I
approached M. T. Anderson’s
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation
with some trepidation. I had been told that the subject of the
book was unsettling. I had read
Feed, and seen how Anderson delivered darkness with
riveting prose. So when I began reading, I wasn’t surprised to
find that the book was unrelentingly grim. The moments of
lightness were always overshadowed by the looming horror that
permeated the action. I thought, more than once, how hard the
story was to read. And, I also wondered, why it was so hard to
put down.
“I was raised in a gaunt house with a garden; my earliest
recollections are of floating lights in the apple-trees.”
Thus begins the tale of a boy raised by rational philosophers
who call themselves the Novanglian College of Lucidity. They
conduct their lives in search of Knowledge, and have decided to
see what would happen if a boy of African decent is given the
education of a European prince. The backdrop is Boston, a few
years before the American Revolution. The boy, Octavian, is a
slave.
The philosophers work under the principle that rational thought
is of utmost importance, and sentiment clouds judgment. As a
result, they can be cruel — engaging in vivisection, dropping a
cat from different heights to see at what point the animal can
no longer catch itself and breaks, slowly administering poison
to a dog to find the minimum dose necessary to kill it,
experimenting on a mute child and beating her to severe injury
when the experiment does not go as planned.
But they do not stint on Octavian’s education. He is taught to
read, write, play the violin, draw, and to understand Latin and
Greek. He is introduced to mathematics by being shown how to
weigh his own urine and feces, and how to subtract that measure
from the weight of the food he has ingested—so that the
philosophers can measure how much his food is used for other
purposes. His subjects of study include classical literature,
biology, and all matter of science as it is understood at the
time. And, he is observant.
As Octavian grows, his status becomes more and more galling to
him. The Novanglian College faces financial woes, and his
slavery bites him harder. Eventually, the philosophers manage to
push him over the edge when they conduct a final horrific
experiment, the details of which I would rather not give away.
Suffice to say that Octavian’s world, as he knew it, must come
to an end, and the confines of the College give way to the world
of Revolutionary America where patriots claim liberty for all,
especially for property owners who wish to keep their slaves.
This is a perspective you don’t often see in literature: the
Revolutionary War from the point of view of slaves.1
The colonists fought because Britain hampered their economic
interests. Freedom, to them, meant not having to pay taxes to
the crown, or abiding by British parliamentary decrees that
worked badly on a continent thousands of miles away. They
maintained a rapacious desire for land and saw England as tying
their hands when it came to expansion. As England cracked down
on its mutinous subjects, it abused individual freedoms, feeding
the patriots’ growing battle cries. But those abuses were not
the root causes of the Revolution. And individual freedom meant
freedom for property owners.
The novel brought this home in such a shocking and powerful way
that it made me wonder: who, in this battle for freedom, was on
the side of the angels?
I
had almost finished the book when I went to see
Amazing Grace, the recent movie directed by Michael
Apted that recounts the British MP William Wilberforce’s
struggle to end the slave trade. Set at about the same time in
history as the novel, it shows a point of view equally
unfamiliar to Americans: abolitionist efforts in England that
were more successful than their American counterparts, despite
the strong economic interests English power brokers had in
slavery—being the basis for a large proportion of the Empire’s
wealth.
The movie touches upon the contributions of abolitionists such
as Thomas Clarkson, Olaudah Equiano, Hannah More, and James
Ramsay, and on the remarkable public campaign—unheard of, and
quasi-treasonous at the time—that brought ordinary people to
boycott slave sugar and sign petitions. And although the movie
describes the ghastliness of the slave trade, it doesn’t provide
the visceral horror that M. T. Anderson delivers. Ultimately,
its attraction comes from watching the beautiful Ioan Gruffud as
Wilberforce and Romola Garai as Barbara Spooner (his wife-to-be)
being noble and good.
I
admit that I enjoyed the show. It was an easy introduction to an
important character in history who, in my readings, was only a
footnote, if I read about him at all. The story’s sugar coating
was light, and fabulous actors provided stellar performances of
both savory and less savory characters. But perhaps, more
important to me, that coupled with M. T. Anderson’s book, the
movie made me rethink a moment in history.
In school I was taught North American history as a manifest
destiny: Europeans arrived, brought culture and wealth, and yes,
there were some mistakes, but ultimately these were addressed,
and all was for the good. When England hampered that progress,
wise, freedom-loving patriots fought the greatest army on earth,
and, as it should be, won. Slavery was ultimately defeated
within America. The lands prospered. People now had freedom.
I
have read and seen a great deal since those initial history
lessons, and they no longer form the bedrock of my
understanding. Still, they color my view of the world. As good
fiction does, both Octavian Nothing and Amazing Grace made me
think about those premises, rework them again, and wonder where
the truth lies, all the while reminding me how slavery is a
great evil, and that I should never forget it.
Quotation from The
Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation;
Volume I: The Pox Party, by M. T. Anderson. Copyright © 2006
by M. T. Anderson
1. In the book
Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American
Revolution, Brian Schama wrote a history of what
happened to slaves during the American Revolution. For
those who escaped, he tracked their flight from owners,
enlistment in the British army, service during the war,
and long sought redress once the war was over. Published
the same year as Anderson’s novel, it makes me wonder at
the convergence of thought by disparate people about the
same subject.
