Some thoughts on Babel by R.F. Kuang

I just finished R.F. Kuang’s *Babel, or the Necessity of Violence.* I found the book engaging and I was impressed with her research (especially the etymology rabbit holes), but I’m very mixed on the ending.

The conclusion she wants to land on is that violence is necessary (i.e., the title) for any seismic sociopolitical change to succeed, but it’s not clear to me what Kuang *means* by violence. >!Robin and Victoire storm Babel at gunpoint and shoot Professor Playfair, but afterwards they show no violence at all, except by omission, until Robin kills himself.!< Robin craves a blood-filled vengeance but what he actually does is enact a strike, hardly a violent act. My question, then, is what would be the practical application of these ideas in 19th century England, or today for that matter. Should the workers go on strike and lobby the power-brokers for social reform, or should they storm the House of Commons with firearms and burn it all down? The fact of the matter is that Babel didn’t exist in the 1800s, nor does there exist today any simple avatar of capitalism and Empire that can be overthrown by mere force. Kuang paints a kiddie version of revolution, setting up fake conflicts where the solutions are easy, with very little insight on what would actually be required to bring a global power to its knees. There is also glaringly scant discussion on what’s supposed to *happen* after the Empire falls. She takes pains to argue that the British are not cleverer than other nations, they’re merely greedier, more brutal, seeming to imply that no power replacing them could possibly be worse – it’s by no means obvious, however, that the resulting power vacuum would lead to an improvement in human rights. The Hermes Society, or more specifically Robin and Griffin, have no substantive ideas for how to enact lasting reform, stave off anarchy, and alleviate suffering, but rather than their approach being portrayed as shortsighted it is actually enshrined as the right path all along.

Where the novel really starts to lose me is >!when Robin and Victoire storm Babel under the specific pretense of stopping the opium war, but it gradually morphs into the defeat of the Empire altogether. For Robin, this makes sense, given the bottomless, self-destructive rage we’ve seen him develop, but why do the other occupants of the tower go along? It strains my suspension of disbelief that someone like Professor Craft, even with her speech about the “mass of black rot” inside her, would escalate from humanitarian concerns over an exploitative war to wanting to torch the Library of Alexandria like a shame-filled martyr.!< This is one of many ways in which Kuang’s characters begin to feel like pawns in a moral lecture, rather than the sincere figments of a careful storyteller.

Finally, I think the reason I was mixed on the ending is the same reason I couldn’t finish Kuang’s *Poppy War* trilogy – I find her writing to be relentlessly grim. There are any number of ways that *Babel* could have ended – perhaps the Hermes Society, through a mix of social pressure, pamphleteering, and pointed displays of strength, are able to convince Parliament to vote against the opium war, and Robin is inspired to know that violence isn’t always the only option, that gains can be won by appealing to people’s hearts on the path to justice. This would help to heal his hatred and his desire to die, would show us that he’s better than his brother, and would suggest an inspiring future where Hermes continues its work in the shadows, compiling research and improving the world. Such an ending may have come across as unrealistic, but so is how the book actually ends, >!with a collapsing magic tower that symbolically represents the British Empire and literally represents its downfall.!< We, by contrast, don’t have Babel to burn, so what are we supposed to do? I would honestly be interested to hear Kuang’s ideas.

by LinguistThing