Bio of a Space Tyrant

Piers Anthony?s epic novel Bio of a Space Tyrant acts as a macrocosm of the treatment of refugees and their journeys to freedom. At the time of its creation in the early 1980?s, the novel represents the Vietnamese ?boat people? more specifically, but can still stand for what refugees of all times and from all parts of the world have gone through and continue to go through. Through five volumes, the main character, Hope Hubris, progresses up the societal chain of power, starting as an impoverished refugee fleeing from his home on Callisto and eventually rising up to become President of the United States of Jupiter. It is needless to say that a refugee, even in contemporary America, could never rise to the highest position in the government, however, the novel serves to show that Hope Hubris could work extremely hard to break the pattern of harsh and unfair treatment of refugees, at least for a brief moment in time. The first volume in the series, Refugee, focuses on Hope?s difficult life as a refugee and his emigration to the futuristic United States. This volume shows Hope Hubris and his family as a part of a ?boat people? community escaping their homeland.

?After the fall of Saigon in the summer of 1975, hundreds of tho

. . .

View the whole essay, without interruption

usands of people began fleeing [Vietnam] for fear of political persecution. Hope ?found Helse looking out a port, watching magnificent Jupiter whirl by, shrinking visibly as [they] were towed from it?.

Finally, the boat people and most other refugees have never ?been well received at their destination? (Anthony, Bio of an Ogre 210). They were all secretly escaping the country in small, rickety, and un-seaworthy wooden boats? (?Vietnamese Boatpeople Connection?). The refugees in the novel and in real life have had to deal with political persecution, pirates, rape, and even being turned away from their final destination ? their freedom. However, the ticket price to leave the moon on a transport bubble had risen so high that any refugee would have a hard time paying for one ticket, much less for an entire family?s tickets. If the pirates saw any woman, no matter her looks, they were sure to rape her. Due to the Hubris? low place in society, when Hope got into a fight over his sister?s safety with a scion who had a much higher place in society, the family was evicted from their home and forced to start all over again from scratch. At this point of despair, Helse is muttering part of the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, ?The New Colossus? by Emma Lazarus. Hope also learned that his roommate, Helse, who he had thought was a teenaged boy, was actually a girl: ??I deceived you, pretending to be a boy?. I have no brother to fight for me, so I became a brother,?? Helse revealed to Hope in secret (86). Then, when they were leaving their homeland, Callistan authorities followed them: ?The nether hatch in the saucer opened.

The Hubris family in Bio of a Space Tyrant is symbolic of the Vietnamese boat people and their journey to freedom. They did what they had to do to keep their family alive until the children were old enough to support themselves. The poem is saying that America is an open door for the distressed people of the world; it doesn?t matter their race, their background, their religion, whatever ? anyone is welcome to come, according to the poem.

Approximate Word count = 1981
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

Simply subscribe to view this paper, and 100,000 others.