Colonization is a concept that is dealt with in both Gulliver’s Travels and Oroonoko, but each work has a different perspective on it.  In Gulliver’s Travels Swift illustrates a poignant distaste for colonization, especially in Part IV chapter XII “they go on shore to rob and plunder”, “a free License given to all Acts of Inhumanity”.  Gulliver apologies for the only sin he acknowledges committing, not claiming the lands he found in the name of England, but goes on to explain why the practice of doing so is criminal.  These anti-colonization ideas were radical in Swift’s time, and Swift employs his satirical style to describe the practice of colonization in a new way, as pirates dominating a foreign people and claiming their land in the name of some distant king.  By presenting the idea in an unfamiliar way, Swift builds a picture in our mind of some unjust and barbaric practice of pirates, then putting a familiar name to it to make us view the concept in a novel way.

Conversely, Oroonoko focuses on the cultural influence of colonization, trying to assert European culture in a disparate space while still glorifying the otherness of the foreign society.  The English settlers in this South American colony specifically state that they don’t enslave the native, but rather live harmoniously with them and import slaves from elsewhere.  Behn takes this idea one step further and even glorifies their society as better than the ‘civilized’ society of England.  The native people are compared to Adam and Eve before original sin, wholly innocent and naïve, but also more honourable than English society could exercise, “laws would but teach ‘em to know offence”, “they have a naïve justice which knows no fraud”.

Jonathan Swift is very conscious of creating a sense of legitimacy around Gulliver’s Travels.  As we saw from the original cover of the book, Swift didn’t want to distinguish his work from other factual accounts of travel that were being published around the time.  In the early 18^th century, written works were virtually always used to document factual information, but Swift wanted to unsettle his readers by creating a piece of writing that seemed very terrestrial but quickly spiralled into an entirely bizarre world.  Gulliver is very insistent at the end of every voyage that what he is telling you is the unabashed truth, as though he is making sure the reader is sufficiently confused.  He describes the wonders of a group of people that hit each other in the face with balloons because they have the attention span of a house fly, and then reiterates that he is completely serious.  Readers would have begun the book expecting some sincere story of travel, and almost immediately been forced to falter in their beliefs.  A legitimate book that unapologetically segues into such an outlandish subject makes readers unsure of how they are supposed to react, which was what Swift intended.  He wanted people to question the truth and falter in their beliefs, an effect which is amplified by the scarcity of a point of reference for a fictional story.

Aphra Behn and John Milton use different persuasive measures convince us to agree with their respective agendas.  Aphra spends a large portion of Oroonoko conveying the reality of her experiences.  She is doing her best to create an illusion, which she claims is true, that elicits from us the correct emotional response.  She evokes this response in a subtle way by not commanding our attention of the subject, but rather enticing us into her perspective.  In the first few paragraphs of the story Aphra illustrates how different culture and society is in the colonies, “these people represented… the first state of innocence”, “it seems as if they had no wishes”, to make us sense the exotic peculiarity of this world and the inherent alienation it introduces.  Aphra is carefully creating the response she wants in her reader.  She seeks to “caress ‘em” into her understanding, just as the Englishmen entice the South American people with their knowledge, and coexisting with them, instead of dominating and commanding them.  Conversely, at times, Milton interrupts his eloquent writing with forthright statements about what the reader’s opinions or feelings should be.  This is most apparent in the first two books, in which Satan is very prominent, and Milton often interrupts his words to remind the reader that Satan is wholly evil.  Milton is using a hammer to get his point across, while Behn tries to softly sway our point of view.

The idea of teleology is exemplified best in Paradise Lost, in which God is omniscient and therefor knows the outcome of the story but continues along the same path anyway. In this way God is creating the future he sees. In this text Milton likens himself to God through the use of the omniscient perspective. Milton is setting himself up as the creator and manipulator of this story, in the same way all authors dictate the stories they create, thereby becoming the gods of their own world.

Teleology is the idea that all choices are predetermined, and how can an author begin a story without knowing what they are going to write. Virtually every story is planned before being written; the author can write whatever they choose, creating a narrative that they personally approve of. This is part of the reason reality is so hard to capture in literature, because what is written is idealized by the author, becoming what the author wants it to be. When the story begins there is only one course of events that can occur, the course that the author has chosen. Foreshadowing is present in each many of the works we studied, referring to “so inglorious an end” in the letter preceding Oroonoko, the idea of the wyrd or fate in Beowulf that cannot be escaped, and most prevalent in God’s awareness of the future in Paradise Lost. Authors use foreshadowing to justify their ending to the readers, so the author can support the idea that this is the outcome that was going to occur all along.

Aphra Behn writes Oroonoko with a sexist tone against women.  It was said in our lecture that Behn adheres to the conventions that exclude her.  She is perhaps sacrificing the idea of capable women in her story in order to be seen as a capable woman herself.

The most prominent female character Imoinda is valued for her pleasing appearance and fragility, “beauty of this fair queen” and “lovely modesty”.  Aphra treats her in such a way because straying too far from accepted gender conceptions would have alienated an audience that was already been wary of a female author.  Unlike in Oroonoko’s world, in which honour is sacrificed for nothing and death is better than slavery, Behn understands that she must yield to some predetermined expectations.  As Virgina Wolfe said, Aphra proved she could be successful “writing at the sacrifice… of certain agreeable qualities”.  The world is not fair or honourable, and becoming a prolific female author in the 17^th century was not traditional or acceptable to society, so Aphra committed herself to her writing as her highest priority.  This is the reason she is so well known to us now, because she forced her way into their culture by playing into what the population wanted from an author.

In stark contrast to Oroonoko’s code of honour, this is a much less idealized and vastly more functional view of the world.  To be successful we may need to choose between our integrity or our desire to have power and influence.  In short, do we want to be obscure but content, or important and purposeful as a person that we have contrived.