“I do not pretend, in giving you the history of this Royal Slave, to entertain my reader with 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.” (Oroonoko)
Oroonoko is centralized with slavery and the story even goes to show the horrors of slavery. It has two sections in a sense, one of which he is a slave and one of where he isn’t. Before he is captured Oroonoko is a prince. At one point Oroonoko is living a higher life and within moments he is tricked into being captured. The theme of slavery and anti-colonialism goes hand-in-hand. The colonists are portrayed to be greedy and bad. As Oroonoko steps on to the ship, he is tricked and captured and through the rest of the story false promises of freedom are promised. He is first not treated like a slave because of the way he was in the sense of his education and high social status. He incites a slave revolt soon after his wife becomes pregnant so that his child wouldn’t be born into slavery.
His revolt was not successful and he has to surrender. However he doesn’t get his part of the surrender deal and is whipped with pepper poured into his wounds. This is the part when his conversion ends. His high social status or skills were of no use in this moment because he was generalized into a group that was put down simply because of skin color. The story goes on further and he ends up killing his wife so she and the child wouldn’t have to be a slave—and in the end he dies in the hands of the colonists. The end theme is very important as it highlights the cruelty and end result of slavery. This piece of literature highlights the cruelty of the slave trade and shows the problems during the age of exploration. On the better note the story references new things during the age of exploration which were new to europeans as a sense of moving into the new world.
