The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation (Volume 1): Part II

by M.T. Anderson
Octavian Nothing is an African youth held captive by a group of Enlightenment scientists and philosophers in eighteenth-century Boston. This National Book Award-winning novel explores racism, freedom, and individual identity.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV

Here are links to our lists for other works by M.T. Anderson: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation (Volume 2), Feed.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. intransigence
    stubborn refusal to compromise or change
    Do you see the spots where pictures lately hung, now sold off to pay the debts of your academy’s intransigence?
  2. obeisance
    dutiful or submissive behavior
    I still may bring to memory the smell of the varnish, my face smothered against the desk, my hands stretched before me in a gesture of offering and obeisance.
  3. insuperable
    impossible to surmount
    The difficulties of execution were not insuperable; but I feared that there should be no vigor in my rendering when my senses were clogged with terror at crowds and a crippling imagination of imminent failure.
  4. petrifaction
    the process of turning some plant material into stone
    From the steaming and corrosive blood of the Gorgon Medusa, most terrible to behold, she whose serpent-fringed visage incited petrifaction in all who gazed upon it, arose Pegasus, noblest of steeds, who alone could loft mortals to the heights of Mount Parnassus; in the same way, often that which most we fear births the resolve that spurs us on to altitudes we could not have achieved, had we continued walking on our customary paths.
  5. ebullience
    eager enjoyment or approval
    The applause, perhaps, lacked something of the vigor, the generosity and celebratory ebullience it had in my previous performance.
  6. penury
    a state of extreme poverty or destitution
    All the while, our gaunt house by the garden descended ever more into penury.
  7. suffuse
    cause to spread or flush or flood through, over, or across
    I was sensible of a growing revolt of the spirit that suffused the whole of my frame, which would no longer be stifled or mollified.
  8. trepidation
    a feeling of alarm or dread
    Mr. Sharpe and Mr. Gitney both felt considerable trepidation at the onset of what promised to be the most mischievous of calamities.
  9. obsequious
    attentive in an ingratiating or servile manner
    As a result, Mr. Sharpe and Mr. Gitney’s remonstrances with the committee of investors were grown particularly groveling and obsequious.
  10. imminent
    close in time; about to occur
    And late in March, as we all awaited some imminent fatality, Mr. Gitney sent out invitations for a pox party.
  11. mitigation
    acting in a way to cause an offense seem less serious
    The sole mitigation I can summon is that you did not sit in a chair which might have been occupied by a guest, but settled upon the floor.
  12. susceptibility
    the state of being easily affected
    I would not have been released from my duties at all — nor would have the other less-fevered servants — and we would have received few of the comforts of the sick, had Mr. Gitney not been conducting an experiment to determine the relative susceptibility of Homo afri and Homo europcei to the pox; which survey, as I demonstrated to him, should be invalidated, did we not receive the same treatment as our masters.
  13. animadvert
    express blame or censure or make a harshly critical remark
    There is no need to animadvert to the deeds of that day, which shall resound, for weal or woe, as long as this terrestrial globe has habitation.
  14. dissimulation
    the act of deceiving
    "A death-bed's a detector of the heart!’ the poet Young has written. "Here tired dissimulation drops her mask!'
  15. palliative
    moderating pain or sorrow by making it easier to bear
    SEVERAL HEROICAL ATTEMPTS at palliative intervention were attempted, especially to the last-mentioned subject.
Created on Wed Oct 23 12:21:15 EDT 2013 (updated Tue Aug 05 12:01:23 EDT 2025)

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