Oroonoko
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40 free Oroonoko trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Oroonoko is short enough to read in an evening and strange enough to argue about for a lifetime. Aphra Behn's 1688 story follows an African prince from the battlefields and court intrigues of his homeland to a plantation colony across the Atlantic, where love, broken promises and rebellion lead to one of the most shocking endings in English fiction. This quiz works through the story the way a good summary does: the prince's rise, the rivalry over Imoinda, the betrayal at sea, life on the plantation, the revolt and its aftermath. It also covers the woman who wrote it, the real colony and people behind the tale, and the stage versions and debates that kept it alive. It suits students revising the text, book clubs and anyone curious about one of the earliest English novels. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches you something.
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Q 01What does Oroonoko calmly do while his executioners cut him apart at the end of Aphra Behn's story?
Smokes a pipe
He smokes a pipe, holding it steady until his second arm is cut off. Only then does it drop, and he dies without a groan or a reproach.
Q 02Before writing Oroonoko, Aphra Behn was sent to Antwerp by King Charles II in which role?
A spy
A spy for the Crown in Antwerp, she was paid so poorly that money had to be borrowed to get her home. The debts pushed her to write for the stage.
Q 03Why do the plantation slaves in Oroonoko recognise the prince on his first visit to their houses?
He had sold them
He had sold them: most were captives from his wars whom he traded away. Even so, they fall at his feet and hail him as their king.
Q 04Which Roman name does Oroonoko's new owner give him when he arrives in the colony as a slave?
Caesar
Caesar is the name he bears for the rest of the story. The narrator explains that colonists renamed every slave they bought, finding African names hard to pronounce.
Q 05How does a trusted English visitor capture Oroonoko and a hundred of his young courtiers?
A dinner on his ship
A dinner on his ship leaves the guests drunk on punch and wine, and the crew claps them all in irons. The captain was an old acquaintance who had hunted and dined at court.
Q 06Oroonoko led later readers to regard Aphra Behn as a precursor of which American novelist?
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin 164 years after Oroonoko. Behn's narrator mourns one royal captive but lodges no protest against slavery itself.
Q 07Biographer Janet Todd argues that Aphra Behn drew on which Shakespeare tragedy for Oroonoko?
Othello
Othello, another great African soldier among Europeans, was a play Behn deeply admired. On stage, Oroonoko was likewise played by an actor in blackface.
Q 08Aphra Behn, the author of Oroonoko, is remembered as one of the first Englishwomen to do what?
Live by her writing
To live by her writing, she turned out hit plays through the 1670s and 1680s, when only John Dryden was more productive.
Q 09In a 1667 treaty, England gave up the colony in Oroonoko but kept which future American city?
New York
New York, seized from its founders three years earlier, stayed English under the Treaty of Breda. The narrator of Oroonoko says the king should never have parted with his colony so easily.
Q 10Why does Oroonoko kill his wife Imoinda, with her consent, before seeking revenge?
To shield her from his foes
To shield her from his foes: he expects to die in the attempt and fears she would be left to the mob. She pleads for death faster than he can propose it.
Q 11In which English colony does the enslaved prince of Oroonoko meet the story's narrator?
Surinam
Surinam, on the coast of South America, was nicknamed Willoughbyland after its founder and had some fifty sugar plantations by 1663.
Q 12The aged king who takes Imoinda for himself in Oroonoko is what relation to the prince?
His grandfather
His grandfather is past a hundred and has outlived every son, thirteen of them killed in battle, which leaves Oroonoko as the only heir.
Q 13What news about Imoinda makes Oroonoko determined to win freedom and lead a slave revolt?
She is pregnant
She is pregnant, and by the colony's rule the baby would belong to their owners. Oroonoko, the last of his line, cannot bear to father a slave.
Q 21Aphra Behn died within a year of publishing Oroonoko and lies buried in which London church?
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey holds her grave in the East Cloister, outside Poets' Corner. Her stone declares that wit can never be defence enough against mortality.
Q 22Oroonoko is the last heir to the throne of which warlike African country in Behn's story?
Coramantien
Coramantien echoes Fort Cormantin, a real English slave-trading post on the Gold Coast, in what is now Ghana.
Q 23In Aphra Behn's story, how does Imoinda's father, the old general who trained Oroonoko, die?
Saving the prince's life
Q 14In Oroonoko, what does the old king send Imoinda as a command to join his women?
The royal veil
The royal veil covers the chosen woman and marks her as the king's. Refusing it meant death, so Imoinda goes, although she is already promised to Oroonoko.
Q 15After selling Imoinda into slavery, what lie does the old king send Oroonoko?
She was put to death
She was put to death, he claims, because in their code an honourable death was kinder than slavery. He knew Oroonoko would never pardon the truth.
Q 16Which young Cornish gentleman buys Oroonoko, treats him as a friend and promises to send him home?
Trefry
Trefry, who manages the absent Lord Governor's estate, is so struck by his captive's bearing that he loves him like a brother. The promise is never kept.
Q 17Oroonoko owes his European learning partly to a tutor who was banished from which country?
France
France had exiled the tutor for his heretical notions. At the African court he taught the young prince morals, language and science.
Q 18Chained below deck on the voyage in Oroonoko, how do the prince and his men resist their captor?
They refuse all food
They refuse all food until the captain, afraid of losing his valuable cargo, swears to set them ashore at the next landfall. He breaks the oath.
Q 19After the deputy governor has Oroonoko whipped, what do his tormentors rub into the open wounds?
Indian pepper
Indian pepper is rubbed in until he is close to raving, and he is then chained to the ground. The narrator's party later has him bathed to wash it out.
Q 20Critics call Oroonoko an early landmark for which literary theme, later linked with Rousseau?
The noble savage
The noble savage, an outsider whose natural virtue shames civilised Europeans, fits the prince and also the natives, whom the narrator likens to Adam and Eve before the Fall.
Saving the prince's life, he bows his head into the path of a shot aimed at Oroonoko. The grieving prince calls on the general's daughter and falls in love.
Q 24The narrator of Oroonoko laments that England's king let the colony pass to which rival nation?
The Dutch
The Dutch took the colony soon after the events of the story. The narrator claims they killed or scattered everyone who could have told the hero's history better.
Q 25How does Oroonoko's friend Aboan win the help of Onahal, the older woman guarding Imoinda?
He becomes her lover
He becomes her lover, courting her so convincingly that she presses two large pearls on him and lets both men into the women's quarters at midnight.
Q 26Under which new name is Imoinda living when Oroonoko finds her on the same plantation?
Clemene
Clemene is the name her owners gave her, and every man on the estate is in love with her. She faints at the sight of Oroonoko.
Q 27During the slave revolt, what does Imoinda do to the colony's deputy governor?
Shoots him with an arrow
She shoots him with an arrow in the shoulder, and the tip is poisoned. He survives only because his native mistress sucks the venom from the wound.
Q 28Urging the slaves to flee, Oroonoko cites which ancient commander who overcame every obstacle?
Hannibal
Hannibal, he reminds them, cut his way through mountains of solid rock. A few shrubs they could burn should not stop men resolved to die or conquer.
Q 29Which playwright turned Oroonoko into a stage tragedy that outshone Behn's book through the 1700s?
Thomas Southerne
Thomas Southerne staged his version within a decade of the book and thanked Behn in the printed foreword. Its comic subplot was later cut from performances.
Q 30Oroonoko reached print in 1688, the year of which upheaval that drove King James II from England?
The Glorious Revolution
The Glorious Revolution replaced James with William of Orange. Scholars read the story's insistence that a king's word is sacred as a royalist comment on the crisis.