A modest proposal theme

topic for Week #1: Oroonoko and "A Modest Proposal" both contain social commentary for their time. Based on your reading, what's the most important theme or idea to take away from the texts? You do need at least one specific example from each text. It doesn't need to be the same focus for the two--you can focus on two different themes or ideas. But what overarching idea or ideas are Behn and Swift focusing on? This discussion needs at least 250 words. I hope that this file can help you.English 2206 – Kosiba Notes for Week #1 Keep in mind throughout this course that the notes I provide for each of the readings are intended as a supplement and guide to the reading itself and should never be used solely as a substitute for reading the story. Aphra Behn – Oroonoko (Vol. D, pages 198-246) As the introductory material to your text notes, Aphra Behn was “the first professional woman writer in England” (198). Her accomplishments are important because many women at the time did not have the means or the popular approval to have a writing career on the same scale as what she achieved. Her novella (the term we apply to works that are longer than a conventional short story but not quite a novel), Oroonoko, was first published in 1688 and delved into the social and economic dynamics between Africa and the Caribbean, particularly in regards to slavery. Race takes on complicated dimensions in this text, as there are obviously contrasts between black men and women and those who are white, but there are also dynamics within those cultures. One example of this is when Oroonoko sells his prisoners off as slaves after a battle or conquest. Many of those prisoners would have been from surrounding areas and would, therefore, have been black, so it complicates one of the common perceptions of slavery that all transactions were white individuals selling black slaves. One of the other things that stands out about this narrative, in addition to its complicated issues of morality and heroism, is that there is a framing device conveying this story. We’re hearing the story through a first person narrator, “A. Behn,” who shares some qualities with the actual author and who is fictional in some ways as well (as the introductory material to your text explains). This adds another dimension to our sense of understanding as we’re hearing Oroonoko’s story “in translation,” in a sense, as it’s being told to us by someone who claims to have first person knowledge of the situation but who is not Oroonoko.