Octavian Nothing Book Analysis

Quincy Fargo
Economics
Book Analysis
9/5/15
The POX Party Analysis The book The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The POX Party by M.T. Anderson was written and published in 2006. The story starts in 1760s and ends in the 1770s about an African Prince named Octavian Nothing who was born in America under the servitude of Mr. Gitney and was educated like European royalty as an experiment. The book is part of a series which contains two books, the second book being The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves. Both book genres are in the historical fiction category but the information used in the first book being closely linked to materials within the

When the book first starts it presents him as naive and willing to accept anything said as fact and an example of this is when he is told to record and weigh his feces to tell the differences from when he eats it and excretes it. Later in the story he finds out no one else weighs their feces and finds it odd no one would want to know how much their food was changed. With time, Octavian was unwilling to follow all of the rules he was told and started branching out to formulate his own opinions about the world. This is shown when he enters a room dedicated to detailing the experiment involving his entire life, this catalyzes his mentality into changing as a whole and is reinforced when getting to know Pro Bono, a slave with a less fortunate situation. As the book goes on as Octavian matures into a young man seeing the world in a different view. He starts to see the hypocrisy of the patriots fighting for freedom, the racial bias others are more than willing to impose on his race, and runs away from it all to no longer be constrained into slavery. His character changes from the naive little boy learning other languages to a young adult realizing how inhumane slavery is regardless of their situation. The story does have its strengths and weaknesses which can take away from the entire novel or give an interest to

The book had several weaknesses which could be off putting for some individuals; the world outside Octavian’s is shown in little fragments thrown to and fro, the beginning starts slow and is rather dry, certain areas in the book can become confusing to readers, and Octavian’s character is viewed from dozens of letters written by a soldier rather than from Octavian himself, effectively avoiding what he may be experiencing. The book does have various strengths which will appeal to several groups of people; a convincing narrative about the life of a black slave not on a plantation, the experiments which actually happened, showing life in the 1770s in most of its entirety, the racial superiority taking place in subtle ways to show accuracy within the time period, those who are empathetic, and moral implications of what Octavian went through. Even if the reader isn’t a historian they will be able to appreciate the book for what it is, A historical fiction retelling of an age that dictated the course of history as a