Traveling Experiences in Gulliver’s Travels vs. Oronooko :: Jonathan Swift Aphra Behn

Traveling Experiences While reading both stories of travel and misfortune for these characters several points came to my mind, wondering if other readers might have thought as well as me. Aphra Behn in Oronooko presents the reader with a story of disgrace, but at the same time full of love. She also lets the reader see a little farther because she gives a lot of description on the characters and the places trying to place the reader in the correct mood and spot as she wanted. Oronooko lives a life of pleasure, but after, a moment of change takes place, which will give his life a spin. On the other hand, Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travel presents the reader with a travel narrative in which the main character is experiencing constant emotional changes in which he knows not who he really is and if he wants to return home or not. Both Behn in Oronooko and Swift in Gulliver’s Travel present the main characters as lost in worlds which are unknown to them, looking for acceptance and trying to fin d who they really are. Oronooko is placed in a terrible situation in which he is deserted from his homeland by his grandfather, the King. This situation makes him feel lost because being his only family and betraying him that way had no possible excuse. He was also separated from his love Imoinda whom to which he declared eternal love. Oronooko is then again betrayed and sent as a slave to Surinam. In this occasion this makes him suffer more emotionally because he knows he is not a slave, but as soon as he gets there his name is changed so he does not feel so much a prince and starts feeling more a slave. His life by now seems like it has no sense until he sees Imoinda again and marries her. He might have thought that his life was about to change, but he did not know it would be for the worse. He would soon be father of a sibling and that child would be born a slave because both Oronooko and Imoinda were slaves at the time. He tries to look for other opportunities to leave that world behind and search for his homeland, but things do not happen as expected.