, ENG3705 Assignment 3 (COMPLETE ANSWERS)
2025 – DUE September 2025; 100% correct solutions
and explanations.
Haunted Nostalgia: Why “the Way Things Were” Can Never
Return in Chapter 32 of Babel
In Chapter 32 of R.F. Kuang’s Babel (2022: 516–526), Letty Price
pleads in desperation: “I just want things to go back to the way they
were. We had a future together, all of us” (519). Her words carry the
weight of nostalgia, longing for a past that seems comforting, stable,
and innocent. Yet the chapter resists her wish at every turn. It is
saturated with betrayal, grief, and haunting, as the other
characters—Robin, Victoire, and the spectral presence of Ramy—
insist that the world has been irreversibly altered.
This essay argues that Letty’s plea is not only impossible but also
profoundly misleading, because nostalgia itself is an act of
distortion. Drawing on Kuang’s Chapter 32 and critical ideas about
nostalgia (Boym, 2001), trauma (Caruth, 1996; LaCapra, 2001),
colonialism (Ngũgĩ, 1986), and memory (Ricoeur, 2004), I contend
that the past Letty yearns for never truly existed in the harmonious
form she remembers. Ramy’s ghost further underscores the
impossibility of return, representing the violent rupture of history
that nostalgia tries, and fails, to erase.
The essay unfolds in six movements: first, Letty’s selective
nostalgia; second, Robin and Victoire’s rejection of her fantasy;
third, the role of Ramy’s ghost as a spectral truth-teller; fourth, the
irreversible fracture of betrayal; fifth, the unyielding backdrop of
colonial violence; and finally, the ethical danger of yearning for a
past that never was.
2025 – DUE September 2025; 100% correct solutions
and explanations.
Haunted Nostalgia: Why “the Way Things Were” Can Never
Return in Chapter 32 of Babel
In Chapter 32 of R.F. Kuang’s Babel (2022: 516–526), Letty Price
pleads in desperation: “I just want things to go back to the way they
were. We had a future together, all of us” (519). Her words carry the
weight of nostalgia, longing for a past that seems comforting, stable,
and innocent. Yet the chapter resists her wish at every turn. It is
saturated with betrayal, grief, and haunting, as the other
characters—Robin, Victoire, and the spectral presence of Ramy—
insist that the world has been irreversibly altered.
This essay argues that Letty’s plea is not only impossible but also
profoundly misleading, because nostalgia itself is an act of
distortion. Drawing on Kuang’s Chapter 32 and critical ideas about
nostalgia (Boym, 2001), trauma (Caruth, 1996; LaCapra, 2001),
colonialism (Ngũgĩ, 1986), and memory (Ricoeur, 2004), I contend
that the past Letty yearns for never truly existed in the harmonious
form she remembers. Ramy’s ghost further underscores the
impossibility of return, representing the violent rupture of history
that nostalgia tries, and fails, to erase.
The essay unfolds in six movements: first, Letty’s selective
nostalgia; second, Robin and Victoire’s rejection of her fantasy;
third, the role of Ramy’s ghost as a spectral truth-teller; fourth, the
irreversible fracture of betrayal; fifth, the unyielding backdrop of
colonial violence; and finally, the ethical danger of yearning for a
past that never was.
