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Aphra Behn 's Oroonoko : The Way That It Has Two Significantly Different And Carefully Designed Settings

Decent Essays

Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko is unique in the way that it has two significantly different and carefully designed settings that help her to get her main point across more effectively. The narrator of this book seems to have a lot in common with Aphra Behn herself. It can be argued that Behn is using her experiences but writing in a way that “inflates” her own status to create the narrator. The book is claimed to be non-fiction, but it is unsure of how much is actually true and what is made up, however, Behn’s description of Surinam comes from her own detailed knowledge of the place, suggesting that at least some of what is in this book is true. For the parts about Africa, the narrator claims to have gotten her knowledge from a direct eye-witness to the events that were occurring. The book begins in Surinam where the narrator describes the local natives as well as the European colonizers that have taken over the land. The native people are described in a manner relating to the story of Adam and Even in the bible living in “the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin” (Behn 11). The natives of Surinam lived in peace with the colonists and the relationship between the two groups was mutually beneficial. The colonists were able to trade European goods and luxuries while the “Indians” had great knowledge of the land and taught the colonists what they needed to know to survive in the land. It was said that the colonists would have enslaved these people, if their numbers had

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