mutterwingwhirr (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mutterwingwhirr) wrote2023-11-28 05:47 am
mutterwingwhirr) wrote2023-11-28 05:47 am
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babel -- 100% review
when the odds are always against you, you learn quickly what kind of adaptability it takes just to survive. what kind of compromises you were always going to be willing to make, and which ones you surprise yourself in taking, when it comes down to it. adaptability is life-- it is the stuff of it, it is the lifeblood of it. to live and to want to live are synecdoche to the myriad trials that one must navigate every waking moment and the desire to do so in order to guarantee the coming of tomorrow. perhaps, then, living can be considered a kind of ongoing negotiation-- one that outlines a vague image of the elusive "tomorrow" against the latest in a series of challenges, promising the former in exchange for the latter.
but what if the demands of tomorrow are too steep? what if, by some means, the prospect of termination becomes far less daunting than the challenges that tomorrow promises to bring? what then? time moves on, irrespective of your consent. tomorrow comes regardless. what would you do? how would you cope?
i've said before how much this book is a narrative around survival. and in the latter half of the book, we see how truly transactional this act of prolonging death becomes. robin's status for victoire and ramy's lives. robin's utility for robin's conscience. robin's anger for robin's stable and comfortable life. lovell's death for robin's conscience. the cohort's unity for robin's guilt. ramy even cites it explicitly, outlining the transaction of robin's continued silence for victoire and letty's (and ramy's) continued survival.
but they do try. they try by scraping together lie after lie. they try by returning to normal life at oxford, as if nothing's gone amiss. they try by gathering intel and trying to contact the hermes society. each iteration, each grasp at a sense of normalcy and purpose, gets more and more far-fetched. but they try. they find ways to contribute to hermes society plans. they find ways to get excited for a future where the empire crumbles and frees them from being outlaws. they hope.
ramy, father, mother. "three people i have witnessed die and not once could i lift a finger to help." how many deaths can you personally witness and/or be responsible for before your life weighs in the balance and is found wanting? for robin... it's four. when even griffin is taken from him, there's nothing left for him. "if he clung for the days or weeks he had left, it was solely for ramy's sake because he did not deserve what was easy."
i've sat on the end of this review for a long time. i've contemplated reading the end of this book again to see if there's a neat way to wrap up this analysis, to show some interesting throughline from the beginning of the novel to the end. but i lack the courage to read the end again. i'm uploading this review now, as it is, as i drafted it before i finished my reread, before i lost my courage. this book changed me, and hurt me, and made me cry. may it speak to you as profoundly as it spoke to me.
but what if the demands of tomorrow are too steep? what if, by some means, the prospect of termination becomes far less daunting than the challenges that tomorrow promises to bring? what then? time moves on, irrespective of your consent. tomorrow comes regardless. what would you do? how would you cope?
i've said before how much this book is a narrative around survival. and in the latter half of the book, we see how truly transactional this act of prolonging death becomes. robin's status for victoire and ramy's lives. robin's utility for robin's conscience. robin's anger for robin's stable and comfortable life. lovell's death for robin's conscience. the cohort's unity for robin's guilt. ramy even cites it explicitly, outlining the transaction of robin's continued silence for victoire and letty's (and ramy's) continued survival.
"There's nothing you can do. He's dead. You killed him. And there's nothing you can do to change that except pray to God for forgiveness... But the question now is how to protect Victoire and Letty. And your turning yourself in doesn't do that, Birdie. Neither does your torturing yourself about your worth as a human being."the way the cohort winds around and around and around this concept of transaction, what they can offer up or negotiate with to return to oxford, to go back to having lives that contribute value to society; they all take turns going mad for it, trying to find the ways in which they can justify their existence inside the system when their actions have transgressed it.
but they do try. they try by scraping together lie after lie. they try by returning to normal life at oxford, as if nothing's gone amiss. they try by gathering intel and trying to contact the hermes society. each iteration, each grasp at a sense of normalcy and purpose, gets more and more far-fetched. but they try. they find ways to contribute to hermes society plans. they find ways to get excited for a future where the empire crumbles and frees them from being outlaws. they hope.
"And then, Letty broke the world."
"I cannot build my life on shifting sands." -Matthew Crawley, Downton Abbeyand then, the downward spiral really begins.
ramy, father, mother. "three people i have witnessed die and not once could i lift a finger to help." how many deaths can you personally witness and/or be responsible for before your life weighs in the balance and is found wanting? for robin... it's four. when even griffin is taken from him, there's nothing left for him. "if he clung for the days or weeks he had left, it was solely for ramy's sake because he did not deserve what was easy."
i've sat on the end of this review for a long time. i've contemplated reading the end of this book again to see if there's a neat way to wrap up this analysis, to show some interesting throughline from the beginning of the novel to the end. but i lack the courage to read the end again. i'm uploading this review now, as it is, as i drafted it before i finished my reread, before i lost my courage. this book changed me, and hurt me, and made me cry. may it speak to you as profoundly as it spoke to me.
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