griffin didn’t have a mom he could remember. Even though lovell’s behavior towards either boys was probably the same until the age they went to oxford, griffin lacked the memories of a period before lovell and before england. All he ever knew was that house in Hampstead, that room with the same books robin later read. He didn’t even have a miss piper . He says that the housekeeper lovvel had in his time was a cold cruel woman, when miss was the closest thing Robin had to a mother after leaving Canton. It is certain that after being accepted at Babel lovell’s attitude towards Griffin and Robin differed. Lovell never loved Robin, never saw him as a person worthy of love or respect because of his lineage but he did find him useful. Every moment where Robin felt remotely accepted by his father or equal to him in conversation towards the beginning of the book it was because of his growing usefulness to him. Griffin, the one who cannot dream in chinese and never could, was never loved & respected for the same reasons as Robin but he was never also of use. He was just a burden. I imagine lovell viewed him as a defective tool. He was never trying to even pretend he cared for Robin so I cant imagine how he treated Griffin. Even without saying a word, the disinterest towards him, the resentment for his inadequacy would be evident. I think that if the ties between griffin and lovell weren’t so evident, the professor would have sent him away before he had the chance to leave on his own. I keep thinking about the note rf kuang wrote at the end of the chapter where griffin dies. That griffin and his cohort were as close as robin’s were, or they thought they were at least. How oxford was the first place griffin felt like home at least until his lack of talent for silver working appeared. How even in hiding so many years later after everything fell apart, consciously or not he organized his safe house as his room in Magpie lane. The only place griffin felt like home was a place where even there, he never really belonged, but the only thing he could do thereafter was to return to it. In memory, by asking robin to say everything he experienced in detail or physically when he left him messages. He could’ve chosen any other place to inform Robin of their next move, a safer place not so close to the university but he did not. He wanted to go back to glimpse even through a closed window his old room. Griffin could never be happy or satisfied, even if he had seen and made Babel fall, because precisely Babel was the place where he felt content, where he felt less alone. Babel the place he never managed to leave behind and his home was at the same time the constitution he sacrificed everything to destroy. He was a man torn apart, an angry man who would rather be angry than accept that really he is sad, sad that everything he wanted to hold on to was never there really in the first place, never for him. He had nothing. Not even his name. He probably wasn’t even named when lovell took him. He has nothing of his. He holds onto nothing and nothing ever tries to hold on to him. Not until he dies. Where Robin for all his admiration, resentment, jealousy, frustration and love for his older brother cannot leave him. Griffin and that did strike me as odd as I read the chapter tells him again and again to leave him, to go, to stop trying to save him. I thought it was odd because when griffin never had anyone stay with him, by him, wouldn’t he be glad that at last someone stayed with him, and it was his little better brother, he wouldn’t die alone. But I don’t think griffin was that kind of person. I think that he was the kind of person that averted from, and was suspicious of, everything that was foreign to him even if it was what he desired most. He was like a beaten dog that couldn’t distinguish a threat from a caring touch so he flinched away from both. This is also shown when robin offers to buy him a warmer coat. He snaps at him offended. He bites.
What also made an impression on me on that note, was that Sterling Jones and Griffin had quarreled over the same girl, over Evie. I didn’t expect for griffin for all his daring in matters of politics and rebellion , to have the courage to hope he got the girl enough to fight about it. Not with a rich, white blond blue eyed man with a big name as an opponent. If not anything else regarding feeling griffin appeared at least, as a total cynic. Robin again and again observes how griffin had no spare compassion to give much like their father. Even when robin tells him that anthony died not much emotion shows on his face. He just faltered for just a second. Griffin’s behavior I don’t think can be explained by a lack of emotion. I do not believe it. I think that griffin had learned especially after killing evie how alone he really was. That sense of loneliness along with the remembrance of what he did, hardened him, I believe for good. He was a fugitive from that moment on and he never stopped running, even when no one was at his door he never stopped. I think he had an innate need to escape stemming from his guilt and his bitterness. I believe anthony was his only real friend. Cocious in nature maybe back then he didn’t manage to help griffin but I believe he was the only person that despite their differences, saw throught to griffin. Saw through his rage and harshness to his grief. I think that if griffin had the time to process anthony’s death he would have been privately crashed. I don’t know how much he would feel it, his heart being hollow for years and resisting of feeling like burned hands that cannot sense anything they touch, their nerve ending destroyed.
Another thing that made me very sad was that griffin after murdering evie, was maybe even more terrified than griffin. Maybe he was a resistant child but he was not accustomed to violence. He didn’t mean to do it especially to her. RF kuanf wrote that unlike robin, griffin did not have his cohort to steady him after. I can only imagine that griffin similarly to robin was haunted by guilt almost maddened. The only reason robin didn’t surrender to the police and didn’t lose his mind was rammy. So imagine someone being all alone. I think that griffin must have been horrified and appalled at that moment. Feeling that no doubt showed at the face of his friends, sterling & anthony. I think maybe that broke him. It is another thing to be hated by ones self and entirely another for your ugliness to be evident for your loved one to see. I think maybe then he pleaded, then he got defensive. This mechanism of defense he would never shake. As rf kuang writes he wore this brand of violence like a coat. I think he was so scared with what he did and was feeling that he adopted this angry, bloodthirsty persona. It was better to convince himself all was done on purpose than crumble under the weight of it.
I don’t believe that griffin didn’t care. I think he would’ve died for all of them. And I think he loved robin as much as he could. I think he cared of his opinion of him, I think he longed to be accepted by him. I think he wanted him to be good, I think he wanted him on his side for once. When robin got shot and confronted griffin about it, to me it was evident that he felt guilty about it even if he tried to shrug it off. I think maybe he was one of those people that cant bear to look in the eye one more thing they did wrong,they failed at and that was protecting his little brother. I think how his last act of love, and life, was to eventually save robin.
I remember them at christmas time when griffin was freezing, when he looked even thinner than before, beaten and bruised. I don’t think he ever had much money maybe he didn’t eat for days. But as haggard as was his appearance I remember when he got the present out of his coat. How he gave it to robin sounding like he wanted to avoid sentiments but still wanting to know and to see if robin liked it. That is one of my favourite scenes in the book. I think it is indicative of an alternative reality, where life was softer and faired. I think they would have been friends there.
Also the aspect of griffin’s deteriorating health really pained me. Because along with eventually robin he was my favourite character I always anticipated the next chapter he’d appear. So every time this happened initially I would rejoice but not for long. Then I would proceed to reading rf kuang’s descriptions of him. He never looked better always worse. Thinner, hungrier, more desperate, more bloodied or bruised more paranoid. Besides the terrible mental pain he must have endured I wanted if I could to alleviate the physical also. I had the feeling that it wasn’t fair after everything he should have been left alone he should’ve come to no more harm. But of course that is not how the story goes. I must harbor an internal belief that those who have endured struggles in their lives should be spared by the limitations and ailments of the flesh. I wish it could be so.
Another tragedy about him is the fact that after listening to robin speak mandarin he was capable after all these years to achieve silver working quite successfully. With lovell as a tutor a not-native speaker, he never could. That made me think that if younger robin had a native tutor like Chakravarti he could have done this earlier. I don’t think much would’ve changed. I just think that maybe griffin would’ve been spared a little of his father’s feelings of dissapointmet, a little of his anger and feeling of inadequacy.
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