The first word of Oronooko: or The History of the Royal Slave is "I"--the narrator--who claims to be "an eyewitness" to the true history of an intriguing hero. Whatever she did not personally observe, she maintains, was given to her as firsthand accounts by others who were there. While she will not bore her readers with all the details concerning this amazing noble hero, she will nevertheless tell them everything about him that she, and her group of curious European friends, found fascinating about this prince before and after he arrived in Surinam ("in the West-Indies"). But, before she tells the story of how this "gallant slave" came to be in this region of the world, she will provide an account of the people, the natives with whom the British live in "perfect peace," and will give a highly detailed description of this wondrous place (1).

She describes a multitude of exotic tropical birds: "parakeets, great parrots, macaws, and a throusand other birds and beasts of wonderful and surprising forms, shapes and colors," as well as a wide variety of insects (2). The native people with whom the Europeans trade, she says, are creative: "we dealt with them with beads of all colors, knives, axes, pins and needles." They wear beaded aprons "as Adam and Eve did the fig leaves." The people, she continues, are beautiful, their skin color a reddish yellow. "They are very modest and shy and despite living practically naked, there is never seen among them any improper or indecent behavior" (3). Of course a man might be attracted to a woman, but he will only touch her with his eyes while his hands remain folded. He sighs with love but never talks to her. The young woman, on the other hand, modestly guards her eyes and keeps them lowered. In short, the narrator reiterates again, the native people are very like the first biblical parents in the Garden of Eden living in "the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin" (3).

Indeed, she insists they do not even understand the concept of sin. Once, they performed a mourning ceremony for the English governor, whom they assumed to be dead because he failed to attend a meeting that he had earlier with a handshake consented to attend. Nothing else but death, they believed, could have kept him from attending the agreed meeting. Later on, when they ask the Governor the English word for a man who fails to keep a promise, he responds "a liar," at which point they accuse the Governor himself of being just such a character. They do not understand vice or cunning, the narrator further insists, except that which they have been taught by the white man. The men take many wives, the younger of whom serve the older respectfully. Unless they have slaves, they keep no servants.

The British live with the native population, the narrator continues, in the "greatest tranquility and good understanding," an arrangement that works well because the natives know the location of all the food in the forest and climb the trees to get delicious fruit. Also, they swim like fish and run as fast as deer when they hunt. They supply great delicacies to the British that the colonists would not be able to get for themselves. They are very useful to us, she insists, so the British treat the natives very well. The British see them as friends and do not "treat them as slaves," and they could not do so even if they wanted to, because "their number[s] so far surpass ... ours in that continent" (5). Instead, those who are made to work in "plantations of sugar are Negroes. Black slaves all together, who are transported" (5). A plantation owner in need of slaves simply orders, like any merchandise, the number of slaves required and pays for them when they are delivered to Surinam by ship. Coramantien, a country on the west coast of Africa, in particular, was utilized because the country was always engaged in wars that resulted in great numbers of captives. The general of the army makes a great profit selling these captives as slaves, especially the poorer ones who cannot afford the ransom.

Analysis

In this era, drama and poetry were the predominant literary forms. For instance, Shakespeare (1564-1616) became famous for writing poetry and drama, but he never wrote a novel. Oroonoko influenced the origin of the British novel. Readers will notice that common features of novels such as chapters or other breaks are in short supply, which points up the newness of the form. If we consider the work a novella, we might be less surprised by the lack of chapter breaks (short stories, which are even shorter, frequently have no chapter breaks). This ClassicNote is broken into four sections centered on different locales or events.

Behn herself spent time in Surinam, a British colony founded in 1640, as a young woman. The narrator, who seems to have much in common with Aphra Behn, is a reporter, most of the time as an eye-witness herself. Thus Behn adds verisimilitude, or the approximation of truth, to the narrative. First she describes the Surinam setting--given as located in the West Indies, the group of islands discovered by Columbus in 1492. Today, what we call Surinam is located on the north coast of South America, bordering Brazil on the south, Guiana on the west, and French Guiana to the east. The focus on details-the kinds of birds and insects, for instance-contributes to the idea that we are dealing with a true story. The vivid descriptions help us trust the narrator when she goes on to present the story of the African prince.

Readers of this early modern literature should remember that some of the terms Behn uses are particular to her era. For instance, she uses the term "tyger" for a small cat, but we should not think she is referring to a tiger.

Behn refers to three different types of people who live in Surinam. The narrator is a European, a young white British woman visiting the British colony. She uses the pronouns "we" and "us" to differentiate Europeans from the two other groups of people, generally "them." One group consists of what some today call Native Americans, the natives, people who are indigenous to that region of South America. She insists that both groups tend to live peacefully together and that the natives are as innocent as Adam and Eve before the fall. With these people in mind, Behn considers the philosophical antithesis of nature versus civilization. She tends to idealize the natives and imbue them with a kind of natural nobility. Indeed, she refers to them as living as early man did during the "Golden Age," before the corruptions of civilization. For this reason, Behn's work might be considered a philosophical one, despite its non-philosophical features. Furthermore, the Noble Savage trope might have later influenced the French philosopher Rousseau (1712-1778). Nevertheless, tensions remain between the Europeans and the natives, beyond the simple identification of the former with culture and the latter with nature. These tensions will become clearer as the novel progresses. In this section, it is enough to note that the British are forced, more or less, to be good to these people and not "treat them as slaves," because they "so far surpass" the British in numbers and in ability to supply natural resources.

Thus, if the British are to make money from their Caribbean colonies, who is going to cut and refine the sugar, harvest the cotton and tobacco, and so on? This issue gave rise to African slavery in all of the Americas. African slaves, the third group of residents in Surinam, were first introduced into Surinam in 1650 by Lord Willoughby, the governor mentioned in Oroonoko who never arrives. Soon the slaves vastly outnumered whites, and fears of rebellion increased.

The fictive story of the African prince Oroonoko emerges from this historical, economic, social and cultural background. European plantation owners in need of slave labor contracted for a number of African slaves to be transported. Coramantien, today Ghana on the west coast of Africa, was in particular very lucrative because it seemed to be always at war and able to produce prisoners for slave traders. It is important to point out that according to Behn, "of these slaves so taken, the general only has all the profit," and Oroonoko is the African general in question who profits from the sale of African slaves (6).

The king of Coramantien is over one hundred years old and has fathered thirteen sons, all of whom were killed in battle. Consequently, the heir to the throne is his valiant adolescent grandson, Oroonoko, who has spent the last two years of his life at war. He is beautiful in stature and smart. He has learned English and Spanish from the traders to whom he sells slaves. Also, his royal tutor is a Frenchman who educates him in the European fashion. The narrator has often seen and conversed with this great man "and been a witness to many of his mighty actions...the most illustrious of courts could not have produced a a braver man...[who] in all points addressed himself as if his education had been in some European court" (7).

During one battle, Oroonoko's mentor and general of the army was killed by an arrow in the eye, an arrow meant for the extremely popular young prince. Oroonoko has been promoted to the position and has just come to his grandfather's court. Here for the first time he sees his mentor's daughter, the beautiful and modest young Imoinda: "a beauty, that to describe her truly she was female to the noble male, the beautiful black Venus to our young Mars, as charming in her person as he, and of delicate virtues" (9). They fall instantly in love. Oroonoko asks Imoinda to marry him, and she quickly agrees. He promises her that despite the fact that his countrymen take as many wives as they can maintain, he will never take another wife, even after Imoinda is old and her beauty has fled. He will remember that her soul is young. (In this culture, their promises constitute a wedding of sorts, but they do not yet consummate their love.)

The king, Oroonoko's grandfather, hears rumors of Imoinda's beauty. He has become increasingly feeble and yearns for his physical prowess to be rekindled. Although he knows of his grandson's attachment, he finds an opportunity to clandestinely view Imoinda. The old man cannot help himself, falls instantly in love, and sends Imoinda the royal veil which marks her as one of the king's women. It is the highest of honors, which no girl is allowed to refuse. Upon her arrival in the otan, the royal seraglio (which houses the king's women and where no man but the king is allowed to visit), Imoinda pleads and tells him of her binding promise to wed Oroonoko: "she was another's and could not be so happy his." But the king is absolutely enamored and puts aside his feelings for his grandson: "what love could not oblige Imoinda to do, duty would compel her to" (12).

When Oroonoko goes to visit Imoinda, he brings her a gift of 150 slaves whom he has captured in battle. But he is shortly cast into depression when he finds her gone. He would have felt better, he tells his friends, if Imoinda had been kidnapped, because then he could rescue her instead of sitting by helplessly while the king holds the girl he considers his wife in his enfeebled arms: "Oh my friends, were she in walled cities or confined from me in fortifications of the greatest strength...I would venture through any hazard to free her, but here in arms of an old man, my youth, my violent love...avail me nothing" (14).

In time Oroonoko reckons that his premarital promise to Imoinda supersedes the king's claim. He plots to enter the otan to "learn from Imonda's own mouth" whether she still loves him (15). And the king, who has been suffering pangs of guilt over the cruel treatment of his grandson, comes to believe that the feelings between the prince and Imoinda have passed. He invites Oroonoko and his friend Aboan to dinner inside the otan. Imoinda, who has been living in misery, has been led to believe that Oroonoko has forgotten her--but when the lovers lay eyes upon each other, they realize their love is as strong as ever.

When Oroonoko views the bed where Imoinda must lie with the enfeebled king, he almost falls apart. Another senior wife of the king named Onahal, who resents being discarded, comforts Oroonoko and tells him she will tell Imoinda of his undying love.

Meanwhile, Onahal's flirting with the handsome Aboan has taken a more serious turn. Later Aboan tells Oroonoko that he believes in time she will allow both men entrance to the otan. Oroonoko is overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. His inquiry whether Aboan will be able to "caress her so, as to engage her entirely," suggests sexual activity with Ohahal. When the king invites both men again to the otan to watch his wives dance, an accident occurs and Imoinda trips into Oroonoko's arms. There can be no doubt about his feelings from his happy response, so the infuriated king, who thinks Imoinda took a false step on purpose, orders him to leave the court. Meanwhile, Onahal has aranged for them to return that evening to the otan.

While Aboan makes love with Onahal, Oroonoko wakens Imoinda, who is "surprised with joy." The couple finally consummate their relationship. Hardly surprising, Oroonoko finds that Imoinda is still a virgin: "he soon prevailed and ravished in a moment what his old grandfather had been endeavouring for many months" (23). Meanwhile, the jealous king sends his guards to check on Oroonoko and to come himself to the otan when he finds he is missing. The guards, however, allow Oroonoko to escape. He rejoins his army and, in an effort to save her life, the terrified Imoinda assures the king that she has been taken against her will. Somewhat mollified, the king spares their lives but orders Imoinda and Onahal to be secretly "sold off instead as slaves to another country, either christian or heathen, 'twas no matter where" (26).

A short while later the king begins to feel chagrin over his decision to sell Imoinda, because being sold as a slave is the greatest dishonor. He believes that he should have put her honorably to death instead. He is concerned that he will lose Oroonoko entirely if he finds out his lover was enslaved instead of being put to death with honor. The king sends a messanger to Oroonoko's camp to tell Oroonoko that Imoinda has been secretly put to death: "for he knew he should never obtain his pardon for the other" (27).

Oroonoko decides to turn over his military exploits to other men and spend the rest of his days in grieving for the woman he believes has died. He takes to his pavilion, where he sinks deeper and deeper into depression and tells his army to select another general. Oroonoko remains depressed, hoping to die, until he hears the army is actually in danger of losing a battle to Jamoan, the leader of the the opposition. This rouses him from his langor, and he dresses for battle.

When his men see him, they treat him like a deity, yet while hoping to die, Oroonoko enters the battle, takes many lives and wins the day. He captures Jamoan and does not sell him into slavery like the other captives. In fact, he treats him so well that he "retained nothing of the prisoner but the name." In time the two become such close friends that this friendship, with that of Aboan and his French tutor, saves him from sinking into "the disease of melancholy and languishment," which certainly would have killed him" (31).

Just as Oroonoko is received at court with all the joy and magnificence that could be expressed for a young victor, there arrives in Coramantien an English ship (32). Oroonoko recognizes the captain, because he has sold him many slaves before. He invites him to his home, and the captain entertains him with globes and maps. So delighted is the captain with his good treatment that he invites Oroonoko and about one hundred others to his ship, where he treats them to a banquet replete with wine in which they overindulge. Soon, to their great surprise, the treacherous captain "gave the word and seized on all his guests," including Oroonoko--"locking him down fast, secured him...[and] betrayed [him] to slavery (33). He rages in vain against the betrayal, and when he realizes he is helpless, he decides not to eat.

All the others follow suit, and the captain becomes agitated that all his cargo will starve themselves to death. For this reason, he sends word to Oroonoko that he is very sorry for his actions, that he made a great mistake, and that he will set Oroonoko and his people free when they come to land. Oroonoko asks to be unshackled, and the captain must comply so that Oroonoko will entreat his people to eat. He is treated well for the rest of the voyage but sinks once again into melancholy over his loss of Imoinda, who he still believes is dead.

The ship arrives at Surinam, where the plantation owners await their lots of slaves and where, the narrator interjects, "I chanced to be" (37).

Analysis

Behn's initial endeavor upon introducing her British readers to Oroonoko is to enable them to accept him as a royal personage and a hero. With this in mind, she describes Oroonoko in European terms. For instance, he has a French tutor to educate him and teach him French manners, which were highly regarded in Restoration England ever since the British king Charles II had been restored in 1663 to the British throne after years spent in exile at the very exclusive French court. Thus, Oroonoko "in all points addressed himself as if his education had been in some European court" (7). The author associates her dark prince with the British monarch Charles I, who was beheaded in 1649 when the Parliament took over the government--an analogy that she will pick up again in the last part of the book, when Oroonoko dies through the treachery of those he trusts.

Behn also gives the African prince European physical characteristics in distinction to the characteristics of others of his race: "his nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat. His mouth the finest shaped that could be seen; far from those great turned lips which are so natural to the rest of the Negroes." In addition, Oroonoko has a superior physical body: "the most famous statuary could not form the figure of a man more admirably turned from head to foot." Overall, there "was nothing in nature more beautiful, agreeable and handsome" (8). The narrator here views Oroonoko as an object not only beautiful and "exactly formed," but as an object of art that could reasonably inspire an erotic gaze.

Moreover, the narrator, "who has often seen and conversed with this great man," points out, "the most illustrious of courts could not have produced a braver man" (7). In time, we will see him in superhero mode killing tigers after seven others fail. Behn paints the prince as a hero in order to inspire her readers' imagination. Indeed, this composite of an enslaved African prince became a very popular story.

Behn also adds an aristocratic touch to Oroonoko in that he is prone to melancholy, or depression. In this era, melancholy was characterized as a disease of the wealthy, the aristocracy, or simply those who could refrain from labor. Those unlucky enough to suffer from melancholia, as it was known, were viewed as highly sensitive and intelligent people, more highly evolved, as it were, than their lesser, more physically healthy and mentally simple brethren. Indeed, in this era, a man with tears in his eyes was throught of as highly refined and thus admirable. When Oroonoko hears of Imoinda's fate, he is shortly cast into a deep depression: "he would never lift a weapon, or draw a bow but abandon the small remains of his life to sighs and tears...and continual thoughts of that innocence, that innocence and beauty" (28). While it might be thought that this depression was only natural, throughout the narrative, Behn continues to use this particular characteristic to lock in the aristocratic nature of her African hero. He sinks deeper and deeper into despair after the death of Imoinda, even coming to lose interest in his position as general: "believe this when you behold Oroonoko, the most wretched and abandoned by fortune of all creation" (29). He will return again and again to this melancholic temperament thoughout the work especially after he is enslaved. After raging in vain against the betrayal of the English captain, he expereinces a fit of depression and decides not to eat. Later, a similar episode occurs when he comes to realize he has been deceived once more by the whites and that they have no intention of granting him his freedom.

Behn later will imbue Oroonoko with many more characteristics of a truly noble hero who lives by a code of honor, in opposition to the British slave traders and plantation owners, who are highly immoral and consistently break their words of honor.

Nevertheless, Oroonoko is no pacifist. He makes war on his neighbors for whatever reason and takes captives from among the losers. He sells them to the European slave traders for profit. Indeed, he brings Imoinda not gold or diamonds but a gift of 150 slaves whom he has captured in battle. This exchange of slaves exemplifies with great historical accuracy the mercantile system of slave buying and selling on the west coast of Africa during the seventeenth century. Although later Oroonoko, when he is himself enslaved, will throw off his shackles and lead a slave revolt, it is necessary to keep in mind that while he might be viewed then as heroic, he still can justify the practice of selling humans by explaining that they are taken honorably in war. At this point in the story he is complicit in the slave trade.

Two additional characters, Aboan and Onahal, are introduced in this section. Aboan exemplifies how friendship functions in this African society. He will go to any lengths to help his friend Oroonoko recover his lost love Imoinda, even if it means making love with one of the older women whom the king has discarded from his bed. Aboan acts as a foil for the white friends Oroonoko will make later on--friends who will deceive him after he arrives as a slave in Surinam.

Onahal is a "decayed beauty," one of the "cast-off mistresses of the king," and now the caretaker of his newer and younger wives, whose job is to "teach them all the wanton arts of love" (18). Although she has been cast aside, she still smolders with passion, especially for Oroonoko's friend Aboan. There is perhaps an autobiographical element surrounding the character of Onahal, who helps the young lovers, Oroonoko and Imoinda, unite in the otan (the king's seraglio--forbidden to other men) while she makes love with the handsome Aboan. When Behn wrote Oroonoko, two years before her death in 1690, she also was whispered about as a fading beauty who was practically destitute.

In this regard Oroonoko can be viewed as particularly heroic; he swears to the young Imoinda that despite the fact that men in his country take as a many wives "as they can maintain," he will never marry another woman. Even after she is old and "her beauty has fled," he will remember that her soul is eternally beautiful. In the minds of Restoration England's readers, who were well familiar with the numerous extramarital dalliances of Charles II, Oroonoko's assertion reveals that he is a man of honor.

When the ship arrives in Surinam, the captain orders the slaves to be put into groups or lots for the merchants and gentlemen who had purchased them, taking care to separate families and acquaintances in case "rage and courage should put them upon contriving some great action, to the ruin of the colony" (37). Despite the captain's promise to free him, Oroonoko is also seized and sold to the overseer of the plantation, whom the narrator happens to be visiting. His look of hatred directed at the captain causes the slave trader to blush: "farewell sir, it is worth my sufferings to gain so true knowledge both of you and of your gods to whom you swear" (37). He jumps into the boat and sets off with his new master, Trefry, "a man of great wit and fine learning," for the three-day journey to his new home at the Parham-hill plantation.

Trefry, the overseer of Lord Governor Willoughby's plantation, is enormously surprised by the superior physical appearance of the new slave who, he happily finds, can speak English. Although Oroonoko attempts to be humble, in time Trefry realizes he has a great mind and a superior education. The men become such good friends that Trefry "ever after loved him as his dearest brother and showed him all the civilities due so great a man." Oroonoko has had good fortune: "he had a man of so excellent parts and wit for a master" (38). In time he informs Trefry of his background, and Trefry promises upon his word of honor that he will find a way to return Oroonoko to his own country and that he will find out what happened to Oroonoko's enslaved friends. Oroonoko believes Trefry is sincere. The fame of Oroonoko precedes their journey upriver to the plantation. Wherever they stop they are met with crowds of people eager to view the richly robed African prince. So much fuss is made that Oroonoko asks for plain clothes, but even the plain brown suit he is given cannot "conceal the graces of his looks and mien," because his nobility shines through (39). There can be no doubt he is a prince, and admirers continue to congregate at every stop.

At this point the narrator points out that it was the common practice for Christians to rename their newly acquired slaves, "their native ones being likely very barbarous and hard to pronounce" (40). She explains that Trefry gave the name of Caesar to Oroonoko for this reason and that from now on she must refer to him as such. Upon his arrival at the plantation, Caesar is received "more like a governor than a slave." Indeed, if the King of England himself showed up he could not have claimed so much attention. Caesar is given a small house and a piece of land apart from the other slaves. When he does visit them, they all fall down and adore him. They recognize the prince who took most of them in battle and sold them into slavery, and now they kiss his feet and call him "king."

Later Trefry tells Oroonoko of a wondrous female slave who came to the plantation about six months earlier. Every man, including himself, he confesses, "is undone in love" with her, but she is too modest and cold and will have no part of any of them (42). When Caesar asks Trefry why he does not take advantage of his position as master, Trefry admits even he is far too intimidated. The next day Trefry walks with Caesar past the cabin of the pretty young slave. Suddenly, a young woman of wondrous beauty darts out of the door chasing a small dog. Caesar finds himself beyond joy, and his heart almost bursts when he beholds his beloved Imoinda come back to life. Imoinda, who is now called Clemene, faints into Caesar's arms, and when she revives the lovers are reunited, swearing that all their terrible troubles have been worth the price now that they are reunited: "what ecstasies of joy they both withheld each other, without speaking, then snatched each other to their arms" (44).

The narrator, meanwhile, has been staying on the same plantation. Having heard of the lovers' reconciliation from Trefry and Caesar's French tutor, she now looks forward to visiting the couple. The whole colony waits for the lord-governor to arrive from England so Caesar can be freed as Trefry has promised. The narrator visits Caesar and Clemene, where she finds that although the former Imonida is covered with carved "fine flowers and birds all over her body," she treats the girl with great respect and is delighted that Caesar has found his lost love. And, "from that happy day, Caesar took Clemene for his wife, to the general joy of all the people...and in a very short time after she conceived a child" (45).

All these happy events make Caesar even more desirous of liberty. He bargains with Trefry to provide some sort of ransom for himself and his new family. They "fed him from day to day on promises" and delayed him until the governor returned. At this point, Caesar begins to distrust Trefry and the others in charge, and he becomes worried that Clemene will give birth before he is set free so that his child will be born a slave, "for all the breed is theirs to whom the parents belong" (45). Caesar becomes increasingly upset, and those in charge fear a slave revolt. The narrator is asked to visit him to calm him and to pass the time.

She entertains him with tales of the Romans and shows Clemene "all the pretty works that [she] was mystery of"--in other words, feminine arts such as embroidery and perhaps painting. She also attempts to convert the couple to a "knowledge of the true god," but Caesar cannot reconcile himself to the idea of the trinity and calls it "a riddle" (46). Nevertheless, the couple finds the encounters with the narrator entertaining and diverting, and Caesar enjoys her, his "great mistress," better company than the men because "he could not drink" (46). He confesses to her that although he had "only the name of a slave and nothing of the toil and labor of one," he has doubts that he will ever be set free. Once again she reassures him that he and Clemene will indeed be freed as soon as the lord-governor arrives. Caesar promises the narrator that he will attempt to be patient and that no matter what happens, he will never doubt her sincerity.

The whites begin to feel increasingly uncomfortable that Caesar might start a slave revolt. For this reason they decide to keep an eye on him and continue to divert him so he does not become too friendly with the other slaves. All the white men in the country come to visit him and reassure him that the lord-governor will free him.

Before describing the diversions set up for Caesar, the narrator digresses by explaining that she and her brother are only in Surinam for a short while because their father, who was named to the position of lieutenant-general, died at sea. Also she states that if the King of England had known what a "vast and charming world" he could have been master of, "he never would have parted with it so easily to the Dutch" (48). Next she provides a sort of catalog of the wonders of this vast continent: the overgrowing, ever-blooming flowers; the miles of bloom-covered trees as big as "English oaks" surrounding St. John's Hill, her house; the fragrant wood; the oranges, lemons, figs, and so on; the perfumed air and the exotic animals that include armadillos; and "all the diverse things this wondrous country affords (49). The group, which includes the narrator and her brother, her servant, Imoinda, and Trefry, search daily for more natural wonders to behold. With Caesar as their guard, they show no fear. For even more exciting diversion, they look for tiger cubs. One day when they remove a cub from its den, the angry mother returns and attacks, but Caesar "ran his sword quite through her breast down to her very heart, home to the hilt of the sword," and he then presents the narrator with the cub.

Another time, we learn, Caesar kills a tiger that was impossible to kill even with guns and poisoned arrows. Caesar shoots an arrow directly into its eye, and later the tiger is found to have seven bullets in its heart. One time he goes fishing upon hearing of a creature called a numb-eel (an electric eel). Anyone in the past who caught the eel ended up dropping the rod because of the shock. But Oroonoko catches the eel and never lets go of the rod although he almost drowns. He eats the eel for supper (53).

Next, the group decides to visit a native village to pass the time. Here, the narrator discusses the "disputes the English are having with the Indians" and explains that they could not travel without going in a group to any of the native towns "for fear they would fall upon us as they did immediately after [her] coming away" (54). Caesar, the narrator, her brother, and her maid set out. They are joined by a native fisherman as a guide familiar with the village inhabitants. The guide remains hidden with Caesar while the others approach the village to surprise the natives. The naked natives welcome them with cries of "wonder and amazement," especially over their clothes, shoes and hair, touching them all over and calling out "amora tiguamy," which means "welcome friend" (55). The natives place leaves the size of tablecloths in front of the group, cut others to form plates, and feed them a wonderful meal of meat which the narrator observes is good but too spicy. After the narrator and her brother play their flutes, the visitors are taken to observe the native healer, who cures "more by fancy than through medicine"--through the power of suggestion--although he also has some effective remedies. Then they visit the captains or leaders of the army, and the narrator is chagrined to find that the men have disfigured themselves to demonstrate their bravery, some by cutting off their nose or ears and such: "they had formidable wounds and scars or rather dismembering" (57). The natives, who wear aprons of leaves and carry bows and arrows, are so innocent and simple that they "adored as a god" an earlier white visitor who showed them fire made from a magnifying glass. After they leave the village, the group meets people from another native tribe carrying bags of gold dust, which they say comes streaming down the mountains after the rains. They bring these men back to the plantation, inform the lord-governor, and send him some of the gold.

Although the lord-governor is later killed in a hurricane after the narrator leaves for London, he commands at this point that a guard be put at the mouth of the Amazon River which leads to this gold region to keep others out. The Dutch, the narrator insists, instead of the King of England will have the advantage of the gold--"it is to be bemoaned what his majesty lost by losing that part of America."

Analysis

In this section, the horrors of slavery and the harsh attitudes and blindness of the European colonists become increasingly apparent. Slaves were given new names by the plantation owners, separated from their families and friends and given no hope whatsoever of seeing them again. They were forced to do menial jobs and to live in the direst of circumstances without any hope of freedom. Attempting to escape, the narrative suggests, resulted in severe punishment including whipping, and sometimes slaves who made more than one escape attempt were put to death as an example to the other slaves who might be nurturing the same ideas. Because of her cruel depiction of slavery in the Americas, Behn has been given credit for writing an anti-colonial, abolitionist tract (though many parts of the narrative suggest different motivations).

As soon as they arrived in the Americas, captive slaves were renamed, partly because it hurt them psychologically by severing them from a primary source of personal identification. Being denied their original name signified that they did not belong to themselves anymore but to their masters. Their families and homes faded into memory. In addition, it was far more comfortable for masters to pronounce names of their own choosing.

The slave name chosen for Oroonoko is Caesar, the name of the Roman emperor ruler who was betrayed by his friends when he was stabbed on the steps of the Roman Senate. At the end of the work, the allusion to Julius Caesar will become clearer when Oroonoko is literally cut to death by those who promised to free him. Behn utilizes this name also to further embed the idea of Oroonoko as a royal and mighty leader. Furthermore, upon his arrival in Surinam, Oroonoko finds himself separated from the African friends he was taken hostage with on the slave ship. Now he finds himself alienated from all that is familiar. It is a stroke of luck that he encounters the goodhearted overseer Trefry who, upon viewing his superior physical prowess and mental skill, takes to him and treats him like a brother, and it is further good fortune that he encounters the narrator, who becomes his advocate and friend.

Yet, Trefry and the narrator never question the institution of slavery as a whole. Indeed, Trefry is an overseer in charge of hundreds of slaves who labor daily on the sugar plantation. The narrator, while she effectively records the horrors of slavery, never takes action or cries out against it during the events of the narrative. Indeed, she is missing when Oroonoko needs her most.

Moreover, there is no sense of outrage on the author's part or on the part of any other characters when Trefry confesses his infatuation with the beautiful but haughty slave Clemene (the slave name given Imoinda). Even Oroonoko, by now Caesar, says to Trefry that while he can understand why Clemene will not have anything to do with the other male slaves, he does not understand why she "escapes those who can entertain her as you can do, or why, being your slave you do not oblige her to yield" (42). Oroonoko here suggests that Clemene should give herself to Trefry because he is the master and could treat her well--and that if she will not submit sexually then Trefry would be right to force her "with the advantages of strength." When Trefry insists he would be too intimidated to do so, the company "laughed as his civility to a slave" (42).

Overall, the focus remains on the gorgeous young prince Oroonoko, whom Behn highly eroticizes in her descriptions of his physical body. There is no further mention of the other "seventeen more of all sorts and sizes," who are also sold as slaves with Oroonoko (37). And the other slaves on the Parham plantation are marginalized to a nearby slave village, while Oroonoko is kept apart from them and is welcomed to reside in the plantation house. Neither he nor Imoinda are portrayed as performing work of any sort.

As she did earlier when she first introduced her readers to Oroonoko as a royal, cultured person of quality, Behn similarly imbues his wife Imoinda with genteel qualities. Imoinda in Africa is the most fair but also the most modest maiden in all of Coramantien. She keeps her eyes cast down and never speaks out of turn. When her long-lost love Oroonoko encounters her once more in Surinam, she is chasing a small dog out the door to her cabin, and she faints into his arms when she sees her African prince. To seventeenth-century readers, Imoninda would from these actions be perceived as a lady. Little lap dogs were carried with pride and joy by ladies of this era, very much like Hollywood starlets today. Also, ladies were notorious in this era for fainting, especially when there was an attractive gentleman around who could catch them. A lady who was so overwhelmed by the world that she actually passed out came to be viewed as especially delicate, sensitive and high-class in the same vein as a sensitive gentleman suffering from a bout of melancholia. Furthermore, we see the narrator "call" on Imoinda as she properly would call upon a British lady, teaching her fine arts such as embroidery.

The narrator here serves more strongly as a character herself, introducing what later becomes identified as the female narrative voice. The narrator is considered in literary terms as an "intrusive narrator" who generally interrupts the narrative when she deems fit in order to interject a personal aside. On the journey to the native village, for instance, she takes a rather long digression by informing the reader how she came to be in Surinam: her father died on the trip to his new post as lieutenant-general, and now she and her family must wait for transport back to England. Also, she provides her readers with a description of the local flora, fauna and cultural customs of the local Native Americans. Like all human beings, the narrator, despite being authoritative in some ways, is not altogether trustworthy. She says one thing and does another. She claims to love Oroonoko and begs him to trust her, but then writes: "after this I neither thought it convenient to trust him much out of our view" (48). By using an intrusive first-person narrator, Behn offers an account worthy of some trust--until close readers start to find contradictions.

Early on, Behn painted Surinam as a paradise like the Garden of Eden, and the native people who are uncorrupted by civilization were thus 'noble savages,' as innocent as Adam and Eve before the Fall. But later, because her social group needs protection to go the native village, the narrator claims to be "in many mortal fears...they should fall upon us" because of disputes the English have had with the natives: "they cut into pieces all they could take, getting into houses and hanging up the mother and all her children about her"-hardly, we could say, a picture of innocents frolicking in paradise (54). Perhaps this change is less of a contradiction than a demystification of a people with whom the narrator is becoming more familiar.

The diversions appease and entertain Caesar for a while, but he becomes increasingly despondent. So does Clemene as the pregnancy progresses. He realizes that while it is difficult to free two slaves, it will become even more so after the baby is born. He decides he has had enough waiting and chooses to take action. One Sunday, while the whites who watch Caesar are "overtaken in drink"--they are dead drunk--he visits the slave village where he gives a rousing speech to the people. About 150 can fight. The rest are women and children who will need protection. He tells them he has observed that the English have only rusty knives and guns because they fail to clean them. They are ill-prepared to fight. Then, to incite the slaves, he summarizes their miserable life. Such "miseries and ignominies of slavery...under such loads, burdens and drudgeries as were fitter for beasts than men" (60). They have lost the "divine quality of men" and have become fit only to work like animals and suffer the whip. They are whipped even when they do not deserve it "till their blood trickled from all parts of their body," blood "whose every drop ought to be revenged with the life of some of those tyrants that impose it" (61). In the same speech, he asks if the whites have taken them as slaves in "honorable battle," whether they are to be "bought and sold like apes and monkeys," and then questions if they should take orders "from such a degenerate race." Finally he asks if they will "suffer the lash from such hands," to which they reply in unison, "no, no, no." In short, "Caesar has spoken like a true king" (61).

Caesar is then interrupted by another slave, Tuscan, who bows before him and asks him how they can escape and travel through the jungle, mountains and rivers when they have women and children to protect--to which Caesar replies, "honor is the first principle in nature," and if there were a woman among them who would choose slavery over the "pursuit of her husband...to share with him in his fortunes...such a one ought to be abandoned, and left as a prey to the common enemy" (62). To this they all rapturously agree and bow, and he continues to motivate them by telling them of the exploits of Hannibal, the general who cut his way through mountains of rock. Their plan of escape involves cutting or burning through the brush to the sea and then to "plant a new colony," find a ship, seize it if need be, and transport themselves back to Africa where they will once more be free. Dying, Caesar insists, is better than living in "perpetual slavery." And at this "they bowed and kissed his feet" and swear to follow him even if it means their death (62). They set that evening for their departure.

When the overseers come to call the slaves to work on Monday morning, they find them all missing and in response muster up whatever weapons they have and call out the so-called militia of about 600 men from neighboring plantations. But never was there a "more comical army that marched off to war" (63). Besides, the plantation owners have great respect for Caesar and understand that he has been ill-treated; they do not want to hunt him down. Indeed, the only one who does is the deputy governor, Byam, who once pretended friendship toward Caesar: "he was a fellow, whose character was not fit to be mentioned" (64). Trefry goes along as a mediator, apparently, realizing that "if they put the Negroes into despair...they would drown or kill themselves before they would yield" (64). The fugitive slaves are not difficult to find, because all their pursuers have to do is follow the burning brush or their cut path. When Caesar realizes the danger, he takes up a defensive posture, placing women and children to the rear, and stands with Tuscan to fight to the death. The English pounce on them, kill some, and wound others, and at this point the women and children jump into the melee yelling "yield, yield," to their men--who eventually submit to the English.

Meanwhile, the nearly full-term pregnant Imoinda takes up a bow and wounds deputy-governor Byam in the shoulder. Quickly, his native woman sucks out the venom and saves his life. When Byam learns that Caesar, along with Imoinda and Tuscan, plan to fight to the death, he attempts to persuade him to surrender by promising him once again that he will be paid the greatest respect-after all, his attempt at revolt could be seen as a rash and youthful but noble deed-and that he will be set free with his wife and child. Caesar responds that he has no faith in the words of the white man. He adds that his actions were hardly rash, and he feels no shame.

With tears in his eyes, Trefry pleads with Caesar to name his conditions of surrender, and Caesar demands that Byam put his promises in writing, to which the deputy general acquiesces. But almost immediately, Caesar and Tuscan are captured and bound to two whipping stakes. Imoninda is taken away so as not to view the spectacle and miscarry. The young prince is beyond indignation, and he makes every attempt to free himself from his fetters: "revenge from his eyes that darted fire...was once both terrible and awful to behold." In time they free him, totally brutalized and weak from "the loss of blood from a thousand wounds all over his body" (67).

The narrator interjects that when she had heard of the uprising she had immediately left Parham plantation for the safety of Colonel Martin's plantation, three days upriver. Martin, she insists, is a good man and true friend of Caesar's. When she returns to Parham she finds Caesar "in a very miserable condition." She begged and pleaded until he understood she had no part in his "ill-treatment" (68). Trefry also, Oroonoko tells her, felt deep regret. But Byam was the one he could never forgive, and upon this man he will one day seek revenge.

When Byam recovers from his shoulder wound, he calls together a group of plantation owners and other whites who conclude that "Caesar should be hanged" as an example to intimidate other slaves against revolt. Trefry, however, tells Byam that he has no such jurisdiction at Parham plantation and that they must continue to wait for the Lord-governor, who acts under the auspices of the King of England. Meanwhile, the deeply depressed Caesar plots revenge on "Byam and all those who had sought to enrage him" even though he knows such an act will surely mean death (71). Then he realizes that if he dies, Imoinda "may be ravished first by every brute, exposed to their nasty lusts, and then a shameful death." (He apparently does not remember that she had done well on her own before his arrival.) He devises a plan to kill her first, take his revenge on Byam, and then kill himself. Taking Imoinda with him into the woods, he tells her "of the necessity of dying," explains the impossibility of escape, and then reveals his plan. Being a dutiful, loving wife, she falls at his feet in gratitude for arranging such an honorable way for her spirit to return home. He draws his knife while "tears trickle down his cheeks," and he gives to her the "fatal stroke, first cutting her throat, and then severing her smiling face from that delicate body" (72).

But after tragically killing Imoinda, Caesar finds himself paralyzed by grief and cannot carry out the second part of his plan to take revenge by killing Byam. Two days pass, and he is still in the woods deeply mourning his beloved Imoinda, "the idol of his heart," whom he has buried under some leaves (72). Six more days pass, and despite his repeated attempts to rise and go after Byam, he becomes increasingly lethargic from lack of food. On the eighth day, a search party drawn by the stench finds the couple. Caesar is greatly weakened. "Oh monster, thou hast murdered thy wife," the shocked group cries out. Seeking to avoid the shameful whip at all costs, Caesar takes out his knife and "rips up his own belly," after which his intestines fall out (75). Tuscan, who runs up to him and takes a blow from Caesar's knife in his arm, vows to help him.

They take him to Parham plantation and call in a doctor who sews up and dresses his wounds, and he continues to live, in deep melancholy, for another week. The narrator stays with him throughout, trying to comfort him and talking to him about Imoinda. Finally a man named Bannister, one of Byam's cohorts, who has no comprehension of the "laws of God or man," arrives and forcibly takes Caesar to the same post where he was whipped. Bannister tells him he will "die like a dog," to which Caesar replies that he finally has met a white man who tells the truth. When Caesar realizes he is about to die, he asks for a pipe of tobacco.

First the executioner cuts off his genitals and throws them into the fire, and then they cut off his ears and his nose and throw them likewise into the fire. All the while, he continues to smoke his pipe, even when they cut off one of his arms. After they cut off his second arm, his head sinks, his pipe drops, "and he gave up the ghost with a groan" (77).

The narrator, meanwhile, is missing. She explains that her mother and sister were by his side when Caesar died but that they could not save him from the rabble, who finally cut Caesar's body into quarters and offered pieces to the owners of the nearby plantations so that they might horrify and intimidate their slaves. Finally, the narrator says, "thus died this great man, worthy of a better fate and a more sublime wit than mine to write his praise." She hopes she has been a good enough writer to help his name survive, as well as that of the brave, beautiful, and faithful Imoinda, for all the ages (77).

Analysis

Oroonoko's speech to his enslaved people is worthy of a king. His rhetoric is inspiring in its proposal of a solution to the evils facing the people. Furthermore, he speaks the political truth that slavery is a feature of tyranny and adds that slavery is such an affront to liberty that people should risk their own lives to escape from it when the time is right.

Behn, like other Restoration writers, saw barbarism as an evil lurking in the hearts of the English people. She was outranged by England's inability to tolerate the late king Charles I, who was beheaded on the order of Parliament after it took over the government in 1649. She also looked upon with horror the recent countless assassination attempts on his son, the restored king Charles II. In this context, Behn saw the British (if not all humanity) as possessing a collective predisposition towards violence, greed, and restless disobedience.

Thus, almost every white character in the text is either positively evil or, at least, weak-willed and passive. (It should be noted that Willoughby, Byam, Trefry and Colonel Martin were real people.) For instance, at the beginning, the British slave-trading captain first befriends and then betrays Oroonoko by asking him to be his guest on his ship--but after getting him drunk, he shackles him into irons. The captain lies to the prince again and assures him he will set him free upon their first sight of land. But he does this only to ensure that his cargo of slaves will arrive in a somewhat healthy condition after they refuse to eat. Hardly surprising, the captain betrays Oroonoko once more when he sells him to Trefry, overseer for Lord Willoughby, the lord-governor of Surinam and the owner of Parham Plantation--who never arrives. Byam, the deputy-governor, also pretends friendship with the African prince and similarly assures him of his freedom. But later he hunts him down, whips him, and orders him killed. Behn scathingly refers to Byam's greed--"he was one who loved to live at others' expense"--and illustrates how to Oroonoko's face he was kind and friendly even while, behind Oroonoko's back, he nefariously plotted the man's death (70).

The barbarism Behn illustrates is particularly apparent in Bannister's elected council, which condemns Oroonoko to death. Bannister captures Oroonoko and tells him honestly that he will "die like a dog"--to which the condemned man replies that he has finally heard a white man tell the truth (76-77). Others are less brutal but lack in their care for him. Trefry, who has been a true friend to Oroonoko, remains blind to the plight of all the other slaves in his charge, and although he attempts to contain the situation until the arrival of the lord-governor Willoughby, he never takes action to protect Oroonoko's or Imoinda's life. Furthermore, even the British narrator, who voiced her friendship and love of Oroonoko, runs away at the first sign of trouble. Recall that, after assuring him of her undying devotion, she reflected that she "neither thought it convenient to trust him much out of our view, nor did the country who feared him" (48).

The awful scene of punishment, though, makes the white barbarism stand out most: "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" (67). Oroonoko is set up as a Christlike patient sufferer, the alternative King whom the reigning polity cannot accept.

Thus, Behn displays Oroonoko as a truly noble and honorable leader. This hero can hardly be compared with the rapacious British colonists and the monstrous mercantile slave traders who barter in human lives. In Oroonoko, then, Behn on the one hand seems to be a royalist who completely supports the ideal of a strong, stable monarchy, while on the other hand she attempts to educate her readers about the realities of the slave system, the barbarism of those involved in the trade, and the need for a more noble system, a heroic absolute monarch who will withstand the British urge toward violence and chaos.

Oroonoko figures as the royal hero who, despite everything, revolts against his life as a slave even if it means losing his beloved wife and child and his own death. Heroic to a fault--his story becomes tragic when he makes himself believe that he should kill his own wife--he would rather die and kill the one he most loves than be enslaved and give her up to others.

In contrast to most of the white characters, the African characters Aboan (Oroonoko's true friend) and Imoinda remain heroic throughout. Behn valorizes Imoinda as a warrior in her own right; the heavily pregnant heroine picks up a bow and shoots her husband's arch enemy with a poisoned arrow. She has the virtue, perhaps, of the mythological Amazon women, who were experts with the bow.

Readers should not make too much of the characterization of most of the whites as barbaric and most of the blacks and natives as noble savages. Behn is not trying to upend the social system of her time. It is important to remember that the social order is restored by the end of the story; the alternative King is put down. Behn never fully repudiates slavery--it seems to be acceptable to treat slaves like the overseer Trefry does--and while she writes of the horrors inherent in slavery, she never suggests that it should be outlawed as an institution. Although Oroonoko suffers as a slave, he never regrets taking slaves himself. He merely justifies the practice of slavery in Africa as men honorably taken in war. Indeed, this view seems to valorize slavery as honorable; after all, to be enslaved is not worse than to be killed, one may think.

Thus Oroonoko receives poetic justice, becoming a slave himself after selling slaves of war to the British for his own profit. But Oroonoko does not seem to make the connection; he never shows regret over having been complicit in selling slaves to the British.

The slaves' plan to start a colony on a beach, where they will seize a ship and return to Africa, seems all but impossible to achieve. They cut a path that anyone could follow. Perhaps it is like Moses leading his enslaved people out of Egypt toward the Promised Land, but where is the miracle that will stop the pursuers? What ship will appear, and who will navigate it? And despite the real chance of winning in the battle, the slaves (even the warrior Tuscan) desert Oroonoko almost at the first moment. The lesson seems to be that an idealistic plan for escape and revolution must be tempered by prudence and courage.

Oroonoko's last days and death are grotesquely tragic. It would be to mistake the point to historicize the details--to say merely that in Behn's era, wild tobacco was much stronger than it is today, and it was used as a soothing narcotic; that the mutilations remind us of the native generals in the village visited by Oroonoko and the narrator, a savage group who cut off parts of their body to demonstrate their heroism; and that quartering a body was a well-known form of torture used in British prisons. These points may be true, but they distract from the literary tragedy of Oroonoko's awful end. His wife has almost no choice but to accept his reasoning that he should kill her in order to save her--could she really survive safely on her own, now that Oroonoko has caused so much trouble? Oroonoko has forced himself into a position where killing his wife seems like the best choice. But he cannot follow through with the rest of the plan, and the tragedy is so severe that he cannot leave her rotten corpse for days. His sorrow foils his own plan for revenge. Readers might like to see the final killing off of Oroonoko as a story of the noble spirit surviving the dismembering of the body, but Oroonoko has broken his own spirit as an unintended consequence of his earlier noble actions.

• Biography of Aphra Behn
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• Summary and Analysis of Section One--Life in Surinam
• Summary and Analysis of Section Two--Life in Coramantien
• Summary and Analysis of Section Three--Oroonoko in Surinam
• Summary and Analysis of Section Four--Revolt in Surinam
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