Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko asks us to consider the power of love - both its ability to make complete a life that was once fragmented and also its ability to bring about annihilation for her novel tells us in turn how her title character is first redeemed and then destroyed by love - although both redemption and destruction take place against the moral complexities of the slave trade and the expansion of the British Empire. The novel is a fictionalized retelling of a captured African prince whom the narrator came to know when he was a slave. Oroonoko, the prince, tells the narrator he fell in love with a woman named Imoinda, who is also loved by a rival king. When their love is discovered, she is sold into slavery and Oroonoko himself is later tricked by a captain (from whom Oroonoko himself had once bought and sold slaves) tricks him and his soldiers and sells them all as slaves. At least as a slave he is reunited in Guiana with Imoinda, but he is forced to rebel against his owners on a matter of principle and in the end he kills Imoinda (to prevent her being captured) before he himself is captured and executed.
The importance of the power love runs throug
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