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<title> Lachlan Beattie </title>
I've read Remembering Babylon by David Malouf and will now try to describe one character in this story. I've chosen Lachlan Beattie, the boy in the McIvor family, because he strikes me as the type of person that my heart would embrace.
Lachlan is a nephew to Mrs McIvor, who's adopted to the family when his father dies. He has come to Australia, which holds a totally different environment compared to Scotland where he was brought up. I think this is one of the reasons why he can interpret Gemmy's gestures into words. They have the same sort of language. Gemmy, who hasn't been speaking English since he was Lachlan's age, is therefor on the same level as the boy. "..but seeing how that the boy was among the quickest of all at guessing what he meant, he fell back on what he felt was an affinity between them." (12) Lachlan and Gemmy somehow develop a special kind of friendship so strong that it leads to the end of the friendship Lachlan held with Hector, the teenager who has been his closest friend since he came to Australia. The fact that Lachlan and Gemmy both are strangers in this specific environment is one of the things that I think bind them together. 
Lachlan takes an honor in standing up for Gemmy, at the same time as he bosses him around. I believe this shows how Lachlan wants to have something on his own. Someone that can show others that he is really someone important.
When we first encounter Lachlan in the dramatic meeting with Gemmy, he strikes us as a boy that isn't easily scared, have the intention of protecting his family as a man, and who has the potential of becoming a strong leader. This is shown when he protects himself and his cousins with only a stick, pretending it to be a gun. He is a stubborn twelve-year-old boy that loves to be in the center of things, getting all the attention. This is particularly made clear to us when he tells the story to the town about the meeting with Gemmy. 
His relation to Janet, his cousin, is difficult. Sometimes they are close but most of the time they are not. Janet resented him for not appreciating her secrets that she showed him as a newcomer. He acted like nothing was good enough for him. Lachlan believed he was proud and tough but Janet thought he cried easily. She also saw that he boasted and lied to get the attention. I believe this pattern is not so hard to understand if we look at Lachlan's position, as a child that has lost his parents and been brought in a new environment. He wants to hold on to the memories of his home and parents, at the same time that he is longing for love and confirmation. He is still too proud to admit that he needs anybody and I believe this is one the reasons he is always hungry for praise, the sort of official appreciation when he doesn't have to get too close to other people. 
We can se a change in character when he discovers that he is no longer the leader among his friends. It's when he isn't the first to know about what happened on their farm when Gemmy almost got murdered. After this he begins to hang out with older boys and starts smoking and swearing. He doesn't let Gemmy follow him around any more because he feels it's embarrassing. "How puffed up he had been with his own importance! What a fool he must have appeared to the very fellows he had meant to impress!....What he distrusted in himself was a tendency, a girlish one he thought, to let his affections rule. It was a weakness he was determined to stamp out." (158) I believe this is quite natural as a part of growing up, but what is special for Lachlan is his eagerness to become a man. A man in his eyes is a person that doesn't show feelings because they are a sign of weakness.
The next time we encounter Lachlan, he is an old man visiting his cousin Janet at a convent. He is now a minister of the government and by that always in the public view, as he liked to be as a boy. Lachlan strikes me here as very caring and even emotional. Caring in his ways toward Janet and emotional when he picks a flower in the garden of the convent and puts it between his teeth. In their conversations he tells her about the hard times in his life, but in the end it all comes down to Gemmy. 
Lachlan and Gemmy parted in a peculiar way only a few years after they met. They didn't say anything, they just parted and looked back at each other once. Now Janet says: "... he was just Gemmy, someone we loved.' Loved. The word, which she had used as if there was nothing problematical in naming thus such a tumult of feelings, released a weight in him that he felt shift and fall away." (p194) It is like he never thought about his feelings for Gemmy as love. The word sort of opens his eyes. Gemmy was maybe one of the few persons in his whole life that he really loved and he never got a chance to tell him that. The weight seem to be something he has carried within his heart for a long time, and I guess that it is guilt. He felt guilt in the way he had treated Gemmy when he was little, and he never had a chance to beg of his forgiveness before they parted.
Lachlan is very logical in his actions and therefore makes a certain type of person. The only part that "sticks out" is his relation to Gemmy and the effect it had on him. Also the small part when he takes the flower in his mouth at the convent. We can see how he never became a man in his own eyes, because these shows affection and emotions, the things he didn't think belonged to a man.
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