The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing

I recently read a booked called The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing where there is a boy named Octavian who is kept by a secret society during revolutionary who do experiments on him. I haven't finished it yet, but it seems to be a bit backwards. Octavian is African American, and all the men who do the experiments are white. All the white men have numbers for names instead of regular names. For Octavian to have a name instead of a number is almost an insult. This is completely different from how slaves were treated then because they all got numbers instead of their names to take away a sense of identity. Octavian is also educated and given many privileges. This is how the white men do their experiments. They try to see if Octavian's race is like the whites. It's interesting to see another side of that time period. Not many white people did experiments like these. Like I said before, it's a bit backwards.