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- Insidious trauma
Gemmy's alienation from both groups causes a loss of self, and a lack of clarity in his understandings of his motifs. I would argue that the effects of this grow to become traumatic. He seeks a knowledge of himself, whilst constantly being plagued by dreams of the past that he cannot connect with, and living in a group in which he feels separate from. When he comes across the three children he states that "if he could only get near enough, the meaning of what was said would come clear to him [...]. It was the words that would recognise him" (32). This suggests that he is not looking for companionship in others, but it is the language that he believes that he has a connection to. This is highlighted in the idea that the words could recognise him and create a sense of familiarity that he himself is unable to create for himself. However, this morphs into a desire to prove himself the same as the children that he witnesses, he "was running to prove that all that separated him from them was the ground that could be covered" (33). He demonstrates a desire to close the distance between him and this group, to cross the barrier between them to feel an element of kinship. His alienation and loneliness overwhelms him, his transition into running supports that once confronted with the opportunity of familiarity, he cannot contain his wish to cross the void. However, this veers into traumatic as he becomes a monster to himself, despising the part of him that does identity with the group when he states that the "creature or spirit in him had spoken up, having all along the words in there that would betray him[...]: Do not shoot. I am a British object" (33). This is significant because the use of "betray" shows that this was not voluntary, and that he could not control himself. He also cannot recognise his past, as this element of himself is referred to as a "creature or spirit". The extent of this alienation of self is evident in his referral to himself as an "object" rather than a subject.

- Event-based trauma
When Gemmy is taken to the water and "his arms are jerked back, his head pushed down. His head, roaring into the sack, is thrust under water" (121). He experiences that traumatic event, as has been stated above, as a separate traumatic event. Although this could also provoke similarities from when he was cast overboard and could cause those memories to resurface also. However, Jock also experiences trauma from the event, stating that "was when the real fear, the real anger took him" (126). He also comforts Gemmy, creating a united front against the experience as "when he shivered, drew him closer, pulled the old moth-eaten blanket around the two of them" (126).

- Collective trauma
The McIvor family experience trauma collectively, each event appears to have a knock-on impact onto the other characters. However, the fear and uncertainty that occupies the village could also be a display of collective trauma. Although the method in which they treat Gemmy and the McIvor's is cruel and unjustified, the perpetual fear and active alertness that the public undergo can be seen as traumatic to an extent. They state "of course, it wasn't him you were scared of. He was harmless, or so they said, and so you preferred to believe. It was the thought that next time it might not be him. [...] It brought you slap up against a terror you thought you had learned, years back, to treat as childish" (42). The uncertainty and fear that revolved around a phantom threat occupies the community, haunting them continuously.

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Insidious trauma is evident through the description of the ‘blacks’ (85), Craps describes ‘racism as a source of what Maria Root calls ‘insidious trauma’ (26).  The language used by Malouf to describe the blacks’ visit on Gemmy strongly suggests that the visit is threatening and unwelcomed by Gemmy ‘He swung round with the hammer raised and they were already on him, two blacks, an old man and a youth, standing quietly just feet away. He had not heard them coming … he dropped his gaze, lowered himself painfully into a cross-legged position, and waited.’ However, it later transpires that the natives were in fact enquiring as to Gemmy’s welfare, and were expressing concerned about him since he’d left their community.  Malouf seems to be toying with the reader’s interpretations, almost encouraging the reader to judge the natives negatively before later divulging the truth of their visit.

It is also challenging to the reader’s understanding of racism, to see that Gemmy is treated with racism, he suffers both overt and insidious trauma at the hands of the Colonials, despite the fact that he is also of British heritage.

Event-based trauma is evident through the behaviour of the McIvor family following the attacks on their property, designed to warn them that some members of the community were unhappy with the presence of Gemmy. Ellen McIvor, when she welcomed other women from the community to her home ‘frostily at first, and never quite in the old way’ she had a kind of reserve now that would never leave her.  They knew it and took her as she was. Things were not so easy for his uncle.  Lachlan saw this because he too felt it.  Something had been destroyed in him that could not be put right.’ (147)  The McIvors’ behaviour was to withdraw from the community, there appears a fracturing of the self, as Craps describes, resulting in a change of behaviour by individuals ‘the fracturing of the self and resulting division in identity caused by an extremely disturbing event.’ (33)

Collective trauma can be seen through the McIvor family’s acceptance of the manifestations of Gemmy’s trauma; his nightmares and neurotic behaviour.  Ellen McIvor accepts Gemmy’s noisy nightmares as not unusual behaviour, not something strange or unfamiliar to her.  ‘She would lie there, reaching for breath; wondering what dream out of the dark world he had lived in had come back to claim him or he had gone to meet; which in the open, unguarded state you fell into when consciousness lapsed might have the power to cross from one head to another, to her husband’s familiar one on the pillow beside her, where he slept on his back with his mouth open and his fists lightly clenched above his collarbone …’ (72) It appears that the Colonists’ community is familiar with the manifestations of trauma, and the reader can speculate on the traumatic experience of moving to live on a remote, inhospitable continent.  Colonisation does not appear to be a panacea for those seeking to escape the poverty of being members of a ‘disempowered group’ (Craps, 21) in their homeland, when they effectively only succeed in exchanging it for poverty in a different climate.

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I read somewhere that this might be termed complex trauma rather than insidious but it seems to me that if it is sustained over a long period of time it could be seen as insidious. Anyway, I felt that was perhaps true of Gemmy's treatment at the hands of Willett (and his girlfriend). Gemmy's experiences return to him as nightmares - 'When darkness fell in the close little room, it stirred' (133). Jane

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Being thrown overboard is an event-based trauma which is represented as psychic splitting, intrusion and belatedness. Gemmy’s life is repeatedly represented as divided temporally by this event. The old life is metaphorically depicted as a ‘curled up in him like an old-man carpet snake...emerging coil on coil into the sun’ (19). Gemmy also articulates this sense of division as a doubling. For example, the stammer ‘belonged to someone he had thought was gone, lost’ (12).  Later he conceives this as a ‘creature whose dreams he shared’ which comes ‘right up to the surface of him’ (28) and ‘the creature, the spirit or whatever it was, that lived in the dark of him’ (29). It is this creature which spoke initially to the children. Frazer describes his experience in terms of a breaching – ‘ he has crossed the boundaries of his given nature’ (121).
The attempts at narrativisation prove problematic as Gemmy experiences ‘gaps in memory’ and ‘so much dislocation’ (14) leading to what Caruth might call a crisis of truth – ‘they could never be certain, later, how much of it was real’ (14). Language is a critical factor in the representation of memory within the trauma response and Gemmy ‘lost his old language in the new one that came to his lips’ (24). Crucially it is seen as creating the objects his life – ‘Now they slipped away ..and with them, and the words, went whatever thin threads had held them together and made up the fabric of his world’ (24).
The discovery of Gemmy’s body on the seashore (itself a liminal space) is described in liminal terms which haunt the ensuing narrative.  He is ‘Lying half in salt and ... half in air’ (20) and the focalised perspective of the Aboriginal community contributes to the sense of strangeness and transformation as they, like Gemmy, imagine a divided self or doubling - ‘It is letting go of that other life’ (21). It is the indigenous community who narrativise for Gemmy, creating a Tempest-like mythic, folkloric tale which ‘he would listen to ..with a kind of wonder, as if what they were recounting had happened ages ago , in a time beyond all memory, and to someone else’ (24), illustrating clearly both dissociation and atemporality.
Gemmy experiences intrusion in the form of nightmares which are represented using a ghost metaphor as ‘midnight hauntings’ (25). Intrusion also comes in the form of flashbacks – an ‘image’, ‘a flash’ and ‘A kind of clattering filled his head’ (26) – when he encounters sensory reminders of his earlier life at the immigrant settlement. The language of a void is also present here since these intruding images are described as filling ‘all the spaces in him’ (26). Not surprisingly, perhaps, language which constructed his previous life, is instrumental in helping to reconstruct. For example, upon seeing the axe ‘A kind of meaning clung to the image’ and ‘The word flew into his head’ (27). He sees language almost as a therapeutic entity ‘It was the words that would recognise him’ (29).
This functions in the text to raise key issues of integration. Ultimately it seems as though Gemmy must remain liminal – he cannot or will not excise the experience of the years he has spent with the Aboriginal people and as a consequence, the settlers cannot accept him. His way of viewing the world, of seeing – a motif for perception – like his physical body, has been fundamentally altered: he achieves a double perspective. Interestingly, his presence sparks an experience of doubling, dissociation and expanded vision in Jock who feels ‘It was as if he had seen the world till now, not through his own eyes, out of some singular self, but through the eyes of a fellow who was always in company, even when he was alone’ (97). His new perceptions cannot be articulated – ‘he could have found no form in which to communicate them’ as they lay ‘outside words’ (98). Although the representation of liminality with Gemmy is largely negative in terms of integration, the depiction of Jock here is one of enrichment which helps to create some layering beyond the (failed) utopian envisioning of Frazer.

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I agree with your points, contributor 2 Although, the spreading of excrement could also be construed as a deliberate act to overtly provoke an event based trauma for Gemmy and McIvor.

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I agree with your points, contributor 2 Although, the spreading of excrement could also be construed as a deliberate act to overtly provoke an event based trauma for Gemmy and McIvor.

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Event-Based Trauma in Remembering Babylon (Bethany) 

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Event-Based Trauma in Remembering Babylon (Bethany) 

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An example of event based trauma, would be the initial event that left Gemmy castaway, as well as the very event of him being lost in Australia, surrounded by people he has nothing in common with. The fact that he is unable to communicate, as well as his status as an outcast results in him being traumatised, so much so that he forgets much of his life, and his vocabulary, prior to being castaway.

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Insidious Trauma in Remembering Babylon (Bethany 

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Insidious Trauma in Remembering Babylon (Bethany 

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Gemmy has never fit in. Both with the aboriginals and the settlers, this presents an ongoing cumulative traumatic impact. With the aboriginals "no woman [...] would have anything to do with him, and there were many objects in the camp that he was forbidden to touch" (28).  Then later, when he is suspected of being a spy, he is exposed to a series of microaggressions that peak at the point referenced by the other contributor (page 121), but one of the initial examples of the insidious trauma is how excrement was spread out in a word on the shed Gemmy was repairing (115).

The fact that the series of microaggressions build suggests that, had Gemmy remained in the settlement, he would have been exposed to even more harm. The fact that those responsible remain nameless means that it could have been anyone, resulting in a sort of power being given to the anonomous as they are unable to be held accountable for their actions.

Another example of insidious trauma, is Lachlan's rejection of Gemmy.  Lachlan, who was one of Gemmy's main allies, turns away from him, "gently at first, then coldly" (158); as he does not want to be associated with him any longer.  This betrayal means that Gemmy loses a friend and supporter, something that results in him having no ties to the settlement, meaning that it is easier for him to vanish into the bush.

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In Remembering Babylon, there is evidence of the potential for collective trauma to occur. 'If they (the native people) had strayed even an inch onto Barney's side...he would have taken a pot at them' (94). The settlers' willingness to commit acts of violence through fear and ignorance prevails.

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In Remembering Babylon, there is evidence of the potential for collective trauma to occur. 'If they (the native people) had strayed even an inch onto Barney's side...he would have taken a pot at them' (94). The settlers' willingness to commit acts of violence through fear and ignorance prevails.

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Gemmy is denigrated generally, especially when he appears to consort with the black people who visited the settlement.(Remembering Babylon) As a result of his association with the natives, Gemmy suffers an event based trauma  when 'his head, roaring into the sack, is thrust under the water and the darkness in the sack turns to mud' (121). The cruelty and ignorance of the settlers reflects the irony of their antagonism against the natives- the very people from whom the land was stolen.

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Gemmy is denigrated generally, especially when he appears to consort with the black people who visited the settlement.(Remembering Babylon) As a result of his association with the natives, Gemmy suffers an event based trauma  when 'his head, roaring into the sack, is thrust under the water and the darkness in the sack turns to mud' (121). The cruelty and ignorance of the settlers reflects the irony of their antagonism against the natives- the very people from whom the land was stolen.

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The inherent  and Insidious racism of the settlers in Remembering Babylon is evident in Jock McIvor's response to Gemmy, whose association with the natives renders him socially unacceptable to the settlers. McIvor could  'not bear to have Gemmy come close to him' (70). Although McIvor allows Gemmy to associate with his family,  he does so reluctantly, in order to appease his wife and to avoid a disclosure to his neighbours of the contrasting opinions the couple had on Gemmy.

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The inherent  and Insidious racism of the settlers in Remembering Babylon is evident in Jock McIvor's response to Gemmy, whose association with the natives renders him socially unacceptable to the settlers. McIvor could  'not bear to have Gemmy come close to him' (70). Although McIvor allows Gemmy to associate with his family,  he does so reluctantly, in order to appease his wife and to avoid a disclosure to his neighbours of the contrasting opinions the couple had on Gemmy.