Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
In fact, when in the midst of trying to sort out what was going on aboard the San Dominick, he briefly thinks that Cereno might be teaming up with the blacks, but this was impossible, since "who ever heard of a white so far a renegade as to apostatize from his very species almost, by leaguing in against it with Negroes?"
Throughout the story, Melville relates how Delano eases his fears by seeing the inferiority of the blacks, like when he feels an "apprehensive twitch" of fear when a group of blacks surround him (Tawill). He quickly assures himself that this group of men are "like so many organ-grinders, still stupidly intent on their work, unmindful of everything beside." Later, Delano associates these Negroes with docile animals. When the black slave Babo is first introduced, he is compared to a pet dog: "By his side stood a black of small stature, in whose rude face, as occasionally, like a shepherd's dog, he mutely turned it up into the Spaniard's, sorrow and affection were equally blended."
Benito Cereno" was published in 1856 only four years before the Civil War. The purpose...
By calling the ship "a slumbering volcano" in the story, he is also alerting the leaders of the United States that treating people inhumanly and enslaving them can cause much wider problems (Robbins). The story is indeed sympathetic to the slaves. The whites are shown to be biased, uncaring individuals and the slaves are seen as cunning and strong fighters who deserve to be free.
References
Andrews, William L.. Three Classic African-American Novels. New York: Penguin Group, 1990.
Karcher, Carolyn L. Shadow Over the Promised Land: Slavery, Race, and Violence in Melville's America. Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.
Robbins, Sarah. Gendering the History of the Antislavery Narrative: Juxtaposing Uncle Tom's Cabin and "Benito Cereno," Beloved and Middle Passage. American Quarterly 49.3, (1997) 531-573
Tawil, Ezra. The Making of Racial Sentiment: Slavery and the Birth of the Frontier
Social Construction of Race and Reality Herman Melville's Benito Cereno is a story of race relations and a narrative of racial formation. The theories and definitions set out by Michael Omi and Howard Winant in their article "Racial Formation in the United States" can easily be applied to Melville's novel. First, Benito Cereno details a slave revolt aboard a Spanish merchant ship off the coast of South America. The historical, political,
American Studies Preface and Conclusion Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and most of the other Founders of the country did not intend for it to be a democracy with equal rights for all citizens, although some like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine did. Like the Quakers, they were ahead of their time in supporting human rights for blacks and Native Americans, which did not exist in reality during the 18th and 19th
nature in American literature, from earliest writings to the Civil War period. It is my purpose to outline the connection between spirituality, freedom and nature and explain how American writers have chosen to reflect and interpret these themes in relation to their historical realities. At the beginning of the colonization process there were two congruent depictions of nature. Initially, the tribes comprising The Iroquois League lived in close contact with
Man of the Crowd By Edgar Allan Poe (1840) The story significantly depicts not only the preoccupation of the 17th hundred London issues and a trend brought by the progressive industrialization of time, but speaks so much relevance in our modern time as well. The epigraph which sums up the very essence of the story explains the dynamic of a human being too busy to mingle with the crowd for fear of