In Herman Melville's novella, "Benito Cereno," an American ship captain has a surprising encounter with slavery when he boards a vessel largely occupied by blacks. The captain of the Bachelor's Delight, Amasa Delano, automatically assumes that this ship's captain is Benito Cereno and the black man accompanying him, Babo, is his servant. Throughout his entire experience, he witnesses strange occurrences, but quickly recovers when he sees something that pleases him. "Scarce an uneasiness entered the honest sailor's mind but, by a subsequent spontaneous act of good sense, it was ejected" (25). His optimism is misleading him because little does he know that the ship had actually been taken over by the slaves and the Spanish men, including Benito Cereno, are being held as hostage under Babo's command, which explains his odd encounters with black-on-white assault. While Amasa Delano is a pleasant man and maintains a positive outlook, he is also racist and blind to the realities of slavery and it's injustice.
While Delano tours the San Dominick, the strangely disarrayed ship, he notices many oddities, such as Cereno's distractedness and the confusing signals given to him by Spanish sailors on board. Delano has tunnel vision to these obscene scenarios occurring on the ship and is easily distracted by pleasant things, such as the way the gentle way in which the slave mothers tend to their children, ".delightedly she caught the child up, with maternal transports, covering .
it with kisses" (30). Delano is an optimist and dismisses his suspicions easily, not letting himself dwell on the sense of doom on the San Dominick. "Captain Delano's surprise might have deepened into some uneasiness had he not been a person of a singularly distrustful good nature, not liable, except on extraordinary and repeated excitement, and hardly then, to indulge in personal alarms, any way involving the imputation of malign evil in man" (2).
Such as Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Benito Cereno by Herman Melville. ... Another example of the origins of evil would be Herman Melville's Benito Cereno. ... Under Benito Cereno's weak leadership they revolted and took over the slave ship. ... Therefore the stories of Herman Melville's Benito Cereno and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein discussed the origins of evil through Rousseau's and Hobb's theories....
The Bachelor's Ignorance In Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno" ignorance appears to be an overwhelming theme. ... Due to the fact this story was written ten years before the Civil War, Melville makes bold statements in "Benito Cereno." ... Delano fails to recognize his self- centeredness until the conclusion of "Benito Cereno". ... "Benito Cereno" is told in third-person narrative form. ... Fortunately, in "Benito Cereno" Melville brought light on the dark subject of slavery....
In his novella, "Benito Cereno"," Herman Melville retraces the story of Amasa Delano, Captain of the Bachelor's Delight, and his encounter with a ship and her crew, both in poor condition. At this point of the story, Captain Delano does not know that the San Dominick, apparently led by Benito Cereno, has in fact undergone the rebellion of the black slaves on board, who now rule the ship. ... The ship is thus the place where "suspicious things " (l.11) happen and seems even haunted: the narrator mentions his "ghostly dread of Don Benito " (l.25), "phantoms " (l.28) and a crew "alleged to h...
Ridley Scott uses color to portray images in his works, similarly to how author Herman Melville employs the color grey in Benito Cereno to show the uncertainty and unclearness throughout Benito Cereno. Herman Melville begins Benito Cereno by describing the setting with everything shrouded under the color of gray which prevents the characters in the story from seeing the truth. ... Greyness when used in Benito Cereno represents the uncertainty in human nature. The climate of grayness in Benito Cereno foreshadows an undercurrent of danger and a warning of threats ahead. ... Melville utilizes a...
Herman Melville was born August, 1, 1819, in New York City. ... Herman Melville worked as a bank clerk before attending the Albany Classical School, and then worked for a short time as a teacher in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. ... Melville's most significant works outside of "Moby-Dick" include the short stories that he wrote during this time period, including "Bartleby the Scrivener" (1853) and "Benito Cereno" (1855). ... His short tales, "Bartleby" and "Benito Cereno," are carefully crafted and profoundly sensitive critiques of his own age that emerge as fables applicable to a later day...
The Piazza Tales, By Herman Melville The Six Lengthy Short Stories The book that I read was The Piazza Tales. These tales were six short stories that consisted of The Piazza,Bartleby, Benito Cereno, The Lightening-rod Man, The Encantadas, and The Bell Tower. ... The Gansevoorts were solid, stable, eminent, prosperous people; the (Herman's Father's side) Melvilles were somewhat less successful materially, possessing an unpredictable. erratic, mercurial strain. ... This was a sense of alienation the Herman Melville felt from his mother. ... The style of Herman Melville is a very unu...
