Oroonoko Characters

The main characters in Oroonoko are Oronooko, Imoinda, Oronooko's grandfather, the slaveowner, and the governor.

  • Oroonoko is Prince of Coromantien, who dies after leading a slave rebellion in Suriname.
  • Imoinda is Oroonoko's wife, who is sold into slavery by Oroonoko's grandfather, the king.
  • Oroonoko's grandfather is the king of Coramentien, who wants Imoinda for himself.
  • The slaveowner Oroonoko's master and friend.
  • The governor is a treacherous man who breaks his promises to Oroonoko. 

Characters

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Oroonoko

Oroonoko is less of a character and more of a perception. The narrator wants him to be the hero of her tragedy. As such, his character is early on uncomplicated by nuance. He is the consummate tragic hero, a near-perfect character whose only flaw is his disastrous willingness to trust others and believe they are as morally pure as he is. His complications and nuance, then, compel the narrator’s education.

From the moment the narrator meets Oroonoko at the Parham plantation, she does not doubt his character. The narrator draws on the European explorers' notion that native peoples of South America and Africa, untouched by the corruptions of civilization, defined a purity, a savage nobility. They were, in their words: “Man before he knew how to sin.”

From the start, the narrator is mesmerized by Oroonoko’s aura, writing:

The most illustrious courts could not have produced a braver man, both for greatness of courage and mind, a judgement more solid; a wit more quick and a conversation more sweet and diverting.

Appropriately, Oroonoko’s love for the beautiful Imoinda is not merely love. For the narrator, it is grand and absolute, simultaneously deeply spiritual and passionately sensual.

However, the narrator learns that Oroonoko is not what he seems to be. First of all, he is no wise Caesar. Tricked by the duplicity of his lecherous grandfather and then duped by a mercenary sea captain, Oroonoko ends up and enslaved kidnapped to Surinam. There, given his station, his erudition, dignity, and grace are ironic. When the overseer bestows on Oroonoko the name “Caesar,” it is more ironic than respectful.

Oroonoko’s tragic fall begins when he realizes that the British are self-serving hypocrites without compassion or moral character. His ill-considered revolt reflects his foolish bravado. The attempt to lead a ragtag group of slaves to freedom is doomed from the start. In making their way to the coast, they leave a broad swatch in the jungle growth, which is easy for the British to track down.

In the end, the narrator struggles to comprehend Oroonoko’s murder of his wife and child, recounting the killing without emotion. She can only record the act, not register its implications. 

Oroonoko’s own execution only heightens that complexity. As he is whipped, the narrator notes, he smiles.  “A blessing on thee,” he says to the tormenter, as he stands “fixed like a rock.” As they begin to dismember him, Oroonoko maintains a stoic demeanor and asks only for a pipe to smoke. Nothing makes sense. “Thus,” the narrator concludes, “died this great man, worthy of a better fate and more sublime wit than mine to write his praise,” acknowledging her inability to understand this contradictory figure.

Imoinda

The bloody death of the pregnant Imoinda is difficult to fathom. It would be easy to fault Imoinda, to define her as a passive victim of misplaced love, or to argue that love clouds her judgment and convinces her to sacrifice not just her life but the life of her unborn child. 

Oroonoko, realizing the uprising is doomed and determined not to allow his wife and his child to be “prey to his enemies,” decides to kill his “radiant and loving” wife, this “black, beautiful Venus,” as well as his child, “the fruits of their tender love.” That Imoinda accepts his decision, “her eyes smiling with joy,” reflects the depth of her respect for the “husband she so tenderly loved” even as he slits her throat, “severing her still smiling face” from her “delicate body.” 

Throughout her ordeals—first in Coramantien where she is taxed by her own King’s immorality and then as a slave in the household of the sugar plantation—Imoinda displays what the narrator extols as heroic grace, moral strength, and stoic dignity. She is made resilient by her love for Oroonoko, the purity of which is underscored by the corrupt King’s efforts to take the girl’s virginity. When Imoinda and Oroonoko finally consummate their love, the narrator assures: “It is not to be imagined the satisfaction of these two young lovers.”

Imoinda...

(This entire section contains 1107 words.)

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is yet another contradiction the narrator struggles to understand: She is strong enough to be weak, weak enough to be strong. The narrator learns how this strong, empowered woman nevertheless chooses sacrifice. “The lovely, young, and adored victim lays herself down before the sacrificer, while [Oroonoko] delivered the fatal stroke.” She accepts the dark wisdom of the man she loves, making her strong enough to sacrifice everything she loves for freedom—not just for herself, but also for her child.

The Narrator

 A tragedy with the emotional dimensions of Oroonoko and Imoinda’s doomed passion does not require any narrative frame. Even still, this is a told story. Literary historians have long assumed that the first-person female narrator was Aphra Behn herself and incorrectly tried to use the narrator’s biographical revelations to shape Behn’s biography. What they overlook is that more than a generation before more famous narrative characters, Oronooko pioneered the use of the narrator as a character.

Given that both Oroonoko and Imoinda die at the end, the narrator alone survives the lovers’ tragedy and can offer insight into its implications. After all, she was there: “I was myself an eye-witness to a great part of what you will find here set down.” The daughter of one of the colonial officials whose sudden death has precipitated her decision to return to England, she is staying temporarily at the Parham plantation. There, she meets Oroonoko; there, she offers reliable eye-witness testimony.

More than providing documentarian immediacy to Oroonoko’s tragedy, however, the narrator learns from the experience. Her education drives the novel. The novel is about her introduction to complexity, to the dignity, beauty, and noble courage of those whom her culture regarded as, at best, innocent and uncomplicated savages and, at worst, commodities to be bought and sold. She learns as well the moral depravity and brutality of her own culture.

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