Schiffman, Adler, and Kaplan argue that Melville wrote the story as a comment on slavery. Schiffman and Adler contend that Melville's novella is a clear indictment of slavery. Kaplan takes the opposite view. Joseph Schiffman, in his critical essay "Critical Problems in Melville's 'Benito Cereno,'" argues that Melville wrote the story from a staunch abolitionist viewpoint. He points to other Melville works to prove his assertion that the color imagery of "Benito Cereno" is reversed from traditional Western thinking of "White is good, Black is evil."
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New York: W. W. Norton, 1992. More, Thomas. Utopia. Robert M. Adams. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.
"Caliban." Caliban. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 1992.
West, Cornel. Race Matters. New York: Vintage, 1992. Wood, Joe, ed. Malcolm X: In Our Own Image.
Kermode, Frank. Introduction. The Tempest. By William Shakespeare. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958. xlii.
Confronting Colonialism in A Tempest A Tempest by Aime Cesaire is an attempt to confront and rewrite the idea of colonialism as presented in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. He is successful at this attempt by changing the point of view of the story. Cesaire transforms the characters and transposes the scenes to reveal Shakespeare’s Prospero as the exploitative European power and Caliban and Ariel as the exploited natives. Cesaire’s A Tempest is an effective response to Shakespeare’s The Tempest because he interprets it from the perspective of the colonized and raises a conflict with Shakespeare as an icon of the literary canon. In The Tempest by William Shakespeare one might argue that colonialism is a reoccurring theme throughout the play because of the slave-master relationship between Ariel and Caliban and Prospero.
By William Shakespeare. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958. xlii. Palmer, D. J. (Editor) The Tempest - A Selection of Critical Essays London: MacMillan Press Ltd., 1977. Shakespeare, William.
C.. Shakespearean Tragedy. New York: Penguin, 1991. Coles, Blanche. Shakespeare’s Four Giants. Rindge, New Hampshire: Richard Smith Publisher, 1957.
Works cited Adorno, Notes to Literature. vol. I. New York: Columbia UP, 1991. Benjamin, Walter.