"Violence shows them how much we’re willing to give up. Violence is the only language they understand, because their system of extraction is inherently violent. Violence shocks the system. And the system cannot survive the shock."
Babel or The Necessity of Violence, also known as Babel: An Arcane History or simply Babel is a 2022 Low Fantasy / Historical Fiction novel by Rebecca F. Kuang.
Set in an alternate 1800s Britain, it tells the story of Robin Swift, a Chinese orphan taken to England by a professor at Oxford University, where he studies Chinese, Greek, and Latin until he is old enough to enroll at the Royal Institute of Translation, AKA Babel. It is there where he’ll learn to aid the British government via silver-working. But serving Babel would mean betraying China.
Babel serves as a thematic response to The Secret History and a critique of academia, capitalism, and imperialism.
As of February 2024, the book has been optioned for television
by production company Temple Hill.
This work provides examples of:
- Accidental Murder: Lovell's death at Robin's hands... sort of. You have to "mean it" to make a silver bar work, and in that moment, he very much meant to hurt him. However, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing; he just so happened to have a deadly weapon in his hands the moment Lovell finally pushed him too far. Even Robin isn't sure if he'd meant to do it or not.
- Affectionate Nickname: Robin Swift is nicknamed "Birdie" by his dearest friend Ramy almost as soon as they first meet. Ramy is the only person who uses the nickname regularly; Robin dislikes when other people try, even other friends of his.
- Arc Words: Wuxíng, or formlessness/invisibility. The silver bar this phrase is carved on appears throughout the book, and represents how as scholars of colour and women, the cohort is invisible in Britain.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Professor Playfair comes across as a fun, approachable, likeable instructor. Underneath, he's a callous man who values theatricality over people or morals, a side that first comes out when he stages a cruel, violent public expulsion of a student.
- Bittersweet Ending: Robin, Ramy, and most of the young Hermes Society members at Oxford are dead. Letty will presumably live out the rest of her life as an agent of the Empire, and Victoire will likely spend the rest of hers running from the law. However, the Empire's silver resonance network has been completely destroyed and their ability to maintain and make silver bars is decimated. The group has helped spark a new labour movement that white British mainlanders favour. The Opium Wars may not happen, and Victoire also escaped with a fortune in silver and the training needed to put it to good use. The government was unable to discover the identity of the dozens of international Hermes members, but it's implied that Victoire will contact them soon.
- Broken Ace: All four of the main characters. They start out as gifted linguists excited to hone their skills, but soon learn that the British Empire will force them to choose between serving its interests or losing access to their livelihood. By the end, none of them are even remotely happy.
- But I Read a Book About It: When Robin ends up with a bullet in his arm after a Hermes assignment, he initially treats it using what he remembers from adventure novels. He then later uses a physician textbook.
- Burial at Sea: Professor Lovell dies on the sea voyage back from Canton, thus his body is thrown into the waters to cover up the murder.
- Bury Your Gays: The only significant relationship the book hints at is Robin's crush on Ramy; both of them die horribly, and we never even learn if Ramy reciprocated.
- Capitalism Is Bad: While imperialism is the centre of the book's criticisms, Kuang also criticizes how silver bars go mostly to rich British people and not those who could actually benefit from them.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Sterling Jones outright states that while there's a silver bar that can peacefully hypnotize a prisoner into spilling information, he prefers using a method that causes agonizing pain in the victim. And the more you struggle, the worse it gets.
- Dances and Balls: The Oxford commemoration ball gives the main characters a taste of British high society — a luxurious gala, questionable desserts, and racist violence.
- Due to the Dead: The day after the British destroy a secret Hermes Society base, the main characters are horrified beyond words to see the British looting the ruins, leaving the dead in the rubble.
- Foul Cafeteria Food: Wealthy, prestigious institution or not, the cafeteria food at Oxford tends towards "tough boiled meat, unsalted roast vegetables, and indistinguishable pottages". It's an endless source of offense to Ramy, a Calcutta native who remembers real seasoning.
- Forbidden Chekhov's Gun: The very first practical lesson the studens get is how to create a devestating super weapon that could be used to safely and irrevocably cripple the British Empire: a saboteur could simply salt a trainload of ore with tainted silver, and thereby ruin every new bar made thereafter.
- Foregone Conclusion:
- The narration makes it clear fairly early on that sooner or later, members of the cohort will end up at odds with each other, and the True Companions will fall apart. They do after returning to Oxford from Canton. Spectacularly.
- The title itself gives away that the revolution is coming, and it will not be pretty.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Discussed and deconstructed. The difference between being willing to die for a cause and wanting to die for a cause is explored, and the latter is scorned by Ramy as "taking the easy way out." In the end, Robin, who has hurled over the Despair Event Horizon, willingly goes to his death to destroy Babel, along with three other rebels. Victoire and another rebel choose to flee and live to fight another day, Victoire in particular on her way to aid slave revolts. The novel never firmly takes a side on who is wrong or right, but shows that, while sometimes sacrifice is necessary, it is not something to be romanticized. Death isn't glorious; it's just death. Same with survival.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: The Hermes Society hides away in the Old Library, which was overlooked during construction.
- Hope Spot: After returning to England, the cohort is able to reside with other members of Hermes and begin planning the revolution. Crushed when Letty betrays and kills most of the members, including Ramy.
- The Idealist: Downplayed; Anthony isn't naive, but he holds the belief that Babel can be changed from within and opposes Griffin's militant strategies.
- Mage Tower: Oxford's tower of Babel is the setting's main school of magic. The actual magic of silver-work takes place at the top floor for safety reasons; much of the rest is given over to administration and the study of The Power of Language. The entire building is heavily enchanted and Bigger on the Inside.
- Magitek: Silver-work enchantments are ubiquitous in British society, particularly those that enhance technology. One important word pair serves the simple purpose of making steam engines more efficient and reliable.
- Majored in Western Hypocrisy: The entire premise of the novel; Babel educates foreign translators to help Britain maintain its hegemonic colonial power.
- Orcus on His Throne: Silverworking has a 1,000 year history, there is a network of defectors, and other nations (e.g. China) have vast silver reserves. All of these potential rivals collectively sit with their thumbs up their asses while The Main Characters Do Everything
- No Blood for Phlebotinum: Magic needs to be anchored in silver, and Britain, as the 19th-century setting's major colonial empire, is bent on securing new silver sources, like the vast reserves in China. Even if that means instigating a war under false pretenses.
- Playing Up the Stereotype: Ramy often exaggerates his Indian accent and makes up fanciful stories about his background. He explains to Robin that the English are racist against him either way, so it's better to be dismissed as a Funny Foreigner than to attract suspicion.
- The Power of Language: Magic is powered by the meaning that's lost when translating terms between languages, making multilingual people the only ones who can use it. Language is also an important source of political power: England controls as much as it can of the translation market to sustain its empire, and the Hermes Society works with the labour movement to undermine the Empire with incendiary pamphlets.Professor Playfair: Because translation can never be perfect, the necessary distortions – the meanings lost or warped in the journey – are caught, and then manifested by the silver. And that, dear students, is as close to magic as anything within the realm of natural science.
- Reinforce Field: Many old buildings and bridges in England are shored up with long-term enchantments. When the Hermes Society disrupts the maintenance schedule for the silver-work, they start crashing down.
- La Résistance: The Hermes Society exists in the shadows, stealing supplies from Babel and fighting against the British Empire to try and create a more equitable world.
- Sacred Scripture: Vodou heritage texts, which makes Victoire uncomfortable translating them from Kreyòl to French for her research project.
- Silver Has Mystic Powers: Nobody knows why silver can produce magical effects from The Power of Language, only that it's the only substance that can do so.
- Shout-Out:
- To The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo, of all things: "Sometimes rare and expensive things are worse."
- The minor character of Elton Pendennis is named after the novel Pendennis by William Makepeace Thackeray, one of the books Kuang read to learn about the character of Oxford.
- Suspicious Spending: Implied regarding Professor Lovell, though it's never used as evidence against him. He can afford expenses, including a second home for his Secret Other Family, that people note to be beyond a professor's salary, and is later exposed as being part of a secret bloc that's engineering a war with China to seize its silver reserves.
- Sympathetic Magic:
- Babel's Magitek security system admits anyone who's had a vial of their blood installed in a special control panel. When members are expelled, their vial is publicly shattered as they're tossed out.
- Much of the region's Utility Magic isn't actually enchanted on-site, only set with silver bars that are sympathetically linked to control rods in Babel that generate the actual magic. In other words, whoever holds Babel can shut down the city's utilities at will.
- The Teetotaler: As a Muslim, Ramy avoids alcohol for religious reasons. 19th-century English society is not particularly respectful of this; even his own English guardian gives him a bottle of port as a present.
- Utility Magic: English society depends on silver-work to improve machinery, support buildings, repel pests, and so on and so forth. Deconstructed since that silver-work is an expensive, centrally controlled industry, making it a tool to reinforce England's social stratification.
- Violence is the Only Option: It's called "The Necessity of Violence" for a reason. As Griffin puts it, violence is the only language a colonizer speaks. You can't reason with or be nice to someone until they stop oppressing a population; some individuals can be swayed, whether due to morality or pragmatism, but the system itself can only be taken down with force. In the end, when Parliament proves it's willing to sacrifice their own citizens just to keep the Empire in power, even if it cannibalizes itself in the process, Robin and the other revolutionaries have to destroy Babel altogether.
- Words Can Break My Bones: The silver bars get their power from the words carved into them. Because the two words aren't an exact translation of one another, the silver bridges the gap between languages to affect its surroundings.
- You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: For most of the story, Ramy is the only one who calls Robin "Birdie". But Letty and Victoire do it later on: Letty when she tries to manipulate him, and Victoire to comfort him.
