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    A Study Guide for M.T. Anderson's "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing"
    A Study Guide for M.T. Anderson's "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing"
    A Study Guide for M.T. Anderson's "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing"
    Ebook42 pages1 hour

    A Study Guide for M.T. Anderson's "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for M.T. Anderson's "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Literary Newsmakers for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Literary Newsmakers for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 20, 2016
    ISBN9781535835121
    A Study Guide for M.T. Anderson's "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for M.T. Anderson's "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing" - Gale

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      The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing

      M. T. Anderson

      2006

      Introduction

      In Thirsty, young adult novelist M. T. Anderson imagines a Massachusetts town that is almost completely normal, except for the vampires. In Feed, he turns his attention to a future that any modern reader would recognize. Shopping is all the rage. Televisions and computers are popular; they are so popular, in fact, that everyone is equipped with a direct brain-connection to them at birth. What unites both books is Anderson's ability to skew his reader's perceptions of the world just enough for them to get a better look at it. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party (2006) is no different. With events unfolding before and during the American Revolution, the time and setting could not be more different from his previous novels. Nevertheless, Anderson has once again rendered a fictional world that is both familiar and alien.

      In pre-Revolutionary Boston, the reader is introduced to the Octavian of the title. Along with his mother, he resides with a group of rationalist philosophers and scientists at the Novanglian College of Lucidity. He is provided a rigorous classical education amidst mysteriously luxurious circumstances. Octavian discovers the essential truth of his existence when he opens the door to a forbidden room. Not only is he a slave, but also the subject of a scientific experiment to determine the intellectual capacities of the African race. When the fortunes of the College change, the motivation behind the research degrades from misguided scientific enquiry to rank propaganda.

      As the novel yields its secrets and its horrors, the reader is kept off guard with shifting points of view and innovative narrative techniques. The end result is an alternative narrative of the American Revolution that strips away mythology in favor of a clear-eyed view of the moral questions present at the founding of the nation.

      Author Biography

      Young adult novelist Matthew Tobin (M. T.) Anderson was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on November 4, 1968. The son of Will, an engineer, and Julianna, an Episcopal priest, he grew up in an undeveloped neighborhood in the town of Stow, outside of Boston, and attended St. Mark's High School in Southborough. In 1987 he was accepted at Harvard. Not looking forward to starting at the university, he deferred for a year to go overseas and attend Winchester College, a boarding school in England. Challenged for the first time by his studies and enjoying life in England, Anderson

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