Oroonoko: The Tragic Hero

 

 

“I do not pretend, in giving you the history of this royal slave, to entertain my reader with the adventures of a feigned hero whose life and fortunes fancy may manage at the poet’s pleasure; nor in relating the truth, design to adorn it with any accidents but such as arrived in earnest to him. And it shall come simply into the world, recommended by its own proper merits and natural intrigues; there being enough of reality to support it and to render it diverting without the addition of invention.” (1)

 

 

These are the opening lines of Aphra Behn’s 1688 novel, Oroonoko, appearing ever so appropriately below the book’s equally self-authenticating subtitle, The Royal Slave, a True History. From the novel’s title and opening sentences, we may already surmise Behn’s endeavor: to portray not mere “fantasy” or “pleasure” for only the entertainment of the reader, but to recount without any narrative adornment the “natural intrigues” and “proper merits” of the truth surrounding a certain hero. That is to say, Oroonoko, in some definitive sense, opens with a plea for its own legitimacy. Behn implores that her book is an unembellished retelling of the truth – a history, and as such, a promise to make intelligible to readers historical events exactly as they happened. And as we enter the novel, it becomes clear that Behn’s ambition to most truthfully portray her narrative is undertaken through borrowing the language of the epic and the Shakespearean drama. That is to say, it is through the appropriation of pre-existing literary forms that Behn endeavors to lend hyper-intelligibility to her narrative. Oroonoko, the grandson of the king of a West African tribe, is the novel’s hero and main character who is eventually shipped to Surinam as a slave, but throughout the book he is unremittingly portrayed in the vein of a classic European hero. He is described as possessing distinctive qualities of integrity, morality, and strength that the narrator closely associates with European nobility; he is reverentially named Caesar upon his arrival in Surinam; and his actions – even his looks – are constantly likened to the most honorable Roman war heroes and deities. Thus, it is overwhelmingly clear that Behn craves to tell the story of Oroonoko as if he were a gallant European hero abound in a foreign land. She attempts to map onto the highly differentiated society of Surinam the conventional, literary-inspired antiquities of the European tradition. Yet, as the novel progresses, we discover that Oroonoko, possessing the royal qualities Behn has ascribed to him, does not fulfill his role as an epic hero. He loses his one true love to his own grandfather; he is captured and sold into slavery; once in Surinam, he is unable to lead a slave rebellion; and he is eventually led to kill his wife, his unborn child, and ultimately himself in a fit of utter hopelessness towards his intractable position within the institution of slavery. In this way, Oroonoko becomes less an epic hero and more an archetypal Shakespearean tragic hero: a royal who possesses individual honor but is plagued by loss, revenge, and fatally-directed courage that ultimately results in his own demise. Yet, why would the novel endeavor so tirelessly to portray Oroonoko an epic hero if only to ultimately undermine his classical heroism?  What kind of story is Oroonoko if its narrative and heroic character fall short of the genre and the language it aspires to emulate?

To answer these questions, we must first fully understand the ways in which the novel appropriates earlier literary modes. We might find our first evidence in this regard before the formal narrative even begins, in The Epistle Dedicatory: To the Right Honourable the Lord Maitland. These are the true first pages of Oroonoko, taking the form of a letter authored by the real Aphra Behn herself to a powerful minister, Lord Maitland, in the court of the current English king. In her letter Behn provides a short background on her novel, but one that seems to self-consciously reinforce the merits of the book rather than provide an explanatory introduction to the story. Expressing anxiety over both her own status as a messenger of this story to the English court and the general literary mode of her narrative, Behn writes: “My Lord, the obligations I have to some of the great men of your nation, particularly to your Lordship, gives me an ambition of making my acknowledgments by all the opportunities I can…This is a true story of a man gallant enough to merit your protection. The royal slave I had the honour to know in my travels to the other world…I wanted power to preserve this great man. If there be anything that seems romantic [about Oroonoko], I beseech your Lordship to consider, these countries do, in all things, so far differ from ours that they pronounce inconceivable wonders; at least they appear so to us because new and strange.”[1] In authoring this statement before the narrative even begins, Behn tellingly elucidates several of her authorial influences. Firstly, she reveals a hyper-awareness that her story will be circulated in a political context, likely to the king himself, and through both this anxiety and her signature at the end of the letter (“My Lord, your Lordship’s most obliged and obedient servant, A. Behn”), reveals she is of a rather loyalist authorial disposition. Secondly, she outs her own novel as one not only interested in communicating a “true story,” but as one that aims to “preserve this great man” called Oroonoko. Her usage of the word “preserve” seems remarkable given what are to be the epic and Shakespearean modes of her narrative, as if her desire to cement the heroic Oroonoko in history necessitates similarly historically rooted modes of language. Thirdly, Behn expresses concern over what may be perceived as her “romantic” styling of the narrative. She assures her readership, however, that the world she encountered in Surinam is deserving of such wondrous description, the implication of course being that her writing will conform to an already existent genre that has precedent for capably and intelligibly deciphering the world in a particular manner. This is all to say, in authoring a story both in service of the king and explicitly designed to preserve its subject within romance writing, Behn is clearly writing with antiquity in mind. That is, from a strictly non-diegetic standpoint, before the narrative even begins we are already led to draw a parallel between authorial intent and rhetorical mode. That is to say, to preserve the past, Behn borrows the European genres that are historically most accustomed to these types of stories.

After these self-conscious opening pages of the novel, Behn establishes the opening setting of her book in the African state of Coramantien, where Oroonoko lives. Herein, we are introduced to Oroonoko’s tribe in an intriguing manner. At once, Behn describes the tribal people and the world in which they live as brimmed with beautiful new fauna; the people adorned with wonderful and exotic items of culture; and the moral character of the region as having “a native justice, which knows no fraud.”[2]  More, she wagers a political observation by stating, “…those on that continent where I was had no king, but the oldest war captain was obeyed with great resignation.”  Yet, immediately after acknowledging the tangible differences in Coramantien, Behn refuses to let these inconsistences linger, instead endeavoring to explain away the new world in direct reference to – and thus by borrowing from – the European world with which she is familiar. Seemingly contradictorily after having just dismissed the notion of a king in Coramantien, she writes:

 

“The king of Coramantien was himself a man of a hundred and odd years old, and had no son…In his younger years he had many gallant men to his sons, thirteen of which died in battle, conquering when they fell; and he had only left him for this successor one grandchild.”[3]

 

 

 

In this passage, Behn not only re-establishes the notion of an African king, but also describes his supposed “royal lineage,” lending to Coramantien both the same authoritative structure of a European monarchical system and English male primogeniture as the norm for political succession.[4]  It is not surprising, then, that our introduction to Oroonoko’s character as the novel’s “epic hero” should immediately follow from this distinct European priming. Comprising a particularly long passage from the novel, Oroonoko’s introduction seems to mirror in length an epic poem itself, (excerpted in part below):

 

“[…And he had only left him for this successor one grandchild]…son to one of these dead victors, who, as soon as he could bear a bow in his hand and a quiver at his back, was sent into the field to be trained by one of the oldest generals to war; where, from his natural inclination to arms and the occasions given him with the good conduct of the old general, he became, at the age of seventeen, one of the most expert captains and bravest soldiers that ever saw the field of Mars…He had scarce arrived at his seventeenth year, when fighting by his side, the general was killed with an arrow in his eye, which the Prince Oroonoko very narrowly avoided…It was then, afflicted as Oroonoko was, that he was proclaimed general in the old man’s place; and then it was, at the finishing of that war which had continued for two years, that the prince came to court…[I] do assure my reader, the most illustrious courts could not have produced a braver man, both for greatness of courage and mind, a judgment more solid, a wit more quickly and a conversation more sweet and delivering. He had heard of and admired the Romans…He had an extreme good and graceful mien and all the civility of a well-bred great man. He had nothing of barbarity in his nature, but in all points addressed himself as if his education had been in some European court…His eyes were the most awful that could be seen, and very piercing; the white of them being like snow as were his teeth. His nose was rising and Roman instead of African and flat…Oroonoko was as capable even of reigning well, and of governing as wisely…and was as sensible of power as any prince civilized in the most refined schools of humanity and learning, or the most illustrious courts.”[5]

 

 

 

This passage elucidates a great many of Behn’s rhetorical devices as they attempt to overlook Oroonoko’s African heritage and culture and instead shroud it in the history and rhetoric of European nobility. Oroonoko is, first, described to us as an epic military hero (“one of the most expert captains and bravest soldiers”) who has descended from courtly nobility (“son to one of these dead victors”) and fights on the battlefield of Mars, named for the Roman God of War. These choices of language are clear – if not blatant – appropriations of Oroonoko’s character to confer upon him a kind-of vicarious nobility derived from ideals of European society, which consequently fashion him into a protagonist the narrator and readers like her are used to reading about in great epics. This appropriation becomes increasingly apparent as Behn not only visually likens Oroonoko to a European noble using clear racial insinuations (“His nose was rising and Roman instead of African and flat…the white [of his teeth] being like snow”), but also as she anchors Oroonoko’s intelligence as procured “in court,” as would also be the case for many European scholars reading her novel. That is, in portraying Oroonoko as a noble savage by explicitly borrowing from the epic mode, Behn endeavors to fashion her main character as hyper-intelligible, regardless of the degree to which the qualities ascribed to him coincide with the society in which he lives.

Yet, intriguingly, it is the novel’s intention to ultimately undermine this attempt at legibility. As the book progresses, the expectations and opportunities for Oroonoko to fulfill his anticipated role as an epic hero become increasingly attractive – especially as the institution of slavery becomes all the more oppressive – yet his ability to triumph against these evils is continually disallowed by the narrative. That is to say, as Oroonoko is forcibly shipped overseas as a slave to Surinam, where the latter half of the novel takes place, it is made most painfully evident the tragic impossibility for him to actually become an epic hero. More, this tragedy is ingeniously mirrored in Behn’s literary mode: the once standalone heroic epic begins to elide into Shakespearean tragedy. The first instance of this genre shift comes just as Oroonoko arrives on the plantation that is owned by his new master, Mr. Trefry. That the novel should make its most distinct formal shift as Oroonoko steps foot on the plantation is surely no coincidence, for it is precisely the immutable reality of slavery that both most palpably demands of Oroonoko an epic heroism and ultimately rejects his valiant attempts at fulfilling this role. As Oroonoko is brought onto the plantation, Behn writes: “I ought to tell you that the Christians never buy any slaves but they give them some name of their own…so that Mr. Trefry gave Oroonoko that of Caesar, which name will live in that country as long as that (scarce more) glorious one of the great Roman, for it is most evident he wanted [lacked] no part of the personal courage of that Caesar, and acted things as memorable…”[6] From this passage, that Oroonoko should take the name Caesar is certainly a deliberate instance of genre conflation: Julius Caesar is classically historicized as both an epic hero and a Shakespearean tragedy. Yet what might be initial ambivalence towards which literary mode inspires Behn to lend Oroonoko his new name is soon dissipated as we discover how she begins to script Caesar’s dialogue. Instead of Oroonoko’s words being routed through the narrator as they were earlier in Coramantien, Caesar’s begin to assume a dramatic autonomy, appearing in italics and becoming highly idiomatic of the Shakespearean soliloquy. The most remarkable example of this new dialogue appears at perhaps the climax of the novel, as Oroonoko and the group of runaway slaves he has inspired engage in violent rebellion against the oppressive Governor Byam. Inciting his fellow Africans to revolt, Oroonoko exclaims:

 

“And why, my dear friends and fellow sufferers, should we be slaves to an unknown people? Have they vanquished us nobly in fight? Have they won us in honourable battle? Are we by the chance of war become their slaves? This would not anger a noble heart, this would not animate a soldier’s soul. No, but we are bought and sold like apes or monkeys, to be the sport of women, fools and cowards…Do you not hear every day how they upbraid each other with infamy of life, below the wildest savages? And shall we render obedience to such a degenerate race, who have no one human virtue left to distinguish them from the vilest creatures. Will you, I say, suffer the lash from such hands?”[7]

 

In this excerpt, the dramatic repetition of such provocative questions posed by one man to an intensely attentive and obedient audience, the highly anti-authoritarian and morality-driven mode of his speech, and the rhetorical strategy of linking the speaker to his audience clearly aligns Oroonoko with a tragic Shakespearean heroic figure confiding in the audience a deep moral truth as he fights against seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Yet here, Behn’s portrayal of Oroonoko as a Shakespearean hero does not function in the same way as did her allying him with an epic hero. If the epic mode both offered Oroonoko the potential to romantically triumph over the evils he encounters and thereby make intelligible his European heroism, by borrowing the Renaissance literary mode to portray him as a tragic figure, Behn instead cements Oroonoko’s failed heroism. Thus it seems as though Behn’s genre addition in the novel ingeniously forebodes Oroonoko’s own destiny in the narrative. To this point, as the novel progresses towards the end, we more clearly understand that Caesar’s attempts to uproot and avert the oppressive and violent force of slavery that is keeping he, his wife, and his people enslaved are, tragically, to no avail. After failing to lead a slave rebellion, he is brutally whipped by Governor Byam after being dragged back to the plantation. Barely alive after this beating, Caesar – most lucidly resembling a Shakespearean protagonist – pledges to enact revenge on Byam, even if it is to cost him his life. Caesar exclaims, “It had been well for him [Byam] if he had sacrificed me, instead of giving me the contemptible whip…Therefore, for his own safety, let him speedily dispatch me, for if I could dispatch myself, I would not till that justice were done to my injured person…No, I would not kill myself…till I have completed my revenge.”[8]  This longed-for revenge is Caesar’s last attempt at defeating slavery in the novel, albeit in some removed form, yet even so, he is unable to carry out his revenge plot, instead moved to kill his wife – who asks to die by his hand instead of live in chains – along with his unborn child, before stabbing himself to death. In this way, Oroonoko most excruciatingly and tragically fails to fulfill the epic heroism expected of him and instead assumes the role of the tragic hero.

Thus, the novel seems to suggest that even after aligning Oroonoko with European qualities, a Roman name, and all the virtues of an epic hero, he is still unable to defeat the institution of slavery that persecutes him. This is to say, in Oroonoko, slavery is too powerful a modernizing force to be defeated by old forms of honor and heroism associated with the epic: the horrible and insurmountable moral incongruities of African enslavement leave modern society dissatisfyingly unintelligible. In this way, we might view Behn’s narrator as perhaps just another character within the action: someone who sets out with the confident ambition of explaining a new, undiscovered world, but cannot – even with the aid of royal language – fashion a respectable or intelligible world from such dark and complex realities. The epic is no longer able to describe modern society, and from this obsolescence emerges tragedy.