Oroonoko: Civil or Savage?

When we discussed the civility and savageness of the characters in Oroonoko a few classes ago,I think that most of the groups agreed that the king and captain were savage, and that Imoinda was one of the more civilized of the characters. Oroonoko's place on the chart in all of the groups seemed to fall in the Most Civil to Neutral range. I forgot to write it down and my memory is hazy, but I believe that my group placed Oroonoko closer to the most civilized end of the spectrum.

After our class discussion, it did not seem so clear to me where all the characters should be placed, especially Oroonoko himself because he has changed so much by the end of the story. By our society's standards, it would be agreed that slavery is bad, and therefore the English should be considered savage in this story as they are trading, and killing, African Americans as slaves. But in the time period that this story takes place, slavery was a common and mostly accepted thing, wouldn't the English be considered civilized as an organized society?

In Oroonoko's case, he at first seems to be one of the most civilized characters, and one of the reasons being that he fell in love with Imoinda and decided that he wanted to be with her and only her. Though this appears to be civilized to us, in his culture, it was common for men to take many girlfriends, so Oroonoko was actually going against his society's standards. At the end of the book, when he realizes that he will never escape and that his son will be born into slavery, Oroonoko decides to, with her permission, kill Imoinda and later allow himself to be killed. By the end, Oroonoko seems to have lost all civility, but when you look at it from his perspective, he did the only thing he felt was right in his situation. He did not want his child to live his life enslaved, and felt that it would be better to die than live a life without freedom. This may come across as selfish, for taking the lives of not only himself, but also Imoinda and their unborn child, however, he genuinely believed that there was no other way out. Imoinda also agreed with Oroonoko's plan, so he did not commit these acts without her consent, so he cannot be definitely described as completely savage towards the end. It is difficult to clearly define a character as civilized or savage in this story, because it really just depends on the perspective of the reader, as well as the characters.

Measure for Measure

I'm going to return to Measure for Measure real quick. I just wanted to say how I feel bad for Isabella, and that I do not think that the ending was all around satisfactory. I'm not even going to get into my feelings about Angelo, because what he asked of Isabella was wrong all around and I cannot express enough how much he creeps me out.

I think Isabella's decision to not give up her virginity to save her brother's life was definitely justified. Although Claudio's crime may not have been as bad as some others, which were ignored, Isabella still believed that her brother committed a sin. As much as she wanted to save his life, she did not want to do so by committing the same sin herself by giving up her virginity to Angelo. At first Claudio was cool with this, but then he changed his mind and saw her as being selfish.

I do not think that Isabella was being selfish. Isabella sincerely believed that her brother was going to hell for his actions; she didn't want to have to condemn herself just to extend his life for a little while, especially since she wanted to become a nun. Nobody should ever be forced or guilted into sleeping with somebody.

As for the Duke, it just annoyed me endlessly how he proposed to Isabella at the end. Was he planning this all along, or did he just happen to notice that she is a strong, independent woman and decide that he wanted her, just as Angelo did? We don't really know for sure, and we never find out what her answer to him is in the end because she has no dialogue. I like that this gives directors of different productions of this play freedom the play around with this and decide how they want Isabella to react through expression. However, I did not like that the Duke did not seem to give her much of a chance to answer, and that he asked for her hand in marriage even though he knew that she was going to become a nun. Even though in the end her brother's life was spared because of the Duke's master plan, I just don't see how Isabella would even consider marrying him after he lied about Claudio's death and tricked her.

Utopia

When I started reading Book II of Utopia, I instantly thought it was better than the first section that we read because it was much easier to read and understand. Book I is very dull and boring, and I just found it difficult to get through because it is so wordy. I felt like Thomas More was just rambling a lot of the time, which makes it difficult to find the point he was making. I found Book II easier to read because More was describing this so called “perfect” world, and it wasn’t as hard to understand. At first, Utopia sounded interesting to me—not in the “I would like to live there” way, but more because it was a different take on what an ideal society would look like. But as I read on I realized that it’s not as perfect as Thomas More makes it out to be.

My cons list ended up being much, much longer than my pros list. The first aspect that hit me that I didn’t like was the fact that in this “perfect” society, there were still slaves. I know that during the 16^th century, slaves were a common thing, and were different from how we think of them. That doesn’t stop me from thinking that a utopia should not have slaves, because then this would not be a perfect world for everyone; only some. I also didn’t like the same routine every single day, no privacy, and the fact that everybody wore generally the same clothes. There is no individuality in this, and to me it seems like this world would get very boring, very fast.

Thomas More’s version of Utopia feels like the world itself is trying too hard to be perfect, if that makes any sense. Like someone just thought “Hey, if we make everybody look the same and have the same job, then there won’t be any problems in the world.” This reminds me of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 because in that world, the government made books illegal and burned them all to prevent the people from having individuality or having any opinions and beliefs of their own. To the people in the book, other than Guy Montag and Clarisse, this was a perfect world because there were no problems, and nobody argued or had a different opinion, but it was really a dystopia. I feel like More’s Utopia is going to eventually become a dystopia, because it is not, in fact, perfect.