The native people with whom the Europeans trade, she says, are creative: "we dealt with them with beads of all colors, knives, axes, pins and needles." They wear beaded aprons "as Adam and Eve did the fig leaves." The people, she continues, are beautiful, their skin color a reddish yellow. She describes a multitude of exotic tropical birds: "parakeets, great parrots, macaws, and a throusand other birds and beasts of wonderful and surprising forms, shapes and colors," as well as a wide variety of insects (2). But, before she tells the story of how this "gallant slave" came to be in this region of the world, she will provide an account of the people, the natives with whom the British live in "perfect peace," and will give a highly detailed description of this wondrous place (1). While she will not bore her readers with all the details concerning this amazing noble hero, she will nevertheless tell them everything about him that she, and her group of curious European friends, found fascinating about this prince before and after he arrived in Surinam ("in the West-Indies"). Whatever she did not personally observe, she maintains, was given to her as firsthand accounts by others who were there. The first word of Oronooko: or The History of the Royal Slave is "I"-the narrator-who claims to be "an eyewitness" to the true history of an intriguing hero.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |