1) There’s
some pretty fascinating dialogue w/r/t the condition of a slave, and the
justification for revolt, in 3.2. Comment on one argument or statement of
either Aboan or Oroonoko.
or
2) Charlotte /
Welldon has a speech at 4.1.58-77. Comment on the use of “credit” and “bank”
and other mercantile / monetary metaphors here.
or
3) The end of
the play is rather bifurcated, what with the comedy and the tragedy all mixed
together. What do you make of this? You might discuss a representative sample,
such as: “I am a woman, sir” (5.1.60) for the comedic part, and for the tragic
part, “Forbid it, Nature” (5.5.277). [But there are lots of other possibilities.]
or
4) Discuss another part of today’s reading that
seems to be in need of exploration, elucidation, or comment.
As modern as this play feels at times, its portrayal of slavery is reminder that Oroonoko was written before England abolished slavery - or even thought too hard about the possibility. Oroonoko blames the white colonists for breaking their word, but never for selling him (which is cute, because they did that through deceit as well). He tells Alboan flat out that there's nothing wrong with trading in slaves, as the whites and the blacks both do in this story (and history). What interested me was that the black slaves in Oroonoko are depicted as just, if not more, human than their white captors, but slavery isn't criminalized. I'd thought that since Southerne was so sympathetic to the Africans, he'd use Oroonoko to blast their enslavement. Instead, he seems to be saying that blacks are noble people, but enslaving noble people is fine. I wonder if this moral double-standard would have stuck out when the play was first performed, or if I'm just picking on this because of my twentieth-century upbringing. Either way, Oroonoko's socio-political statements do seem to bear a lot of weight, since he's the one in the trenches. Then again, you have to remember that this isn't a 'true history'; it's an overly dramatic story written by an white Englishwoman.
ReplyDeleteOroonoko’s response to the Lieutenant Governor’s speechifying is “You can speak fair (IV.ii.95),” and the word fair here can potentially hold a double meaning. Fairness is justice, but it’s also a word for light-skinned. Perhaps the LG’s proposal is a statement of English honour/chivalry/warfare-- you do not fight a great person to the death because nobility don’t deserve to die, rather you conquer a people and keep the leader alive to show everyone that a prince who “would well deserve the empire of the world” was beaten. From Oroonoko’s actions in the play, I think that it’s safe to say that he doesn’t believe in the LG’s principle. Rather, a leader should be with his people: if they fight under his name, he should fight with them, and they go down together because they are one. Oroonoko’s “own terms” are tied to those of all of the slaves who rally about him. He can’t cut himself away from them for the sake of living and being happy, it’s simply not his way.
ReplyDeleteI think that one of his tragic flaws is loyalty. It keeps him waiting for Imoinda, it leads him to join the rebellion when he was hesitant at first, and now he’s going to die with those rebels because he refuses to take the chance the LG gives him as his royal status deserves according to English convention. What keeps him from losing his life in this moment of conflict is not his acceptance of “fair play” but his loyalty and sense of duty to his unborn child.
And when he does die (after the death of Imoinda and that child), he mockingly refers to “the hands of justice” as per the English--that murderers must pay capital punishment. However, he obviously didn’t do the physical deed, as Imoinda killed herself, yet he feels responsible for her as well as for all of his kin. His suicide (and the murder/revenging of the LG) is not English at all, but still true to his previous philosophies: he’d rather die than have any severance from his people.
The line that Oroonoko speaks in Act V, scene V, "death is security of all our fears" is putting something that happens often in plays (suicide) into a really poetic and almost beautiful context. AS we know, at the end, death is their "security", or kind of the failsafe to prevent more horrors from happening. Yet, what I really appreciate here is I think a more realistic view of what it means to kill one's lover. Oroonoko hesitates greatly before he kills Imoinda, and even though it is easier to die, it is not easier to watch your lover die by the means of your own hands. Imoinda on the other hand is pretty anxious to die, and I'm not sure what to make of it. She doesn't seem to have as much of an internal struggle as Oroonoko does, and in the end it is really she who kills herself. Maybe she realizes that as a woman she really has no chance to defend herself so its better to end it all now, yet I find the two different struggles/perspectives really interesting.
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