ENG3705
ASSIGNMENT 3 2025
UNIQUE NO.
DUE DATE: 2025
, ENG3705: Assignment 03 (2025)
Essay Title: The Irrevocable Fracture of the Past: Letty’s Plea and the
Impossibility of Returning to “the Way Things Were”
In Chapter 32 of R.F. Kuang’s Babel (2022: 516–526), the fragile façade of
companionship, unity, and trust among the surviving students shatters irreparably. Letty
Price, in a desperate, emotional, and almost childlike plea, insists: “I just want things to
go back to the way they were. We had a future together, all of us” (2022: 519). Her
words resonate with a nostalgic yearning for stability, familiarity, and innocence, but the
surrounding events of the chapter—and indeed the entire novel—undermine the very
possibility of restoration. The loss of Ramy, the betrayal of Letty herself, and the
broader upheavals of imperial violence render the past irrevocably unreachable. This
essay argues that it is not possible for things to return to “the way they were”,
because the group’s relationships, their political consciousness, and the violent rupture
of colonial realities have permanently altered their identities. To make this argument, I
will analyse the characters’ positions in Chapter 32, paying close attention to Letty’s
desperate nostalgia, Robin’s bitter clarity, Victoire’s anguished defiance, and the
spectral presence of Ramy’s ghost.
Letty’s Nostalgic Yearning: Innocent or Naïve?
Letty’s plea is saturated with a desperate, naïve, and almost pathetic nostalgia. She
longs for the idyllic camaraderie of their earlier student days, those deceptively tranquil
moments in the hallowed, gothic, and enchanting halls of Babel, where intellectual
curiosity seemed to bind them together. For Letty, those “golden” days of scholarly
routine symbolized safety, belonging, and purpose. Her longing to “go back” reveals a
deep emotional attachment to stability, but it also exposes her privileged insulation
from the violent realities faced by her friends.
ASSIGNMENT 3 2025
UNIQUE NO.
DUE DATE: 2025
, ENG3705: Assignment 03 (2025)
Essay Title: The Irrevocable Fracture of the Past: Letty’s Plea and the
Impossibility of Returning to “the Way Things Were”
In Chapter 32 of R.F. Kuang’s Babel (2022: 516–526), the fragile façade of
companionship, unity, and trust among the surviving students shatters irreparably. Letty
Price, in a desperate, emotional, and almost childlike plea, insists: “I just want things to
go back to the way they were. We had a future together, all of us” (2022: 519). Her
words resonate with a nostalgic yearning for stability, familiarity, and innocence, but the
surrounding events of the chapter—and indeed the entire novel—undermine the very
possibility of restoration. The loss of Ramy, the betrayal of Letty herself, and the
broader upheavals of imperial violence render the past irrevocably unreachable. This
essay argues that it is not possible for things to return to “the way they were”,
because the group’s relationships, their political consciousness, and the violent rupture
of colonial realities have permanently altered their identities. To make this argument, I
will analyse the characters’ positions in Chapter 32, paying close attention to Letty’s
desperate nostalgia, Robin’s bitter clarity, Victoire’s anguished defiance, and the
spectral presence of Ramy’s ghost.
Letty’s Nostalgic Yearning: Innocent or Naïve?
Letty’s plea is saturated with a desperate, naïve, and almost pathetic nostalgia. She
longs for the idyllic camaraderie of their earlier student days, those deceptively tranquil
moments in the hallowed, gothic, and enchanting halls of Babel, where intellectual
curiosity seemed to bind them together. For Letty, those “golden” days of scholarly
routine symbolized safety, belonging, and purpose. Her longing to “go back” reveals a
deep emotional attachment to stability, but it also exposes her privileged insulation
from the violent realities faced by her friends.
