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<title> ANALYSING A GROWING BOY TO DEATH </title>
A central part of the novel "Remembering Babylon", by David Malouf, is its detailed characterization. I am going to describe one of the characters: Lachlan Beattie, and I will focus my description on two things. Firstly, in the story Lachlan undergoes a change from authority to humiliation and from self-assurance to a feeling of awkwardness. I believe that this change is caused by the growing distrust against Gemmy in the settlement, and also by his wish to be a grown man. Secondly, I will discuss how Lachlans characteristics are conveyed in the text. 
	Lachlan Beattie was born in Scotland. When he was nine years old, his father died in a pit accident. He then moved to Queensland to stay with his aunt and uncle, the McIvors. Together with his cousins, he is the first to meet Gemmy, the strange fellow who emerges out of the ti-tree swamp one day. He brings him in to the settlement, and this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. He will recall this friendship many times when he is old, a long time after Gemmy has gone, and he himself has become a minister in the British Government.
	When he first comes to the settlement, Lachlan is a quick-witted town boy, not impressed by the life in the bush. He shows no gratitude for the fact that he has been saved from starving in Scotland. Playing with his cousins, he is an authority. There is a struggle between Lachlan and Janet, but he is always the superior. Sometimes they go on quite well, but, as it is said: "he was easy as long as you gave in to him". When he brings Gemmy to the settlement he becomes superior also among the other children; "Something impressive and mysterious set the two figures ...[Lachlan and Gemmy]... in a dimension where they appeared unreachable."
	Moreover, Lachlan is self-centered and self-assured. When bringing Gemmy in, he is described as an actor on a stage, about to explode. He always tries to draw attention to himself and win approval. He has great plans for the future, in which he and Gemmy will explore the continent together, and there will be a monument set up for them. (This is, in a dreadfully different way, realized later, when Lachlan travels with the road gang and searches for the bones of Gemmy's slaughtered body.)
	But as the suspicion against Gemmy grows among the neighbours, and finally turns into terror, Lachlan's role in the group is changed. This is very well handled in the text. For about hundred pages, when everything happens, there is almost not a word about Lachlan. When the former order in the settlement is inevitably ruined, he is back again, and finds himself in the middle of it, and does not know how it happened. He is humiliated by the other children, when they ask him about the rumours of what happened to Gemmy the other night, and he cannot answer. "He felt betrayed on all sides ... they [his family] had let him sleep, as if he could be of no help, and had afterward kept it from him!".
	He does not know how to handle this new situation. He is not a boy any more, and he wants to be a part of the older group. But then he cannot have Gemmy tagging at his heels any more, though he would want to. Not feeling comfortable in the settlement, he seeks up Mrs Hutchene's house in the forest, and finds, among others, Gemmy and his cousins there, in that lighter corner of the world, and he feels very awkward. "There was, he saw, some other lighter way of responding to things. These others had found it. What was wrong with him that he could not." 
	After this he finally breaks with Gemmy, and finds he has also grown apart from Janet. In this new mood he enters the world outside the settlement.
	I would now like to give my view on the characterization. Almost everything the reader gets to know about Lachlan, and all the other characters for that matter, is told by deep analysing. The reader has no chance of building his/her own opinion, based on what Lachlan says or does. He is the author's creation, and the author wants to analyse his creation in detail; all that I have quoted above are taken from such analyses. This prevents the characters from being alive, and makes many passages seem dull and endless. 
	So, summing up things, it can be said that he characterization of Lachlan Beattie is part of a detailed description of confrontations, growth and group dynamics. There is no doubt about that Malouf has made "A really impressive achievement", as Doris Lessing put it. However, I find it very uninteresting, by the way it is telled, leaving no freedom to the reader. Most of the analyses are so deep that they are actually boring.
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