Character Analysis
Titus Boyus Ordinarius
Truth: "Titus" is a fancy-shmancy name. For one thing, any time you put a -us at the end of a name, you're just begging the reader to think in terms of the high-falutin' dead language of Latin. For another thing—well, let's just say "Shakespeare" and leave it at that.
Get ready for some serious juxtaposition, though, because our unit Titus is hardly grand. Oh, sure, he's super hot, but we find out from his mom that he was genetically engineered to look like a C-level FeedCast star who enjoyed roughly fifteen minutes of fame when Titus's parents were younger (25.62-72). This probably means there are others out there with Titus's same features—especially since Titus and his friends all seem to be about the same.
We even hear from Titus's own mouth how utterly, blandly normal he is, even compared to his normal friends:
I was the normal guy, I was magic Mr. Normal Dumbass, with my dumbass normal friends, and oh! Like the whole, like oh! How delightful, the whole enchanted world of being a stupid s***head who goes dancing and gets laid! You wanted to mingle with the common people. (53.61)
Of course, he's being a little sarcastic here, since he's saying this to Violet toward the end of the book, when he's all ticked off that she "used" him. But based on the rest of the book, he's not wrong: Titus is a perfectly normal example of a perfectly normal teen of the near-future. Which means he's a lot like a perfectly normal teen of the early 21st century, only with a feed actually installed in his head rather than in his smartphone.
Smarter Than the Average Mr. Normal
Most of the time, we can't distinguish Titus's manner of speaking or interests from those of his (dumb) friends. Still, there are some hints that he may be just a level above them in this category. Remember, for example, how he is captivated by watching Violet release the orbs of juice from her lips? We're pretty sure Link and Marty would be too busy bashing each other in the head to notice that sort of detail—and if they did, we doubt they'd think it was hot.
The other big hint comes when Violet remarks that he's the only one of his friends who uses metaphor, like when he describes the dead vines whipping up to the crack in the moon garden terrarium as "a squid in love with the sky" (15.9). But we also see a couple of other examples of Titus using metaphor:
- "I could feel like I was getting closer to Violet, which was like a present which I didn't know what was inside of." (36.2)
- Quendy's lesions open and close like "a fish mouth singing a country song" (42.3)
Notice something? Sure, Titus uses metaphors, but they tend to be based on consumption: presents and a cheap throwaway consumer good like Billy Big Mouth Bass.
We'll give him an A for effort, though. And he does come out with some real gems from time to time, like the squid comparison, and this one also: "[A]nd finally my fingers found her wrist. Violet's. It felt so soft, like something I had never felt before. It felt like the neck of a swan in the wind" (5.99). All of this suggests that Titus is more curious and perhaps smarter than his friends, since the ability to create metaphors demonstrates creativity and the ability to form unusual connections.
Plus, a lot of this seeming lack of intelligence is really ignorance. And by that we mean that he's simply uneducated, which is not surprising considering what SchoolTM teaches these kids. (For more on SchoolTM, mosey on over to our "Setting" section. We'll wait.)
The Velocity of Titus
Titus may starts out as a self-described normal kid who just wants to hang out and get drunk—we mean, go into mal—with his friends, but he undergoes some important character transformation over the course of the novel: he becomes interesting. Seriously. That's basically his entire character arc, going from boring and complacent to slightly less boring and questioning.
And it's all thanks to "learn[ing] an important lesson about love" (58.14).
Here's how it happens: first, he meets Violet. She looks different, talks different, and has weird ideas about resisting the feed. Getting hacked by the Coalition of Pity allows them to bond in the hospital, setting thing up for a happy little relationship back on Earth. Only, this is no The Fault In Our Stars. Titus isn't too hip to the idea that Violet's sick and her feed can't be fixed. Plus, there's all that tension between Violet and his friends. It all comes to a head when Violet has a seizure at Link's party, and yells at Quendy that she's "a monster."
While Titus cares enough to visit her in the hospital, he starts to disconnect—pun intended—himself from her. He doesn't return her chats and messages. He deletes all the memories Violent sends him without reading any of them, and then lies to Violet to cover his tracks. Finally, he reveals that he can't be intimate with Violet because it would be like touching a zombie: he can't get around the idea that she'll soon be dead, and that totally grosses him out. Then, he follows this up by breaking up with her.
Way mature, Titus.
If Titus were in Jerks Anonymous, this would be his rock bottom. He never gets the chance to make it up to Violet, but he does seem to learn his lesson—although he has to learn it from Violet's dad. When Titus visits Violet after her body has completely shut down, her dad gives Titus an unwanted first-hand view of what Violet went through. It's not pretty, but it does teach him something important: that you have to look right at someone to really see them.
All Growed Up
A little context: a bit before this happened, Titus notices something about his hologram teacher: "If you don't look right at them, they can look just like an empty shell" (46.6). With Violet, we get the sense that Titus is finally "looking right at" someone for the first time—and seeing that there's actually a lot there. There's a real person, not a simulacrum made up of chats, consumer preferences, and (let's face it) shallow desires.
By forcing Titus to re-live Violet's experiences, Violet's dad helps Titus make that final leap from idiot party boy to (almost) caring adult. He learns what resisting the feed is all about: genuinely engaging with and caring about something beyond his own selfish, feed-fueled desires.
"Okay," you're saying. "But then why does Titus go home and order pair after pair of pants?"
Well, here's how we see it: ordering all those pants is kind of like Violet's own consumer rebellion. He doesn't want the pants—he's just ordering the items to order them, in his very own way of rejecting consumer goods.
Want more proof that he's learned his lesson? At the very end of the book, he returns to Violet's bedside, and tells her stories. That's his way of giving her back the memories that he so callously erased.
And then he does something really out of character—or rather, out of character for who he used to be: he cries.
Titus's Timeline