Oolanga

**Oolanga**, also known as **Christy Minstrel**, or **Mr. Christy**, is a West African servant for Edgar Caswall. He is described as a clever, unscrupulous man, who seeks opportunities of self-advancement. However, being unscrupulous and stealthy, he looks to dishonest means. He was very keen to Lady Arabella’s advancement toward his master, and was watchful to the slightest sign of anything that would materialise this knowledge (1911, Chapter 15).

## His dress

‘Oolanga‘s dress had the appearance of an absurd mixture.’ “He had on an evening [suit] of an ill cut, an abnormally efflorescent white shirt with exaggerated cuffs and collar, all holding mock jewels of various colors. In his nose was a silver ring, and in his ears large ornaments, composed of trophies of teeth. He wore a tall hat, which had once been of a shape of some kind, with a band of gold lace. Altogether he looked like a horrible distortion of a gentleman’s servant” (1911, Chapter 5, *Home-Coming*).

## His character

‘Oolanga is quite a great person from his world of the African West Coast. He has two things which men of his background respect: he can make them afraid, and he is lavish with money. He was originally a witch-finder, who worked his way up to become an Obi-man, which gives an opportunity to wealth. He reached the highest honour in hellish service, to become a user of Voodoo. In his collection, are predatory bird beaks that break, rend and tear. Also fish parts from those which are born to destroy, to wound, to torture.’ “This being has enough evil in his face to frighten even a strong man.” (1911, Chapter 8).

## His ugliness

Just as Caswall, his master, looked as a savage—but as a “cultured savage”, Oolanga appeared as the hardened savage. His face is described as “pure pristine, unreformed, unsoftened savage, with inherent in it all the hideous possibilities of a lost, devil-ridden child of the forest and the swamp—the lowest and most loathsome of all created things which were in some form ostensibly human.” (Chapter 4).

## His beauty

“Had [Oolanga] known and been capable of understanding the real value placed on him, his beauty, his worthiness, by other persons, and compared it with the value in these matters in which he held himself” (1911, Chapter 15) he would not have displayed characteristics of the antagonist. As further explained by Bram Stoker...

“If ignorance be bliss, bliss has a dynamic quality which later leads to destruction. Doubtless Oolanga had his dreams like other men. In such cases he doubtless saw himself—or would have done had he the knowledge with which to make the comparison—as a young sun-god, as beautiful as the eye of dusky or even white womanhood had ever dwelt upon. He would have been filled with all noble and captivating qualities regarded as such in West Africa. Women would have loved him, and would have told him so in the overt and fervid manner usual in the shadowy depths of the forest of the Gold Coast. After all, etiquette is a valuable factor in the higher circles of even Africa in reducing chaos to social order and in avoiding mistakes properly ending in lethal violence. Had he known of such an educational influence, the ambitious Oolanga might have regretted its absence from his curriculum. But as it was, intent on his own ends, he went on in blind ignorance of offence” (1911, Chapter 15).

## Notes

1. ↑ 1911, Chapter 5, *Home-Coming* was removed from the subsequent abridgments since 1925.
2. ↑ The characterization of Oolanga in Chapter 4, has led many critics to beleve that Bram Stoker was a racist. This theory has been further compounded from the abridgments, where later editors inserted the term “nigger”, in many places, with reference to Oolanga. None of the revisions since 1925, were authorized by Bram Stoker (1847—1912) as he had long been dead. However, even while living during a period of active slavery, Bram Stoker portrays, in-depth, a balance of ugliness and beauty, intelligence and keenness, that the Oolanga character possesses. See also The Lair of the White Worm (Synopsis)#Critique.