I enjoyed our discussion in class today regarding Benito Cereno, and I felt like
I had cheated myself by "googleing" the ending last night. However, I just finished the book
and reading the ending was much more different then finding out about it on an internet
website. All in all, with the extensive moments of dragging descriptive details, I thought the book was well written. I think that Brandon mentioned a good point in class earlier that the author provides a lot of forshadowing. In retrospect, after finishing the book, I am left questioning why I did not see everything from the beginning. However, Melville tried to elude readers from the truth throughout the story by adding extra information to throw the reader off from what was really happening. I started the book believing that Delano was a mighty sea captain, only to find out that he was completely naive. I then believed that Benito was going to be evil- especially because of the description we get in the beginning of the book. Furthermore, I feel as if my accusations were justified especially with Benito's curiouscharacter and when he asks Delano about what he has on his boat and if it will be on his boat later. My mind then begins
to think that he might be a pirate. Only towards the middle do things start to slowly add up, and at the end we find out that the slaves were really in control the whole time.
I want to add something that I thought was important and that is- throughout most of the book I felt there was a similarity to Heroic Slave. Once again, we see a white man seeing a slave as a normal human being. I recall that when Delano sees the relationship with Babo and Benito he makes note that Babo was a companion not a slave. Furthermore, Benito mentiones how Babo is his confidant, and before getting to the end I thought Melville was trying to imply the same message as Douglas. Certainly, I was mistaken and as I mentioned earlier in class, I felt that this book was a negative portrayal of slaves and a positive portrayal of slavery, which may have been Melville's point. Did anyone else see any similarities between the two books?
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Mira,
ReplyDeleteExcept for the part of showing the revolts on the ship as positive and negative, the similarities between both books are quite outstanding. At first, I felt Melville would turn the revolt in favor of abolitionist and rally them together. However, the description of the actual revolt and the black characters make them seem as if they should be chained and put in a cell. They become what Delano saw them as from the beginning, animals. Sadly, this book would prove to Americans why blacks need to be slaves. If blacks did not have the white superiors to oversee and control them, they would only kill and cause their own deaths as well. This makes me wonder if Melville wasn't just a lesser degree of white supremacy or an intense racist.