Essay Sample about the History of The Royal Slave

In her novel Oroonoko, Alpha Behn shapes her reader's feelings using various strategies and good choice of appropriate words. The novel is a complete paradox and thoroughly entertaining. Various genres such as romance, travel narratives and also novel fiction all intermingled together making the reader interested. Aphra Ben shapes her reader's feelings through various careful strategies.

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One of the ways through which the novelist throws the reader into the complete scene of the events of the novel is through personal narration. The readers of the novel get first-hand entertainment throughout the novel. This is made possible by her travel narrative through the novel. She appeals to the attention of readers right for the first paragraph by bringing in her feelings and motives of the novels. She says that she does not want to pretend that she is writing about history but aims at entertaining the readers through the novel. The personal sentiments shared by the writer concerning her work aims at making the events in the novel real and entertaining. The author also reveals some of her stands and feelings regarding certain serious social and political issues described in the novel. As the novel describes the transitions that took place in the 17th century, she reveals the fact that she is conservative and would like to remain in the aristocratic and romance prone ideological past and not the newer ego drove and rationalist age. The author has been so sly in explaining her own loathe for a constrained society while encouraging liberty and enlightenment in an appealing personal way. There is an undertone of romance and allegory throughout the novel, and this is more interesting to readers.

The author also chooses her diction carefully throughout the novel. Certain words are carefully chosen in the novel to bring out a more realistic and credible version of the historical events in the novel. For example, she uses the black prince to bring out the very bad noble features where individuals pretend to be serving and leading their people while in a real sense they are advancing their selfish interests. The author also chooses some word and sentence fragments to bring out the concept of emotional favoritism. For example, this can be seen when the captain of the ship lures Oronooko and his kin into a wonderful and dazzling feast on board an immense ship. The author here aims at bringing out the power and might of their captors and the fact that they appeared to be good people from the outside. However, when the captain takes Oronooko and many of his tribesmen captive in the process of the feast, Behn uses very harsh words to describe and condemn the acts. For example, she says that "the same treachery was used" to capture other slaves. This brings out the very brutal and emotionless nature of the captors. Their wicked side is brought out.

The author manages to contrast the positive and negatives sides of the slave captors by describing them at first as having "invited them to a "dazzling feast in an immense ship."However, as it turns out that the ship and his army are no good people, the author describes them as people of "treachery." Finally, the author manages to allow readers to think for themselves.For example, in the colonies. She says that she will leave readers to "decide as they please". This is strategy helps to make the novel interesting and emotionally appealing.