For Thursday: Behn's Oroonoko (be sure to finish!)

An 18th century depiction of slave torture

Other ideas and passages to consider in your second response to Oroonoko:

* Though Oroonoko has many elements of the "romance," particularly the sections in Africa, it also borrows from another popular genre of 17th/18th century literature, the travel narrative.  In what ways might you consider Oroonoko as a "travel guide" to Surinam...and furthermore, how might it function as a sales pitch for future colonists? 

* Consider how Behn depicts the Surinam natives when "she" and Oroonoko visit them in their village.  How does this jive with her earlier depictions of the natives as "Edenic" children? 

* Does the narrator betray Oroonoko toward the end?  Why doesn't she protect him, or at least use her great influence to dissuade him?  Why does she conveniently dissapear toward the end of the narrative?

* In Srinivas Aravamudan's famous book on 18th century colonialism, Tropicopolitans, he writes this about Oroonoko: "Oroonoko’s pethood is linked to earlier descriptions of the natives being “caressed,” as well as wild birds and animals being collected for the same purpose...Echoing this consumerist impulse, the narrator assimilates Oroonoko’s and Imoinda’s scarification to statuary…such ornamentation is relevant as a description of a potential pet and a variety of other mercantile objects, to elicit a collector’s desire to possess the “curios” that adorned the mantelpieces and cabinets of the leisured classes” (41).  Is the narrator's interest in Oroonoko simply that--a desire to possess a "curio" of this strange colony?  Is the work an allegory for the consumerist impulse of colonialism itself, the desire to own and possess the outside world? 

* Examine Oroonoko's great speech before his final battle: is this a theatrical set piece or a truly abolitionist argument?  How does this change or complicate or views of Oroonoko, the narrator, or Behn herself? 

* How does the narrator record Oroonoko's torture and death?  Does it seem to be heroically tragic, like his famous namesake, or has he turned into a colonial monster--similar to the natives whose dashing dismemberment Oroonoko seems to emulate?  How did she mean us to read this...and do we read it differently today?