet’s experience with the bees is her connection to nature, and a newly found appreciation for it, similar to the way in which Aboriginals, and Gemmy view the land. Gemmy is as close as any white man will come to becoming one with the land, and the attempted murder, and discomfort that he creates in the white community represents how afraid of connecting with Australia, Aborigines and the land, the new settlers are. In this way, the bees swarming over her body, and her subsequent attitude change towards her ‘old’ self represents again what the settlers fear. Janet has lost part of ‘it’ through her experience, rejecting her old, European-constructed self, and embracing a new life, something that almost all settlers have struggle, or been incapable of achieving.

This passage is perhaps the clearest example in the book of a settler embracing the land, and leaving themselves behind willingly. Others who try to accept the aboriginals and their attitude towards the land are rejected- Jock accepts Gemmy and is rejected by society, Mr Frazer is rejected by the governor- but Janet is at Mrs Hutchence house, which is a refuge from some of the settler’s attitudes.

Remembering Babylon by David Malouf

List Price: $10.00Pages: 208Format: Paperback ISBN: 0679749519Publisher: Vintage

The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group's reading of David Malouf's Remembering Babylon. We hope they will aid your understanding of a novel that presents readers with the verbal energy of a prose poem (and with some of the finest nature writing since D. H. Lawrence's), a psychological discernment worthy of Virginia Woolf, and the thematic resonance of an Australian Genesis. In the case of Remembering Babylon, the myth is that of the settling of Australia and of the fateful contact between white Europeans and black aborigines.

That contact--and all its tragic repercussions and missed possibilities--is represented by the sudden appearance, in an unnamed Queensland settlement in the 1840s, of Gemmy Fairley, an English castaway who was rescued by aborigines and has lived among them for sixteen years before crossing into the territory claimed by his countrymen. With his sun-blackened face and straw-white hair, his twitching gait and few, inarticulate scraps of English, Gemmy is a

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confusing--and increasingly suspicious--figure to his new hosts. On a practical level, some settlers fear that Gemmy is a spy sent by the aborigines, who are thought to have massacred settlers elsewhere in the new territory. But he also represents the dread possibility that civilization, language--whiteness itself--are qualities as provisional as their farms and tumbledown shacks. Looking at Gemmy, they find themselves wondering, "Could you lose it? Not just language but it. It." [p. 40]

In time these suspicions prove too great, the gulf between cultures too insurmountable: Gemmy is beaten and driven away. His few allies, the Scots farmer Jock McIvor, his nephew Lachlan Beattie, his elder daughter Janet, and the botanizing Reverend Frazer, are permanently estranged from their community--and indeed, from their ingenuous former selves. In that outcome, David Malouf sees a fall from grace that has implicated succeeding generations of European Australians, a loss of the potential self embodied in this "in-between creature" [p. 28] who was neither wholly white nor wholly black but "a true child of the place as it will one day be." [p. 132] Drawing on the true story of Gemmy Morril, Malouf has created a haunting, melancholy, and stunningly written parable of the limits of imagination and the intractibility of human nature, of the moment in which two peoples met on the ground of a new world--and one of them turned away.

DISCUSSION1. Malouf tells his story in an intermittent and at times circuitous manner. Typically, he reports the essentials of an incident, traces its repercussions through different witnesses, and then returns to fill in its missing details--particularly, the actions and motivations of his central character. Where else does Malouf employ this narrative strategy? What does he accomplish by telling his story from shifting points of view and by withholding critical revelations?

2. In contrast to his use of multiple points of view, the author employs a stable and somewhat distanced narrative voice. That voice can express profound and often lyrical insights into each of the novel's characters, yet it belongs to none of them. How does the tension between a fixed, omniscient voice and shifting, limited points of view affect your perception of the novel's events?

3. Lachlan and his cousins first encounter Gemmy while pretending to hunt wolves on the Russian steppes. What irony is implicit in this game? Where else in Remembering Babylon do characters behave as though they were somewhere other than the Queensland bush? What are the consequences of this tendency?

4. Lachlan "captures" Gemmy with an imaginary weapon, a stick masquerading as a gun. Why does Gemmy surrender? What power does he recognize in this object and in the gesture that animates it? Where else in Remembering Babylon do simple objects acquire magical power?

5. To the children, the landscape from which Gemmy emerges is "the abode of everything savage and fearsome, and since it lay so far beyond experience, not just their own but their parents' too, of nightmare, rumours, superstitions and all that belonged to Absolute Dark." [p. 3] How is this initial description amplified or altered in the course of the novel? At what moments does the

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landscape seem to physically permeate its inhabitants, as, for example, on page 18, where Abbot feels his blood beating in unison with the shrilling of insects in the bush?

6. How do Gemmy and his aboriginal rescuers view the same landscape? What language does Malouf use to convey their differing perceptions? Which vision of the land triumphs by the novel's climax? At what points--and through what agency--do some of the novel's English characters come to see the Australian terrain as Gemmy does?

7. Gemmy's first words are "Do not shoot. I am a B-b-british object!" [p. 3] What does it mean to be an object rather than a subject? What meanings accrue to this phrase in light of Gemmy's experience as a child in England--and as a man-child in a white settlement in Australia?

8. Gemmy returns to his countrymen at a certain moment in Australian history, at a time when settlement in Queensland has advanced only halfway up the coast and many villages--including the one in which the action unfolds--are still unnamed. How has Australia changed by the novel's climax? What is the implied relation between Gemmy's fate and the progress of Australian history?

9. The fact that Gemmy is first seen balanced precariously on a fence is indicative of his status as an "in-between creature" [p. 28], poised between European and aboriginal identities. How does Gemmy's treatment by the aborigines both parallel and differ from his treatment by Englishmen? How does Gemmy view himself? What other hybrids or transitions does he embody?

10. Language plays a critical role within this novel, beginning with Gemmy's sense that the words in which Abbot transcribes his story contain "the whole of what he was" [p. 20]. At what other points in the book does the spoken or written word act as a magical shorthand, one that not only connotes but invokes and transforms reality? How does Malouf's prose style mirror this effect? How does the novel's sense of language parallel its vision of objects and landscape?

11. It is tempting to see Gemmy as an innocent. But has Gemmy merely stumbled into colonial territory or has he come there with a purpose--and, if so, what is it? Is your earlier sense of Gemmy altered by the discovery that, as a boy in England, he may have killed his master?

12. Behind every imposture lies a second self. In Gemmy's case, that other self is the one that lies dormant during his life with the aborigines and that first surfaces when he tastes the mash that Ellen McIvor is throwing to her chickens [p. 31]. How does Malouf describe the interplay between his characters' different selves? Which of his characters realize their inner selves by the novel's end?

13. In the course of Remembering Babylon, certain characters change, not only in relation to Gemmy, but in relation to each other. Where, and in whom, do these changes occur? To what extent is Gemmy the cause of these transformations?

14. Repetition is an essential part of this novel's structure. It is not just that certain incidents--Gemmy's fall from the fence, his meeting with the aborigines--are narrated from different points

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of view. In Remembering Babylon episodes and objects have a way of doubling. What is the effect of these multiplications? How do they constitute a cyclical counterpoint to the linear progression of the narrative?

15. By the simple fact of his presence, Gemmy divides his hosts into two camps: those who tolerate and in time love him, and those who are determined to drive him away. What is it that distinguishes Gemmy's protectors from his tormentors? What qualities do the two groups have in common?

16. Although Malouf tells his story from multiple points of view and tells us much about characters as diverse as a thirteen-year-old boy, a middle-aged farm wife, and an otherworldly parson, he leaves his aboriginal characters enigmas. We know them only through Gemmy, who has lived among them but is not entirely of them. Why might Malouf have chosen to do this? What is the effect of this gap in the novel's psychological fabric?

17. Nature is one of this novel's central mysteries, not only in the form of the land, with its strange life-forms and reversed seasons, but in its human aspect. The Reverend Frazer describes Gemmy as someone who "has crossed the boundaries of his given nature." [p. 132] What vision of human nature does Remembering Babylon present? What is the implied relationship between human nature and the natural world?

18. What is the "Babylon" of this novel's title? What "Jerusalem" does Malouf suggest as its counterpart?

"Breathtaking...To read this remarkable book is to remember Babylon well, whether you think you've been there or not. "

——The New York Times Book Review