Captain Delano And Benito Cereno Analysis

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Melville has an interesting way of conveying his ideas about slavery into Benito Cereno. One way in which he does so is through Captain Delano. Throughout a good portion of the story Delano is incapable of discovering the truth. Most specifically, about the situation that lay in front of him on the St. Dominic. Delano cannot even conceive of the idea that the slaves on board the ship were in the driver’s seat, as far as power is concerned. For instance, after Cereno gives the background story concerning the ship, Delano claims, “the Spaniard 's manner while telling the story. There was a gloomy hesitancy and subterfuge about it” (Melville 1145). His suspicion always lies with the Spaniards. In fact, it took Delano nearly the whole story to …show more content…

Melville has made Delano out to be a replica of a white male of a nineteenth century new world. One critic discusses this idea by making the claim that Delano, “is seen as representative of New World Man: democratic, compassionate, generous, capable of decisive action, although blind to evil and unable to learn from his experience (Hopkins 682). The important thing to focus on here is that Delano is “blind to evil, and unable to learn from his experience” (Hopkins 682). But why is he blind to evil? Most simply, he is blind to evil because of his own evil tendency to be racist. Yellin makes a suggestion that “racism prevents an educated mind from realizing the obvious” (Yellin ??). To reiterate, for the story, this means Delano is ignorant to the goings on, because of his racist tendency. For the bigger picture, Melville is saying the men of the nineteenth century are racist, and because of that are blind to any sort of uprising, on the part of the slaves. Delano nearly gets insight, when he questions, “Could then Don Benito be any way in complicity with the blacks”? (Melville 1151), His answer, No, “they were too stupid” (Melville …show more content…

The passage claims “like delirious black dervishes, the six Ashantees danced on the poop” (Melville, 1169). Why would they dance when they know that they have lost? Well, they might have been dancing because Melville wished to give them one sort of final hurrah for all they have accomplished. In a way, it can be thought of as one final victory, for the once had been slaves. Melville did not want them to go down and out without a final celebration. If Melville had been pro-slavery, he wouldn’t have given them this dance of

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