Who Done It Essay Research Paper Oroonoko

Who Done It Essay, Research Paper

Oroonoko’s Slavery Problem: An Interpretation

Aphra Behn’s seventeenth century tale of a noble African prince’s tragic fall to slavery, Oroonoko, has often been cited as a major antislavery work. Under close examination, however, Oroonoko tells a more complex story. The volatile cultural, moral, and religious crosscurrents that Behn finds surrounding her manifest themselves in the forms of narrative equivocality and intermittent satire in Oroonoko. Throughout the text, she seemingly possesses a conflicting attitude toward the slavery institution and racism in general. On one hand, her portrayal of the protagonist Oroonoko is just, heroic, and deeply sympathetic, and she often disparages European culture and religion while portraying Europeans themselves in an unfavorable light; however, Behn perhaps unconsciously reveals her deeply rooted cultural bias and racism, fictionalizes and romanticizes the lives of slaves on the plantations, and displays an apparent noncommittal attitude towards slavery.

In selecting an African prince as her protagonist in a heroic romance, Behn not only makes an unconventional literary decision but also makes a statement on race. She shows that African Americans can be just as noble, virtuous, passionate, heroic, and just as worthy of literary praise and human compassion. Rarely before has an African American been portrayed in such a favorable light in British literature: ” . . . ‘Twas amazing to imagine where ’twas he got that real greatness of soul, those refined notions of true honor, that absolute generosity . . . the highest passions of love and gallantry”(2155); “There [is] no one grace wanting that bears the standard of true beauty”(2156). The manner of Oroonoko’s death echoes that of tragic Christian martyrs and heroes in classic literature. His speeches compare to great leaders of antiquity, and the question he puts to his fellow slaves–”Shall we render obedience to such a degenerate race, who have no one human virtue left to distinguish them from the vilest creatures.”(2184)–is perhaps Behn’s strongest statement against slavery. Her pen lavishes no less praise on Oroonoko’s lover Imoinda, “the brave, the beautiful, and the constant”(2193). Through Oroonoko and Imoinda’s suffering Behn highlights the excessive cruelty of the white man while underlining the honor and virtue of the lovers. She thus elevates two “slaves” to immortal status. She establishes what she has set out to do: to “make [Oroonoko's] glorious name survive to all ages”(2193). His name survives indeed, not as a common slave or even a mere prince, but an African American who serves as a sympathetic while revolutionary hero and a vehicle for Behn’s indirect attack on the slavery institution and those who perpetrate it.

In addition, Behn shows that she is not incapable of appreciating cultures different from her own while disparaging European society and its religion. She devotes many paragraphs to descriptions of the natives of Surinam whom she portrays as “charming and novel”(2153), innocent in their ways yet skilled in war and game. A philosophical libertine, Behn conveniently utilizes these natives, along with Oroonoko’s virtues, to launch a raillery against European civilization, especially religion. The natives’ nakedness, she claims, “better instructs the world than all the inventions of man; religion would here but destroy that tranquility they possess by ignorance”(2153). When the captain who captures Oroonoko as a slave refuses to release his shackles, Oroonoko replies that he “[is] very sorry to hear that the captain [pretends] to the knowledge and worship of any gods who had taught him no better principles”(2170). To his death Oroonoko refuses to accept Christianity. This is no surprise since Behn all but populates her story with dishonest, villainous Christians. There is the captain who abuses Oroonoko’s trusty nature and sells him as a slave; there are the pursuants of Oroonoko who torture him “in a most deplorable and inhumane manner”(2187). Indeed, the most despicable character in the story is the European deputy governor: “He [is] a fellow,” Behn describes, “whose character is not fit to be mentioned with the worst of the slaves”(2186). He, too, lures Oroonoko back to captivity with cunning duplicity, and his men eventually kill Oroonoko with unimaginable cruelty. The governor’s council has “no sort of principles to make them worthy the name of men”(2189). In addition, Behn comments on existing gender issues when she describes Europeans laughing at Mr. Trefry because of his “civility to a slave”(2174): in this case, Imoinda. It is apparently outrageous that a white aristocrat like Mr. Trefry treats Imoinda–a slave as well as a woman–with proper respect. Behn in effect criticizes her contemporaries for treating women, slaves or not, as property. Under Behn’s pen, the Europeans indeed come off as “without virtue or morality”(2157) and form striking contrasts to the native “Indians,” Oroonoko, and his countrymen.

Despite these revealing insights into the fallacies of racial discrimination, Oroonoko reveals that part of Behn still clings to her cultural biases and inveterate racism. While she is open minded enough to praise the beauty of the natives and of the Africans, for example, Behn comments that “they have all that is called beauty except the color”(2153). She indeed attributes many of Oroonoko