Babel Chapters 7 & 8 Summary & Analysis

Summary: Chapters 7 & 8

Chapter 7

Robin receives and decodes a confusing note from Griffin instructing him to open Babel's doors at midnight the next night it rains, wait in the foyer for five minutes, and return home immediately. Robin evades Ramy's questions and follows the instructions. Two Hermes Society members arrive, entering Babel with him. Back home, Robin is stricken by what he has done and dissolves into a state of panic though he eventually begins to calm. He receives another mysterious note telling him to await further instructions and he feels oddly disappointed, ready for more action.

Meanwhile, his life as a student continues and he falls in love with Oxford and the members of his cohort. Ostracized from everyone else, Robin, Ramy, Victoire, and Letty bind to one another, forming an inseparable family. Robin feels guilty for loving them and his life, torn between Oxford and the Hermes Society, which he never tells his friends about.

Chapter 8

Robin continues to help the Hermes Society, growing used to their missions. One day, Robin asks Griffin what his long-term involvement with Hermes will look like. Griffin acknowledges that even though it would be a great help for Hermes to have a consistent contact on the inside, most students associated with Hermes eventually leave Babel as it becomes too morally difficult to stay affiliated with the University. Griffin says that Robin will likely do exactly what Griffin did: fake his death and disappear, leaving Oxford life behind. Once again, Robin feels torn between his love for Oxford and his loyalty to Hermes, but Griffin tells him to enjoy his life for now.

Meanwhile, Robin and the other three members of the cohort continue to be ostracized, despite Babel's prestigious standing. While they enjoy a certain level of privilege, they are constantly reminded of their status as outsiders, such as when Ramy is denied service at local pubs or when Letty and Victoire are banned from accessing library books without a male student present. Robin is privately envious of those born into the world of Oxford, like Elton Pendennis, who truly belong there. He gets an invite to a party at Pendennis's house and despite discouragement from his friends, especially Letty, Robin decides to go.

At the party, Robin and Pendennis share a tense encounter. Extremely pretentious, Pendennis recites his original poetry aloud and Robin begins to understand that Pendennis and his friends merely seek to convince themselves that they are intellectually equal to those who study at Babel. Pendennis's poem is shallow and Robin purposely does not praise it, opting to leave the party and recount the events to his friends the following day, who find the encounter extremely amusing. Letty, however, is still angry.

Victoire explains that Letty's brother, Lincoln, who died shortly before she came to Oxford, had attended the University but was more like Pendennis than the typical Babel student. After a night of heavy drinking, he was run over by a carriage and killed. Letty took the Babel entrance exams soon after. Now, she feels the pressure of being a woman at Oxford acutely, anxious that everyone compares her to her brother. Robin and Ramy regret teasing her, and by the next day, things between the group are smoothed over. In class, Professor Playfair discusses translation theory, arguing that no translation is truly faithful to the original, and that all translations involve betrayal.

Read an analysis of Professor Playfair’s assertion that translation is inherently a betrayal.