Malicious Babo
Benito Cereno is a short novel written by Melville, with a surprise ending. At least it was quite a surprise that Babo, the negro servant of Cereno, ends up being the one in charge of the ship. Babo fought for his freedom, which is good, but Babo went above and beyond the means necessary to get his freedom. Along with that he has much more serious problems with himself. Here are some ways to see it. There are two ways to look at what Babo did. When he was fighting for his freedom he was either fighting for his life or for his quality of life. Babo was fighting for a cause that is unjustifiable after the actions that he committed. Babo was fighting for his quality of life and what Babo did to improve his quality of life was terrible and with malicious intent. Yet, there is always another side to an argument so first I will show the way Babo could be seen as a symbol of good. These concepts, life versus quality of life and how Babo is seen as both good and evil, I will clarify in the paragraphs that follow.
Babo could be considered a good leader
Babo could also be considered a genius
Another good quality of Babo is his will to live
Fighting for your life is when you are in danger of losing your life. Babo was never in danger of losing his life before he took over Cerenos' ship. Babo didn't like the situation that he was in. So yes, do something about being a slave but there is no need to kill anyone. Babo could have remained on the ship, been sold into slavery and then reposes his freedom much like how Fredrick Douglass attained his. Fredrick Douglass got out of slavery without a single life lost. If Babo had done what he was told to do, Babos' head wouldn't be on a stick right now. Babo would b...
... middle of paper ...
... to steal his ship. Another trait of Babo is that he is a selfish human being. He tries to get what he wants all the time. Babo forces his way of thinking onto his fellow slaves by telling them what to do. If you put these qualities together in one person you will get something bad. Actually to be specific you will get an unethical, dictating liar that rules in such a way that he will get the most personal gain.
In conclusion, Babos' actions can speak for themselves. He took fighting for his life over the top, to the point where he became a malicious, gruesome, savage beast that fought to improve his life without taking into consideration the lives of others. He was willing to stop at nothing to get what he wanted. This included murdering and stealing his way to the top where he thought nobody would be able to stop him. I think Babo is where he needs to be.
Throughout the book we watch the narrator, Scout Finch, go from a naive first grader that think Maycomb is the best place out there, to finally maturing and understanding the world around her. Throughout the book Scout is impressioned by so many people that Boo Radley is a monster that should be kept in at all times. Later we learn he isn’t, but one of the first impressions we get from him is a brute
The “Dark Tide” by Stephen Puleo was the first book to tell the full story of “The Great Boston Molasses Flood.” The reason he wrote the nonfiction novel was to give the full accounting of what happened in the historical context. He used court records, newspaper accounts, and files from the fire department. He recrafted the tale about what actually happened with painstaking and terrifying details of those affected. Puleo creates a new way to view the dreadful catastrophe as something that changed Boston (“Dark Tide”).
The food contains meat which were contaminated with tuberculosis. Nearly half of the males in the troop died. However, Dr. Sapolsky found out that baboons who died were aggressive and were not socially connected. For example, all the hostile alpha male was dead. The ones who survived were the kind males and females which changed the atmosphere of the tribe. When the new aggressive male baboons joined the tribe, it normally takes them six months to learn the new norm of the Keekorok
Slave rebellions are the common topic of the two stories. Melville plays with the anxiety whites had of such and Douglass of its possibility to elevate slaves out of their misery. If paraphrased, the end of chapter X in Douglass’s Narrative serves as a perfect illustration of this: Douglass describes his Master Hugh seizing the money Douglass had earned; “not because he [Hugh] earned it, - not because he had any hand in earning it … but solely because he had the power to compel me to give it up.” Exchange ‘money’ with ‘liberty’ and Babo’s right to revolution as that “of the grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas”, becomes as right as the white man’s enslavement of blacks. In understanding this, Babo turns into a true hero – albeit a literate one – on a level with Nat Turner, Madison Washington and others. His quest for freedom and his struggle to achieve it deserves to be remembered, just as Douglass is remembered today.
Both the “character” of Frederick Douglass in Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and the character of Babo in Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno are, among many things, a tale of heroism. Although there are clear distinctions between Douglass’s autobiography and abolitionist work and Cereno’s fictional work -specifically in terms of how they resisted slavery and to what extent they were successful- both protagonists use their intelligence and strength to overcome their white masters and a society that has subordinated them.
For one, South America is a far off and removed place from the hot bed of political issues regarding the slaves in the United States. Keeping in mind that Melville was writing a short story and selling it to an audience that was both pro- and anti- slavery, by placing the ship in South America, he was able to escape from taking a strong political stance. His choice of setting limits the numerous outcomes of the revolt on San Dominick. In other words, had he placed the ship on an island off the United States, the trial would be influenced by that state's laws. In this way, the story is less biased to any laws governing the states. The trial takes place in Lima, Peru. Because Babo keeps silent, the depositions of ...
In Melville's Moby-Dick, or The Whale, Ahab calls himself "madness maddened" and across the oceans he unleashes his madness in an unerring quest to wreak his hate upon the white whale, that agent or principal of the "inscrutable malignancy" lurking behind the phenomenal world. Milder asserts that by making Ahab mad, Melville found the means to present an apocalyptic act of a hero, free of the constraints of realism, that might express the disillusionment of the cultural moment that had witnessed the end of religion, the frustration of the Romantic quest, and the end of the possibility for spiritual meaning in the universe. Thus, Ahab is rendered believable. But by making Ahab mad, he risked rendering him irrelevant. For Ahab to remain important for the reader, he must not be reduced to mere madness. Once he speaks only for the aberrant, one need no longer grapple with him, need not account for Ahab. We dismiss Calibans, Pucks, even Iagos, but we cannot easily dismiss Lear and McBeth and Hamlet or Ahab. The madman and the possessed can be exiled from our affinities as wholly "other," such that one inscribes their behavior in a circle of experience separate from our own, for unless by some event beyond our control we ourselves become monsters or madmen, the madman's reality remains sufficiently and safely different from our own. To attempt to account for Ahab, one must acknowledge his reality as a possible reality and admit the potential for the Ahabian in one's own possible reality.
“The Jungle,” written by Upton Sinclair in 1906, describes how the life and challenges of immigrants in the United States affected their emotional and physical state, as well as relationships with others. The working class was contrasted to wealthy and powerful individuals who controlled numerous industries and activities in the community. The world was always divided into these two categories of people, those controlling the world and holding the majority of the power, and those being subjected to them. Sinclair succeeded to show this social gap by using the example of the meatpacking industry. He explained the terrible and unsafe working conditions workers in the US were subjected to and the increasing rate of corruption, which created the feeling of hopelessness among the working class.
Wendy Galeas Professor Geddes The Study of Literature: Essay 2 April 9, 2015 In Herman Melville’s work “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street”, the idea of a capitalist agenda is intentionally reinforced. This short work tells the story of a lawyer on Wall-Street and those of his employees, but he is particularly fascinated by Bartleby. Bartleby at first a hard worker who divulged tirelessly in his job as a law-copyist begins to “ prefer not” to do what is asked of him.
Captain Delano's attitude towards his slaves could be called humane, but not human or humanitarian. He classified them with animals, and talked about them as if they were a wildlife documentary. He put arbitrary values on them, and Babo in particular whom he named a sum for. (p. 60-61) We see Delano's attitude towards blacks concentrated in his comment on Babo's conduct.
The Captain of the HMS Bounty was William Bligh. He was very strict in his actions and in his punishment. He followed the “Articles of War” like the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church followed the Bible. When they were in port the Captain was very courteous and polite to everyone on the ship. He treated everyone equally and didn’t abuse his rank. That soon changed as the ship set out for the open seas and Tahiti. The crew started to challenge the Captain and he punished each person that defied him. Many of his actions were unjustifiable and should in turn be pu...
Herman Melville fills “Benito Cereno” with a perspective of classical America and uses a full spectrum of literary devices to criticize Captain Delano’s representation of 19th Century America. Melville indicates a plenty of detail, mostly visual and reflecting, to prepare for the fantastic revelation of Don Benito's confinement and the proved ignorance of Captain Delano. The rhetorical questions, imagery, and metaphors in “Benito Cereno” are crucial to the comparing of Captain Delano to the 19th Century America.
In the beginning of the story the reader is told that Boo is a very bad person. Multiple people say how bad of a person he is but the reader is not given much information about him. Calpurnia whispers, “‘There goes the meanest man ever God blew breath into’” (15). They say he is the meanest man to walk this earth, but they do not even know him. They just heard rumors about him. Towards the end of the novel he finally shows himself. He helps the kids without doing any harm. By the end of the book, the reader realizes that Boo is a good person and has no evil within him. He is in the bedroom with them because he is the one that saved them. He helps save Scout’s life but fails to save Jem’s. Lee writes, “Boo had drifted to a corner of the room, where he stood with his chin up, peering from a distance at Jem” (372). He went from being known as a nightmare to a hero in just a few
Covey enjoyed the most unbounded reputation for being a first-rate overseer and negro-breaker. It was of considerable importance to him.” What i'm saying is that Frederick Douglass means by all of this that happened that you have to take risk and is better fighting for what is right because he didn't take all the poop that Mr.Covey was doing.One more thing about how it changed frederick douglass life is that he did not change his life but other slaves as well because thanks to him he got to get his freedom.His life did not change by fighting Mr.Covey because violence is not the answer and that stayed on his permanent record.Frederick Douglass instead of fighting Mr.Covey he probably should've just ask why is he doing this,he could of ask for help or he could of pushed him and ran away to some free place where they don't accept slavery.I also don't think that he shouldn't of bought corvey because what happened if he hunted him down and killed him or whooped him that was a really risky move of frederick