On the Morality of Mr. Gitney on the Novanglian College of Lucidity

First and foremost Octavian and his mother are, under the legal gaze of the English Empire, slaves. They have been bought and paid for and cannot leave the college and enjoy the same freedoms that white colonists enjoyed at the time. When reading the first tens of pages, naturally a hatred grew in me of the curator of this institution, Mr. 03-01 (Mr. Gitney as he is now to be addressed as after the unfortunate arrival of the philistine Mr. Sharpe). The passage that solidified this was on page 11 when, after Cassiopea asserts that Octavian is his son, Mr. Gitney responds “Let us say rather that he belongs to all of us”, (Anderson). Who is this man to make such a claim of another human being, in the presence of this being's mother no less? A slave-owner, someone who partakes in something as detestable as the trade of souls. Needless to say I felt no warm feelings to this person.

That is, however, until after Octavian enters the forbidden room wherein anything measurable he had done was recorded in volumes and is caught. The punishment expected (at least what I was expecting) was a punishment fitting for a slave of that time: a scolding and a beating. This was not the case. Rather, Octavian is subjected to the same punishment 03-01 received as a child. Furthermore, he offers words of hope and encouragement to Octavian: “This, you must understand Octavian, is the true and sublime end of discipline: that you may rise into a new and glorious buoyancy”, (50).

At this point I began to wonder whether or not Mr. Gitney was an evil maniacal 'scientist' who threw cats off scaffolds out of morbid curiosity and boredom, or a genuinely good man who would have done better with the moral compass of a more modern, progressive time (to the extent that racism and slave owning is concerned). He seems genuinely fond of and proud of Octavian, and unhappy at the cruelties he and his mother suffered by the lash and rod of Chedelthorpe. A question I pose is the one I have struggled with: Is Mr. 03-01, and by extension the College, really that bad although they are slave-owners? To be forced by slavery to have a classical education is much preferable to the alternative for African slaves, as Octiavian learns after Mr. Sharpe arrives. Octavian is much more educated than the revolutionaries occupying Boston at the time. Mr. Gitney never beat a customs officer after tarring and covering him with feathers.

In answering this question, one cannot forget Mr. Gitney's cruelness in the beginning of the novel, among others one example being the incident with the poisoned dog. As the novel takes place over years, it seems that Mr. Gitney and the others are indeed “discovering the truth” they wished to seek not from the trivial numbers and figures they collect, not from the sick experiments they forced him to be a subject of, but rather from simply being around Octavian and his mother. This makes me wonder: what can change the nature of a man? Octavian is growing up, and he is learning what it means to be truly a slave. Before the gray rule of Mr. Sharpe, it seemed that he had found friends (at least people who respect him) in his captors. Now he watches Dr. Trefusis helplessly and Dr. Trefusis watches him helplessly as their bastion of art and philosophy is destroyed by the futility of utility. He is learning of revolutions of Rome perpetrated by slaves like himself. What will cause him to change from an Observer to an Artist, what will give him the driving passion? What will change the nature of Octavian Nothing?