A black African is captured and sold into slavery. It’s an unfortunate story, but one with approximately eleven million equivalents. Aphra Behn, however, brings this common piece of history to life in her story Oroonoko, the tale of an African prince tricked into slavery in the West Indies. As the storyteller, Behn makes use of two common forms of narration, the third person and the first person. She recounts what she is present for in the first person, while relying on the words of Oroonoko himself to explain what she did not see. The effectiveness of each of these modes of narration can be judged by two standards, the ability to effectively convey action and by the ability to portray emotion. Examining two separate passages of Oroonoko, each depicting Oroonoko in battle, can best illustrate these standards. The first of these passages, from page 2187-88(“While he was speaking….wounded him almost to death”), is a third person account of one of Oroonoko’s battles, while the second passage, from page 2199-2200(“sometimes we would go surprising…strong limbs”) is a first person narratative about Oronooko’s encounter with a tiger. Though in Oroonoko, both first and third person narration modes are necessary to complete the st
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No doubt, his enthusiasm and passion would have been high, but this cannot be fully described by Oroonoko in a way that would be effective when written. By looking at these two passages, one written from a story dictated by Oroonoko, and one written from a personal experience, it is possible to see that the first person narration is much more effective in its description, and thus the third person narration mode in this story only exists to provide necessary information. While they do provide the reader with the exact feelings of the hero, they do so in a very direct and uncreative way. As a result, the detail is, while attempting to entice excitement, quite vague.
By contrast, a look at the second of the passages, the one written in the first person, reveals a much more accurate and precise presentation of action. This intense attention to detail is further shown in her description of Oroonoko’s slaughter of the tiger. Thus, Behn uses the line “and being animated with despair, fought as if he came on purpose to die(2188)” to best capture Oroonoko’s emotional state.
In conclusion, it can be seen that the only purpose that Behn has for using the third person narration technique is its necessity to provide the background to the story. An occurrence such as this has virtually unlimited possibilities for description and excitement, if one was there to witness it. The best of her emotional description is when Oroonoko fixes “his awful stern eyes full upon those of the beast”(2200). Behn writes that Oroonoko was responsible for “turning the tide of victory”(2188). This follows from the conclusion that the first person narration is superior in both its ability to portray action, and its ability to portray emotion. If it were possible for Behn to have been present as all the events described in Oroonoko, the entire story would have been written in the first person. This is because Behn is not required to rely on someone else’s memory to tell her story, but can write from her own first hand observations.
The first area of assessment for these passages is their ability to accurately and effectively portray action.
Approximate Word count =
974
Approximate Pages =
4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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