Summary
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation is an impressive, beautiful, and at times quite challenging young adult novel. It follows the main character, Octavian, through several years of his youth as a slave in eighteenth-century America. Octavian, however, is not just growing up throughout the novel: his development into a complex, textured character mirrors the transformation of the American colonies into a new, equally complex nation.
Octavian was born to a beautiful woman who was once a princess in Africa but is now a slave in the North American colonies. When the novel starts, Octavian is being raised as a scientific experiment by a group of amateur philosophers who want to determine precisely how the intellect of the African compares to that of the Caucasian. Octavian is therefore both a slave and the subject of scientific scrutiny. That dynamic produces in the novel tremendous intellectual insight, beautiful portraits of period activities—and scenes of aching loneliness.
That loneliness colors the novel as Octavian grows up and his position in colonial society gets more complicated and dangerous. As his life plays out against the backdrop of pre-Revolutionary politics, and then becomes actively intertwined with the U.S. Revolutionary War, Octavian tries to figure out who he is and how he can be free. The intellectual and emotional complexities Octavian experiences are matched by the book’s stylistic complexities. The novel changes tone, perspective, and even form, moving from stately and stylized prose early in the novel to letters and newspaper clippings from period philosophers, slave catchers, and farmers turned soldiers later in the book. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing is not always an easy novel to read, but it does an admirable job of exploring the period’s key clashes and conflicts, many of which still have a lingering effect on American society
Extended Summary
When The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing opens, Octavian is being raised by a group of amateur philosophers at the Novanglian College of Lucidity as a scientific experiment to determine the intellectual capacity of the African race. He lives in a completely artificial setting where people’s names have been replaced by new ones, or by numbers, and where every detail of his day is analyzed, right down to his feces. Though a slave, his mother plays the role of a salon mistress, the only woman trading witty comments with a crowd of male intellectuals.
This lasts until the Novanglian College of Lucidity’s aristocratic patron, Lord Cheldthorpe, dies. When his son, the Earl of Cheldthorpe, succeeds him, Mr. Gitney, whose house hosts the college, tries to persuade him to continue funding their research. Although the Earl of Cheldthorpe is not really very interested in science, he is extremely interested in Octavian’s mother, Princess Cassiopeia. Hoping to save the college, Gitney encourages Cheldthorpe, who eventually expresses his sexual desire for Princess Cassiopeia. He asks if she would like him to purchase her, to keep her as a mistress; she instead asks him to marry her. He declines and tries to rape Cassiopeia. Octavian tries to defend his mother, and both of them are whipped as a result.
The Earl of Cheldthorpe withdraws his financial support from the college, and Gitney must find new backers. Richard Sharpe becomes the new overseer at Novanglian. Sharpe shifts the investigations from the pure inquiries of science into more practical research. He also modifies the experiment involving Octavian so that it will intentionally fail. Octavian’s studies change from classical literature to basic grammar, and he must start doing household chores and performing with his violin for money.
Another slave, Bono,...
(This entire section contains 777 words.)
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tutors Octavian in housework. This lasts until Sharpe and Gitney suspect Bono of knowing something about a potential slave uprising. To protect themselves from such a rebellion, they give Bono away as a present to a college benefactor. To get better control of their slaves, and also to perform yet another scientific experiment, Mr. Gitney decides to hold a “Pox Party.” His plan is to test the new scientific discovery of vaccination and to expose people to a safe dose of smallpox so that when the expected smallpox plague accompanies the war and moves through their community, they will be safe. Forty-nine people are confined for this purpose. Eleven had been previously infected and so are immune, but thirty-eight are intentionally infected, including Octavian and his mother.
Everyone falls ill, and three die. Princess Cassiopeia suffers the most from the infection, losing her beauty to the disease’s raging pustules, and eventually dies a horrible death—which Mr. Gitney dutifully records for the purposes of science: he is comparing Caucasian and African responses to infection.
Octavian is lost without her and runs away. He flees through the increasingly disordered colonies, trying to earn his dinner, sometimes begging, and sometimes fighting his way free of attempts to capture him. Octavian eventually ends up as a recruit in a rebel militia company, where he becomes companion to and eventually friends with Private Evidence Goring. While Octavian had narrated the early portions of the novel, Ev Goring narrates most of the later portion, describing how Octavian played the fiddle (usually mournfully) for the company, worked with them, and at times fought with them, as America fought for its independence.
Unfortunately, word of Octavian’s skill with the violin eventually reaches Mr. Sharpe, and Octavian is returned to captivity. He is taken back to the college and kept in shackles and a mask for several days. His captors quiz him about the location of Bono, who had escaped. He tries not to eat or drink, but after three days he eats a little oatmeal. Some time after that, Octavian is led before Gitney, Sharpe, and Dr. Trefusis, who had been Octavian’s tutor. Sharpe and Gitney conduct a kind of inquisition during which they explain Octavian’s flaws and crimes to him. Octavian tries to answer them and to challenge the hypocrisy involved in fighting for American liberty while denying him his. They put the mask back on Octavian, which includes a bit that silences him. Sharpe delivers a lecture on economics and the great chain of being, which includes Octavian in his proper place as a slave.
This lasts until Sharpe and Gitney pass out after being drugged by Dr. Trefusis, who has long sympathized with Octavian’s position and suffering. The old white philosopher and the young black slave then escape in Gitney’s carriage to make their way in the world.
