In the story Oroonoko by Aphra Behn tells the story of the African prince Oroonoko and his beloved wife Imoinda, who are captured by the British and brought to Surinam as slaves. Oroonoko is set in the 1600s, at a time when many countries, including Surinam, were under British colonial rule. Aphra Behn depicts how British imperialism, in tandem with the Atlantic slave trade, fundamentally changed life in Africa and certain parts of South America. The character who is brave, intelligent Oroonoko is a victim of imperialism, which is depicted as evil, corrupting force. While on the other end the natives of Surinam as innocent, good natured people. She emphasizes the fact they regularly trade beads, bins, and needles to prove that the natives are creative, and she claims that the people of Surinam have no words meaning lies or deception. By praising so called primitive cultures, Behn criticizes colonial regimes, as well as Western European culture. The colonists themselves, however, are not innocent. The slaves and many of the settlers recognize Oroonoko’s inherent nobility, the colonial government refuses to restore his freedom and threatens to enslave his unborn child. In this way, Surinam resembles seventeenth century England. Similarly, to England’s King James II who faced a nation that sought to deny both his nobility and that of his son.
The last descendant of the king of Coramantien, Oroonoko was raised away from the court to be a skillful warrior by Imoinda’s father. He has strong notions of duty and perfectly follows the codes of his society, except when his love of Imoiunda compels him to protect and honor their marriage by taking her life to protect her and their unborn child. He mistakenly assumes that his notion of honor means the same thing to the white Christians he comes in contact with. The very mistake that several times ends up costing him his freedom. The theme of anti- colonialism can be seen throughout the course of Oroonoko through the comparison of the way in which the Surinam natives are portrayed, versus the way in which the white colonizers are portrayed. It sheds light on the horrors of slavery and paints many of the white colonists as brutal, greedy, and dishonest. As we saw with the British slave trading captain first befriends Oroonoko, but later betrays him and then lies to him twice and sells him. Oroonoko has been promised numerous times his freedom by deputy – governor of Surinam, he portrayed himself as Oroonoko’s friend and assured him over and over again that he would be free. But later on, Byram shows his true colors when he hunts him down, whips him, and without a thought orders him to death.
This image of the slave Atlantic slave trade connects to Oroonoko because it shows what slaves him include had to go through when they were sold and robbed of their freedom. The whites who would whip Oroonoko acted very cruelly in rending the flesh from his bones. Such as it say in the text “ when they thought they were sufficiently revenged on him, they untied him almost fainting with the loss of blood, from a thousand wounds all over his body and led him bleeding and naked as he was, and loaded him all over with irons and then rubbed his wounds to complete their cruelty, with Indian pepper which had like to have made him raving mad” (Behn 67). In the image we can see the blacks being escorted by the white colonist onto the boat half naked and from the looks of it probably malnutrition.
This image shows the mistreatment of slaves went through with their owners, who always made sure they walked in line just right and did their bidding. And if they stepped out of said line they were beaten or killed. Just as we saw with Oroonoko and his wife, while they were promised over and over lies of freedom. Oroonoko soon saw that he and his family were never going to be free or truly free I should say, and he saw no other solution for his family but to kill them from their awful life. He knew he would die a slave and didn’t want that for his wife, so he ended her suffering which seemed to agitate them even more. Oroonoko who was a prince a slave gave his freedom to protect his wife and unborn child and still lost his life. Sadly, I wish I could say racism and slavery has ended but I don’t think it has or will end anytime soon. And as far as slavery is concerned as long as we still have sweat shops and child labor that’s slavery to me. Oroonoko surprisingly turned out to be a great read while sad but a good read.
Work Cite
Dunn, Makhno. “o-TRANSATLANTIC-SLAVE-TRADE-Facebook.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 14 Mar. 2019, www.flickr.com/photos/162769934@N06/46650872954/in/faves-187464637@N04/.
