Reflection on Oroonoko
參賽者：柳宗成（應外一）
名次：佳作
書名：應外一 柳宗成
得獎作品：
It was the era of genuineness; it was the era of artifice, it was Eden of innocence; it was Sodom of hypocrisy, it was the empyrean of all virtues; it was the abyss of all sins, it was the paradise of peace; it was the pandemonium of violence, and above, this absurdity was what I beheld in the short novel Oroonoko, a book written by an English female of the Restoration— Aphra Behn.
The plot commenced with a sketch of a nameless lady’s witness to a primitive land with a primeval forests, a verdant and jubilant place which the chattering parrots merrily inhabited, which chirping birds delightedly dwelt in, and which the peaceable man peacefully resided in. It seemed that the wonderland was tranquil and blessed as if it were the Garden of Eden that the omnipotent and omniscient Creator bestowed upon Adam and Eve; nevertheless, the approaching diabolic colonists shortly sabotaged the bliss that the inhabitants once immersed in and vandalized Nature that the residents once possessed. This invasion led to the calamitous results and tragic death of Oroonoko, the African prince who was later tricked to be a slave by the crafty captain; and Imoinda, the pathetic woman bargained to the wicked captain by a king and enslaved by the sinister colonist.
My mind resounded with the impressive and heartbroken scene that Oroonoko mournfully cut Imoinda’s throat, sorrowfully removed her face, and grievously witnessed his own wife’s decease. Unlike Othello, a Moorish man in great jealousy suffocating his own innocent wife Desdemona, Oroonoko’s murder of Imoinda resulted from Oroonoko’s slavery, the colonists’ despotic power, and Oroonoko’s own sympathy for his own expectant wife and for the fetus. Being a slave without dignity, fearing that their kids will also be born in captivity after his or her birth, and preventing his wife in slavery from being tarnished by the colonists, Oroonoko painfully resolved to slay his own wife so that the tragedy of the slavery or the calamity of everything would not continuously recur in his homeland, in his wife’s life, and in his child’s future. As soon as I read this cruel but compassionate part of the novel, I simultaneously expressed my sympathy for the price in slavery, Oroonoko, and also thought that all the misery and misfortune has ended with Imoinda’s death; yet, shortly afterward, I found that my speculation was opposite to the story that Aphra Behn has indited. Soon after I just finished reading Oroonoko’s personal killing of Imoinda, I learned that Oroonoko, sinking into deeper depression and having a heavy heart, kept watch for Imoinda’s corpse until the corpse’s stench brought the colonists to the scene and the colonists took away Oroonoko’s life and that Oroonoko was ravaged by the inhumane abuse of his body whereas he stood stoically smoking the pipe until he fell down dead. It is a dreadful story that is more fearful than Edger Allan Poe’s stories and that shepherds the readers of all Modern into the colonial age. As I scrutinized the lines in the novel, it seemed that the slaves in the colony were all reappearing and howling for their strenuous travail. Behn really aroused readers’ sympathy to those who situated in the low stratum of society and accused the privileged of their exploitation and persecution. Once the readers saw the miserable lives of the slaves with their own eyes, they would show their mercy for the underprivileged as Behn wished the readers to be concerned with the people in low stratum and to introspect the barbarity of the glorious epoch.
Apart from the novel itself, the story appeared to insinuate our history and our society. Oroonoko in the novel ultimately slew his wife because he did not possess the strength like the armed colonists’ power to thwart the colonial captain’s violence and insult to his family. Without the inferiority, he had no alternative but to take away his wife’s life in order to end the torments they suffered from and provoke an outcry. Similarly, the Peasant’s Revolt of England, the Jacquerie in medieval France, the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution were the reprinted version of the prince Oroonoko. When the underprivileged or the oppressed were crucified by the governments’ exploitation or the totalitarians’ maltreatment, they simultaneously decided to crusade against tyranny, to revolt against authority, and to strive for their rights so as to annihilate the inequality they faced. However, not having the same financial capability as the government and the same scepter as the sovereign, the underprivileged can only gang the men together and make an assault on the ruler, with the iron and the fists. As the underprivileged rose in rebellion against their ruler, society soon lapsed into agitation and havoc and suffers from the thorns that are engendered from the underprivileged as well as the ruler. From these facts, we can say that when the oppressed encounter society’s tearless treatment or isolation and are at the end of the rope, they are inclined to damage themselves or injure others, causing everyone’s catastrophe and nightmare. This is not what we expect to see.Hence, as soon as we see the poor or the underprivileged, we must not evade them as the rich man fared sumptuously ignores Lazarus, a beggar who is full of sores. Instead, we must generously give our assistance to those needy people. With our help, they will not imprison themselves in the abyss of helplessness; jail them in the inferno of poverty, and lock themselves in the perdition of ordeals. Conversely, they procure the hope and more impetus to serve for their society and usher other impoverished people into bliss of being concerned. And, all the goodwill shepherds all humans into a harmonious heaven.
