ENG3705
ASSIGNMENT 3 2025
UNIQUE NO.
DUE DATE: 2025
, Modern and Postmodern Literature in English
Can Things Ever Go Back to the Way They Were?
Chapter 32 of R.F. Kuang’s Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence (2022) captures a
profoundly poignant and dramatically charged confrontation between the surviving
friends of the once tightly bonded quartet of Robin, Ramy, Victoire, and Letty. It is in this
chapter that Letty Price, burdened by a heavy conscience, uttered her heartbreaking
plea: “I just want things to go back to the way they were. We had a future together, all of
us” (Kuang, 2022: 519). This nostalgic lament, fragile and desperate, crystallises one of
the central tensions of the novel: whether fractured friendships, broken loyalties, and
violent betrayals can ever be mended.
In this essay, I argue that it is impossible for things to return to their previous
harmonious state. The reasons are not only structural—political, social, and racial—but
also deeply personal and emotional. The betrayals are too severe, the consequences
too irrevocable, and the ideological chasms too wide to bridge. Letty’s longing is a
naïve, wistful, almost childlike yearning for a vanished innocence, yet the novel
demonstrates that innocence is irretrievable once corrupted by power, violence, and
prejudice. By closely analysing Chapter 32, and incorporating the ghostly, sorrowful
presence of Ramy, I show how the dynamics between the characters decisively
foreclose any possibility of a return to unity.
Letty’s Nostalgic Plea: A Naïve Longing for Restoration
Letty’s words are dripping with nostalgia, coloured by her idealised memory of their
collective past. Her adjectives—“future,” “together,” “all”—highlight her desire for
wholeness, continuity, and predictability. Yet this longing is fundamentally illusory.
From the very beginning of their friendship, fissures had been hidden beneath the
veneer of solidarity: Letty’s privileged whiteness, her ingrained prejudices, and her
ASSIGNMENT 3 2025
UNIQUE NO.
DUE DATE: 2025
, Modern and Postmodern Literature in English
Can Things Ever Go Back to the Way They Were?
Chapter 32 of R.F. Kuang’s Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence (2022) captures a
profoundly poignant and dramatically charged confrontation between the surviving
friends of the once tightly bonded quartet of Robin, Ramy, Victoire, and Letty. It is in this
chapter that Letty Price, burdened by a heavy conscience, uttered her heartbreaking
plea: “I just want things to go back to the way they were. We had a future together, all of
us” (Kuang, 2022: 519). This nostalgic lament, fragile and desperate, crystallises one of
the central tensions of the novel: whether fractured friendships, broken loyalties, and
violent betrayals can ever be mended.
In this essay, I argue that it is impossible for things to return to their previous
harmonious state. The reasons are not only structural—political, social, and racial—but
also deeply personal and emotional. The betrayals are too severe, the consequences
too irrevocable, and the ideological chasms too wide to bridge. Letty’s longing is a
naïve, wistful, almost childlike yearning for a vanished innocence, yet the novel
demonstrates that innocence is irretrievable once corrupted by power, violence, and
prejudice. By closely analysing Chapter 32, and incorporating the ghostly, sorrowful
presence of Ramy, I show how the dynamics between the characters decisively
foreclose any possibility of a return to unity.
Letty’s Nostalgic Plea: A Naïve Longing for Restoration
Letty’s words are dripping with nostalgia, coloured by her idealised memory of their
collective past. Her adjectives—“future,” “together,” “all”—highlight her desire for
wholeness, continuity, and predictability. Yet this longing is fundamentally illusory.
From the very beginning of their friendship, fissures had been hidden beneath the
veneer of solidarity: Letty’s privileged whiteness, her ingrained prejudices, and her
