For the most part I really enjoyed "Benito Cereno". I feel as though I would have gotten frustrated with the book because it is a little slow moving in retrospect had I not already known that it was about a slave rebellion. Since the whole book is entitled "Two Slave Rebellions at Sea" we know, although it wasn't known when "Benito Cereno" was originally published, that a slave rebellion has to happen at some point. It was not long before one could infer that the slave rebellion had already happened.
While some seem to have found Captain Delano to be frustrating I found him quite entertaining. I particularly enjoyed the part when Delano thought that the ship was haunted; the line, “I to be murdered here at the ends of the earth, on board a haunted pirate-ship by a horrible Spaniard. Too nonsensical to think of!” (78), really made me laugh. I thought that Captain Delano was representative of how naïve New Englanders were at the time and still are now. Born and raised in Connecticut, I was very unaware of a lot of the problems that still exist today.
Furthermore, I really enjoyed how both “The Heroic Slave” and “Benito Cereno” were about slave rebellions on ships without narrating the rebellion as it happened. I thought both books provided a very unique perspective on the events and were creative in their delivery. I look forward to reading it again and catching things that I missed the first time around.
I’m from New England too! And I have to say I agree that I think Melville was trying to get his audience’s attention by giving them a character to relate to. I think that Delano was to also represent a simple character that was easy to follow, but provided a little bit of that “horror movie feeling” we were talking about in class. I.e you are watching his actions and in your mind screaming ‘No! No! don’t do that!!!!” On page 72 a clear example of this is when the two captains separate for a time on the deck and “there was a different between the idea of Don’ Benito’s darkly preordaining Captain Delano’s fate and Captain Delano lightly arranging Don Benito’s.” The reader is made to feel that there is something extremely sinister that lies ahead and our "dear hero" is about to walk directly into it. This also shows how oblivious Delano is to mysterious happenings on board the ship and how this naiveté supports the suspense of the book. A major portion of this book was to create suspense especially since in was printed in pieces, so Melville had to make the story as mysterious as possible to keep the reader enthralled.
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