ipl-logo

Oroonoko Aphra Behn Summary

1060 Words5 Pages

In her novel Oroonoko, Aphra Behn gives the reader insight into the British Empire, its relationship with other nations and empires, the institution of slavery, and into the lives of those living and working at plantations in Surinam. Whether her tale is entirely true with just the names changed, or intensely embellished in order to provide the audience with a rapt tale of adventure and intrigue, there is enough accurate information to portray these various little worlds of a North African kingdom, or a plantation in Surinam in such a way that the reader may ascertain some of what life in that time and place may have been like. Certainly it is clear that the politics of the time are exceedingly different to what one would consider appropriate today, but additionally it can be noted that the lines of class deeply influence position and political correctness much more significantly than they do in the 21st century. Behn, as an avid royalist and with her own connections to the monarchy in England, makes very clear that …show more content…

“His Face was not that brown, rusty Black which most of that Nation are, but a perfect Ebony, or polish’d Jett. […] His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat. His mouth […] far from those great turn’d Lips, which are so natural to the rest of the Negroes,” and so on (Behn, Oroonoko, p. 13-14). The author is careful to distinguish Oroonoko from the average African and show that his pedigree was not just on paper, but visible in his physical being. It is interesting that Behn would take this to such an extreme considering that many European royals are known to have very distinct, though not necessarily beautiful, features due precisely to the inbreeding necessary to keep their such distinguished royal lineages

Show More
Related

  • Creating African Americans Chapter 1 Summary

    485 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Chapter 1 and 2 of “Creating Black Americans,” author Nell Irvin Painter addresses an imperative issue in which African history and the lives of Africans are often dismissed (2) and continue to be perceived in a negative light (1). This book gives the author the chance to revive the history of Africa, being this a sacred place to provide readers with a “history of their own.” (Painter 4) The issue that Africans were depicted in a negative light impacted various artworks and educational settings in the 19th and early 20th century. For instance, in educational settings, many students were exposed to the Eurocentric Western learning which its depiction of Africa were not only biased, but racist as well.

    Read More

  • Olaudah Equiano Rhetorical Analysis

    683 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Equiano's personal slave narrative, "The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African", Equiano flips the idea that the African people are backwards and barbaric, thus ripe for slavery, by demonstrating his personal exceptionalism through his literacy to show that it is truly the white people who are backwards and barbaric through their own hypocrisy. This reversal that Equiano demonstrates in his slave narrative shows that the savagery of African people exists as a misconception and makes the reader fully grasp the need to abolish slavery and any inequality present. On page seventy-eight, Equiano uses first person pronouns like 'I', 'my', and 'me' to separate himself from the other African people and whites around him. This separation that Equiano creates demonstrates his exceptionalism as an African slave.

    Read More

  • Exploitation In Michelle Cliff's Down The Shore

    1526 Words  | 7 Pages

    Michelle Cliff’s short story Down the Shore conspicuously deals with a particularly personal and specific, deeply psychological experience, in order to ultimately sub-textually create a metaphor regarding a wider issue of highly social nature. More specifically, the development of the inter-dependent themes of trauma, exploitation, as well as female vulnerability, which all in the case in question pertain to one single character, also latently extend over to the wider social issue of colonialism and its entailing negative repercussions, in this case as it applies to the Caribbean and the British Empire. The story’s explicit personal factor is developed through the literary techniques of repetition, symbolism, metaphor, as well as slightly warped albeit telling references to a distinct emotional state, while its implicit social factor is suggested via the techniques of allusion, so as to ultimately create a generally greater, undergirding metaphor.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of John Thornton's African Dimensions Of The Stono Rebellion

    1204 Words  | 5 Pages

    In this article “African Dimensions Of The Stono Rebellion”, John Thornton a professor of history and African American studies, who wrote about the African slaves in the Americas, and specifically the servants in South Carolina during the early eighteenth century. In his writing, the author describes the personality of Africans and their desire to escape from slavery, going through obstacles on their path to freedom. John Thornton is primarily an Africanist, with a specialty in the history of West Central Africa before 1800. His work has also carried him into the study of the African Diaspora, and from there to the history of the Atlantic Basin as a whole, also in the period before the early nineteenth century. Thornton also serves as a consultant

    Read More

  • Prince Among Slaves Character Analysis

    1573 Words  | 7 Pages

    In Terry Alford’s novel “Prince Among Slaves” there were many people that strived to bring Ibrahima back to Africa, during this time he also worked to free his children. The role of letter writing had an impact on the course of the book and each person connected the direction of Ibrahima’s journey. A former prince, Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima, was captured through an ambush due to his lost to the Hebohs and is now a slave (23).

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Novel's Inhuman Traffick

    1011 Words  | 5 Pages

    As the boom from the transatlantic slave trade was being put into a question of universal humanity and morality, millions of Africans were still being sold into a life of victimhood. Amongst those millions were freemen being stripped from their homes, because of their race, in the core and coastal regions of Africa. The Neirsee Incident occurred on, “January 21st, 1828” at a “British owned palm oil house near old Calabar” (Blaufarb and Clarke 71). The Neirsee as it was stopped at the port near the British owned palm oil house, was interrupted by a character name Feraud who “slipped out of old Calabar on the Neirsee”, where the ship was eventually seized after it had, “just loaded its human cargo” (Blaufarb and Clarke 72). The incident had led to innocent British citizens lives being sold into the slave trade.

    Read More

  • Olaudah Equiano's Argument Against Slavery

    683 Words  | 3 Pages

    In The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Olaudah Equiano writes about his experiences as a slave. Beginning with his childhood, he tells of how he was kidnapped and traveled through the Bermuda Triangle, bought by his first white owner, and eventually gained his freedom. Although Equiano still considers himself an African at the end of his text, the text tells a different story about his transformation from an African to a British man. Considered to be a slave narrative by many critics because of its true stories about slavery, there are many issues with Equiano’s argument against slavery: Rather than asking that Britain completely rid of slavery, Equiano actually suggests that they create a new form of slavery which would allow Africans to assimilate to the white men through economic reforms such as paying the Africans for their work and using their land for production.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Gem Of The Ocean By August Wilson

    2089 Words  | 9 Pages

    The author August Wilson is known for writing ten plays based on each decade about the way African Americans were treated in the 20th century. Him being half African American was able to relate and was vivid to the way they were treated. Although, slavery was abolished but discrimination and racism continued which did not made them free and did not obtained the respect that they so much seek. In this essay I will discuss what effects does slavery still have on the characters in Gem of the Ocean, some forty years after its abolition? Why is this important?

    Read More

  • Character Analysis Of The Poisonwood Bible

    583 Words  | 3 Pages

    While some readers consider Rachel Price’s static character nothing more than a pointless trope, it is clear that Kingsolver has carefully crafted Rachel’s accounts of her experiences in the village of Kilanga to subtly illuminate the deeply engrained racism present in the minds of the white missionaries living in Congo at the time, a result of hundreds of years of European colonization and degradation of Sub-Saharan

    Read More

  • The Myth Of The Negro Past Analysis

    903 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout chapter three of The Myth of the Negro Past, Melville Herkovits writes about the African culture back before slaves were brought to the Americas. He refutes many previously thought ideas that African Americans have no past or shared culture which the myth in the title of the book. In chapter three entitled, “The African Cultural Heritage,” Herskovits argued that African Americans descended from a people with a rich series of cultural traditions (Willaims 3). One of the aspects that Herkovits looks into is death in the African family and funerals rites. The ties between ancestors and gods are extremely close in Dahomey and the Yoruba cultures, he even says the power of man doesn’t end when that person dies,

    Read More

  • Aphra Behn's Connecting The Government In Oroonoko?

    1455 Words  | 6 Pages

    Aphra Behn 's exploration into Surinam and seeing their way of life and rich culture helped influence the creation of Oroonoko. Much of the novel has an in-depth relation to Surinam 's way of life and their social status. Behn creates a story that involves the very nature of Slavery during the 1640 's and the impact it had on their society. Throughout the novel, Oroonoko is tricked, lied and stripped of his rights as a human to serve as a prisoner in the slave trade. Despite the unique characteristics Oroonoko has, he is still considered to be a slave and must take drastic measures to protect his family.

    Read More

  • Different But Equal Basil Davidson Analysis

    565 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Basil Davidson’s video, “Different but Equal”, Davidson examines ancient Africa, and how Africans were perceived in ancient and modern times. Davidson discusses pre-colonized Africa and its history, and how racism prevailed in the past and in modern day. By discussing early civilizations, as well as modern day perspectives, Davidson allows the viewer to have expansive information on how individuals view Africans and their culture. In Davidson’s video, he discusses how people in the past have viewed Africa and African culture, and how that relates to our perception of Africa in modern times.

    Read More

  • Lightning Lipstick Analysis

    706 Words  | 3 Pages

    The bright colors and the deformed cartoonlike style in combination with the obvious history of racial mixing suggests the ugly past that is tied to biracial people who are both black and white. The painful and ugly history of rape and the mixing of blacks and whites within slavery is not only expressed through the figures but also through the use of bright colors that clash with each other and also through the cartoonlike distortion of the figures. The ‘ugly” style is meant to express the ugly and difficult history of biracial people. The style and color choice also addressed the subject of “passing” as another lighter race and the tendency of biracial people to choose their lighter skinned heritage over their black heritage. Robert Colescott was known for transgressively playing with themes of race and sex, he was very politically aware.

    Read More

  • Greed In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

    1366 Words  | 6 Pages

    This greed grew strong and grew into the establishment of imperialism through the use of slavery. While the greed is still growing the English have know lost all of their moral value and have cast aside the meaning of life for the Natives of the Congo. This hunger of greed allowed the civilized to become the uncivilized “savages” they paint the Natives to be. Mr. Kurtz is the man that the english view as the idol in a way but dies seeing “The Horror”(154) of all the darkness the “light”(68) has made. Works Cited Qu, Caie.

    Read More

  • Marrakech By George Orwell Analysis

    1588 Words  | 7 Pages

    George Orwell’s “Marrakech” is a non-fictional essay written in the year 1939 that explores the central concerns of the text that were going on within the Moroccan town such as colonialism, racism, oppression and poverty. Orwell describes his time within Marrakech and details the oppression and unfair treatment of the original natives of the land. He very cleverly evokes intense emotions in the reader by opening up his writing to interpretation and in-depth analysis rather than just trying to give a flat out negative opinion which would not have been nearly as effective. Due to this, our appreciation and sympathy towards the text is enhanced and is furthered even more through the use of techniques such as personal anecdote, powerful images and comment and opinion.

    Read More

More about Oroonoko Aphra Behn Summary

Open Document