Oroonoko: Character List (Sec -B, CC-VII)

Oroonoko: Character List 

 

Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave is a short work of prose fiction by Aphra Behn (1640–1689), published in 1688 by William Canning and reissued with two other fictions later that year. The eponymous hero is an African prince from Coramantien who is tricked into slavery and sold to British colonists in Surinam where he meets the narrator. Behn's text is a first-person account of his life, love, rebellion, and execution.

Behn, often cited as the first known professional female writer, was a successful playwright, poet, translator and essayist. She began writing prose fiction in the 1680s, probably in response to the consolidation of theatres that led to a reduced need for new plays. Published less than a year before she died, Oroonoko is sometimes described as one of the first novels in English. Interest in it has increased since the 1970s, with critics arguing that Behn is the foremother of British women writers, and that Oroonoko is a crucial text in the history of the novel.

The novel's success was jump-started by a popular 1695 theatrical adaptation which ran regularly on the British stage throughout the first half of the 18th century, and in America later in the century.

Oroonoko is now the most studied of Aphra Behn's novels, but it was not immediately successful in her own lifetime. It sold well, but the adaptation for the stage by Thomas Southerne (see below) made the story as popular as it became. Soon after her death, the novel began to be read again, and from that time onward the factual claims made by the novel's narrator, and the factuality of the whole plot of the novel, are accepted and questioned with greater and lesser credulity. Because Mrs. Behn was not available to correct or confirm any information, early biographers assumed the first-person narrator was Aphra Behn speaking for herself and incorporated the novel's claims into their accounts of her life. It is important, however, to acknowledge that Oroonoko is a work of fiction and that its first-person narrator—the protagonist—need be no more factual than Jonathan Swift's first-person narrator, ostensibly Gulliver, in Gulliver's Travels, Daniel Defoe's shipwrecked narrator in Robinson Crusoe , or the first-person narrator of A Tale of a Tub.

But before going further details we should be introduced with characters involved in the novel.

Characters

Aboan

Oroonoko's true friend in Coramantien, who helps him enter the Otan to visit Imoinda. 

Bannister

Elected by Byam to round up, whip, and at last kill Oroonoko to dissuade the other slaves from revolting.

Byam

The historical deputy-governor of Surinam who betrays Oroonoko by having him whipped and put to death.

Clemene

The slave name given to Imoinda when she arrives in Surinam.

Caesar

The slave name given to Oroonoko by Trefry when he arrives in Surinam. The name is an allusion to Julius Caesar, the Roman Emperor who was murdered by his "friends." 

Imoinda

The African beauty whom Oroonoko loves. She is sold into slavery after Oroonoko attempts to rescue her from his grandfather the king's otan.

Jamoan

African warrior defeated by Oroonoko, whom he treats with great dignity and as a brother. He mirrors the overseer Trefry, who similarly treats Oroonoko well.

Narrator

A young English woman, based on the author Aphra Behn, who visits Surinam and befriends Oroonoko.

Onahal

The senior wife of the king who helps Oroonoko meet his love Imoinda in the otan, the king's seraglio.

Oroonoko

The African prince who is captured and enslaved by a British slave trader and brought to Surinam, where in time he leads a slave revolt and then dies.

Trefry

The overseer of Parham Plantation, he befriends Oroonoko and attempts to free him and return him to Africa.

Tuscan

The Surinam slave who helps Oroonoko organize the slave revolt but ultimately betrays him.

Willoughy

The lord, governor of Surinam, who owns Perham plantation and never arrives to free Oroonoko.

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