#quarter 1

QUARTER 1 FINALISTS

TWO TEAMS ENTER. ONLY ONE CAN LEAVE.

YOU DECIDE.

Unit: Unit 1- The Eye

Book: Babel or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R. F. Kuang

I was originally uncertain in my inclusion of this text for The Eye. Especially as the text to start off not only The Eye, but the entire curriculum. But as I read, it became increasingly obvious that this fit perfectly.

Kuang uses the character Robin Swift, Griffin Lovell, Ramiz Rafi Mirza, Victoire Desgraves, and, yes, Letitia Price to examine both the structures that hold imperialism and colonialism in power and the effects of both on individuals. We never learn Robin’s, or Griffin’s, birth names in order to make it clear how colonialism steals personal identity. These are themes that really stuck out to me as I was reading, and especially found the idea of how you need to be able to understand the institutional injustices in order to know the full scale of an issue and that those who benefit from the system cannot be trusted to be allies incredibly important as a sociologist.

However, those are not the themes that make this vital for understanding The Eye.

Most, when looking for a book for The Eye would focus on books with themes about surveillance, but that’s not all that The Eye is. And a common in universe complaint about The Eye is that all it does is hoard knowledge and do nothing with it. Babel showed that the hoarding of knowledge, of viewing knowledge as a resource in and of itself, is vital to how imperial powers maintain their dominance. It also showed the siren-call of knowledge that grips just about everyone involved in The Magnus Institute, but that’s neither here nor there.

Finally, with a name like The Necessity of Violence the question quickly becomes “Is this book not more fit for The Slaughter?” But Necessity is the optimal word here. The Slaughter is senseless violence, pointless violence. Violence that exists only for violence’s sake. The violence that Griffin, Robin, and the striking workers used was not senseless, it was purposeful. Which would actually make this a horrible book for The Slaughter.

QUARTER 1 AND 2 FINALISTS

TWO TEAMS ENTER. ONLY ONE CAN LEAVE.

YOU DECIDE.