Living with Luxuries…At What Cost?

Living with Luxuries…At What Cost?
There are many things that many Americans take for granted; Americans are inundated with luxuries of every kind. Many cannot fathom a life without television, cell phones or internet; much less the price that is paid for these luxuries. M.T. Anderson, through his works The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party and Feed, shows where America has come from and where it may be headed in regards to these luxuries. American may not have always had the technology that it does today, but this does not mean that it was without its luxuries. In the case of The Pox Party, luxury simply meant continuing to live in a lifestyle that one has always been accustomed to despite what this might cost others. In Feed, Anderson takes indulgence to the extreme to illustrate what humans are willing to do to themselves in the name of luxury. M.T. Anderson uses his works The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party and Feed to show what extent humans are capable of in the name of luxuries.
The Pox Party is a story about a young boy who is forced to face the issue of his own slavery and what it means to be someone’s property. He and his mother, Cassiopeia, live in The Novanglian College of Lucidity, a college run by a Mr. Gitney, where experiments of every kind take place. Octavian is dressed in the finest silks and linen, taught Greek and Latin, plays the violin and has his excrements weighed daily; he doesn’t realize until he enters a forbidden room, that he is part of an experiment held by the college to establish the learning capacities of Africans and this is the reason for his treatment. After a series of events involving a pox party, a party in which all guests are inoculated with the small pox virus in effort to vaccinate them, and the gruesome death and dissection of his mother Octavian flees the college and joins a local patriot regime. Octavian, however, is tricked by certain parties and is forced to return to the college.
When asked what he learned through his experience writing The Pox Party Anderson replied: “I think there was…a slow, grinding realization for me of what it is that human beings are willing to do to each other to secure their own luxuries…I honestly feel like a full recognition of the capacity of mankind to ignore each other’s suffering is one of the saddest lessons I learned” (Sellers). In The Pox Party Anderson focuses mainly on America’s use of slaves to maintain their luxuries; the slaves worked in the households of the upper middle class for nothing more than food to eat and a place to stay. Through Octavian’s story, Anderson shows the inhumanity of slavery and what it means to truly be free. Most of the white characters in the book see nothing wrong with the act of slavery; most even believe that the “Homo Afri” was an inferior race.
As the backdrop of the story Anderson uses the beginnings of the American Revolution illustrating that, at this time America was as Anderson puts it, “a nation where people were trying to think of themselves in this new way, as proponents of liberty, and yet, at the same time, there was the outrageous hypocrisy of the way the economy rested upon the slavery of that period” (Horning 43). To many Americans of that time slaves were too precious a commodity to be released. Anderson includes as part of the first section of the book an excerpt from The Boston Gazette revealing an upcoming auction of slaves; the ad states that “these are fine specimens!” To the American people, Africans were not human they were specimen, specimen to be sold, bought, and used as their masters saw fit. The slave Bono’s name also reflects the notion of slave as object not person. Bono reveals to Octavian that he was given his name because “I was in my mother’s womb when she was bought. My master purchased me and her, one price. My name’s Pro Bono. For Free. They got two, my mother and me, for the price of one” (Octavian 39). Bono’s name would once again prove true as he is given “as a garnish to a gentleman donor in the Virginia Colony” (Octavian 177).
Bono attempts to reveal to Octavian that he also is a slave, though Octavian is not sure of what this means. Being an experiment, Octavian did not feel the immediate effects of slavery; he was too young to question the fact that all the other people of his color work, seemingly for him and his mother. Octavian credits this to the fact that he and his mother are royalty, not to the fact that the others are slaves. It isn’t until Lord Cheldthrope, one of the college’s heaviest financial contributors, dies that Octavian begins to feel the experience of what exactly it means to be the property of someone else. Lord Cheldthrope was succeeded by his nephew Lord Cheldthrope of the New Creation, who Mr. Gitney hopes will pick up financially where his uncle left off. Anderson uses a conversation between Mr. Gitney and Cassiopeia to reveal the extents Mr. Gitney is willing put Cassiopeia through in order to insure that his college and lifestyle will not be affected by this death. Mr. Gitney tells Cassiopeia “I only ask that you do whatever you can to foster his continued involvement in our philosophical household…I am not jesting. This flirtation is a boon, and unexpected gift. Foster it, Mademoiselle. Do you understand?” (Octavian 89-90). Later when Cassiopeia refuses to be Lord Cheldthrope’s whore, Octavian and his mother learn what happens to slaves who disobey their masters, they are stripped bare and whipped. Through this series of events Anderson points out that to Mr. Gitney the college and his own financial stability are worth more than the humanity of Cassiopeia, someone that he has here-to-fore fostered as a friend.
Mr. Gitney then partners with Mr. Sharpe, a racist man whose only concern is money, to insure the financial stability of the college. Octavian and his mother are forced to work in the house beside the other slaves and the only time Octavian is aloud to play the violin is during performances in which Mr. Sharpe profits. The nature of the experiment on Octavian also changes; his Greek and Latin lessons become increasingly difficult, as Octavian is forced to translate portions of legal documents. When asked by Octavian why it appears that Mr. Sharpe wishes him to fail Mr. Gitney replies, “the nature…of the experiment…has changed…We receive our funds now from a consortium of men of affairs who have some interest in proving the inequality of African capacities” (Octavian 169). The investors that Mr. Gitney is referring to are a group of merchants and plantation owners, the exact type of people who thrive from the free labor that slaves provide.
At the end of the novel Anderson makes his statement about the “luxuries” of slavery abruptly clear. Mr. Gitney explains to Octavian:
Octavian we do not believe in slavery any more than you. We would abolish it if we could. I would free you and the others tomorrow, if I could…But you must understand, there is an expense for everything…To manumit you, I would have to pay a bond…grievously expensive. (Octavian 336)
It does not matter that Mr. Gitney forces his slaves to work for free or that he has them beat when they disobey. This suffering does not affect him directly; he is able to look past the mistreatment of the slaves around him so long as it does not cost him any of his own luxuries. Anderson’s statement is clear, in order to secure one’s own luxuries people are able to ignore the suffering of others around them.
When asked what The Pox Party says about 21st-century America Anderson responded, “One of the things I really wanted to focus on is, What are people willing to do to others to make themselves comfortable...It’s very easy to condemn the past, but it’s a little bit more difficult to turn the lenses on ourselves” (Horning 43). In his book Feed, Anderson turns the lenses to the 21st-century and beyond. In this book he explores not what people are willing to subjugate others to in the name of luxuries, but what they are willing to do to themselves.
Feed is set in a futuristic America where people live in neighborhood pods suspended above ground, couples can go to Venus to fall in love and kids can go to the moon for spring break. This future is not, however, the fun one might imagine when such things are possible. In this capitalism gone mad world forests are cut down to make room for air factories, meat is cultivated in meat farms like agriculture and the oceans are so polluted that even whales have to wear suits to survive. Americans no longer have to worry about reading, writing or even thinking; everything they could ever possibly want is fed to them through a chip in their brain called “the feed.” The main character of this book, Titus, and his friends go to the moon for their spring break and there Titus meets Violet. While at a club on the moon Violet, Titus and his friends’ feeds are hacked by a dissident; for Violet this hacking causes a cascading effect ultimately leading to her death.
Most of the people of this society see nothing wrong with the feed. The luxury this America indulges itself in is the convenience of having everything less than a fingertip away. Since the feed is wired into your brain so as Titus explains, “it knows everything you want and hope for, sometimes before you even know what those things are…so all you have to do is want something and there’s a chance it will be yours” (Feed 48). It doesn’t matter that the feed also hinders its user from thinking on its own sometimes, as the user is constantly inundated with advertisements of all kinds. Anderson points out that in this society people are willing to suspend thought to have the luxury of convenience, and consequently along with thought people also willingly sacrifice the complexity of language. While waiting in the hospital on the moon after his feed is hacked Titus asks his dad how his mom is doing. His father’s response: “She’s like, whoa, she’s like stressed out. This is…Dude…Dude, this is some way bad shit” (Feed 55).
Suspension of thought and speech isn’t the only thing affected by the luxuries of America; people are starting to notice lesions on their bodies. The lesions can be found on any part of the body and even sometimes leak. Towards the end of the book the physical side effects of the feed become shockingly apparent; Titus explains, “Everything was not always going well, because for most people, our hair fell out and we were bald, and we had less skin” (Feed 278). The president, however, attempts to calm peoples fear and speaks to the American people through the feed at one point stating:
we shouldn’t think that there are any truth to the rumors that the lesions are the result of any activity of American Industry. Of course they are not the result of anything American industry has done…we need to remember that America is the nation of freedom, and that freedom, my friends, freedom does not lesions make. (Feed 85)
As Anderson points out in The Pox Party freedom is a multi-dimensional thing. The freedom the patriots fought for was denied to their slaves, and the “freedom” Americans have in Feed becomes null and void by the fact that they become slaves to their feed. Once implanted the feed controls every aspect of their life, down to all bodily functions. This is just another sacrifice the people are willing to make in order to maintain the luxuries that come with the feed.
Violet becomes Anderson’s means of showing the ultimate sacrifice one makes to possess these luxuries. Violet’s father originally refused to have her implanted with the feed, but after seeing that the only way to survive in the mainstream world of America was to have a feed he broke down and had Violet implanted at the age of seven. Here in lies the problem; most people have the feed implanted shortly after birth which gives the brain time to grow around the chip, but because Violet did not receive her chip until she was seven the chip does not properly fit. After Violet and the others were hacked her chip begins to malfunction and since the feed is hardwired into her brain she begins to lose control of her body at times. Violet sends Titus a feed-sim after an extremely bad malfunction of her feed; Titus says:
Suddenly, I couldn’t move my legs, I couldn’t even scream, I just tried to grab on to the banister. I was falling backward. I hit the walls with my hand as hard as possible and then my face hit the carpet on the stair and I was sliding down on my butt. The rug on each stair was burning the side of my face…There was no space in me for breathing…I clutched at the air. (Feed 245-246).
Violet is, by the end of the book, in a completely comatose state trapped inside her own body. Life was the sacrifice that Violet was forced to make to live within the luxuries her world demanded.
Like Octavian’s slavery for Mr. Gitney’s luxuries, Violet became a slave to the feed for her own luxuries. Anderson is able to show the cost of luxuries in two very extreme ways. Though slavery is gone it does not mean that sacrifices are not made on a daily basis for luxury. Today America is becoming more and more like the world of Feed; chips are already being implanted in some. It is not enough for us to say because we no longer force slave labor that we are still not paying a heavy toll for our luxuries. Landscapes are being paved over to create the supermarket across the street because the supermarket across town is not convenient enough. American’s should pay close attention to the message Anderson is trying to portray. The luxuries we enjoy all come at a cost; we should all be aware of the price paid for such things.

Anderson, M.T. Feed. Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2004. Print

---. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party. Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2008. Print

Horning, Kathleen. "Patriot Games." School Library Journal 52.11 (2006): 40-43. Academic Search Premier. Web. 17 Mar. 2010

Sellers, John. “Q & A with M.T. Anderson.” Publishers Weekly 16 Oct. 2008: np. PublishersWeekly.com. Web. 24 Mar. 2010