on
3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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English 45B
Rating: 4/5
Pages: 86
Started: Monday 22 April
Finished: Tuesday 23 April
Summary:
Benito Cereno tells the story of Amasa Delano, a ship's captain who decides to help the erratically sailing, worn-looking ship he spots off the coast of the small island he's restocking at. Upon boarding the boat, and finding a sickly Spanish captain with a strange relationship to the enslaved man acting as his manservant, Delano becomes increasingly suspicious.
Thoughts:
I enjoyed this story in a lot of ways. It felt like a fascinating blend of several of the other stories we've read so far. The sea adventure and encounter of the other felt Gulliver-esque, and the constant nagging suspicion the protagonist expressed felt like Poe-ish foreshadowing. The story as a whole, too, was reminiscent of "The Rime of the Ancient Marinere," with the sense eerie suspicion on a stranded ship. The generic blend was really cool to read, and made the story unique and immersive.
I also was a fan of the writing. The word choice and sheer volume of vocabulary was really impressive, and Melville used words to create precise and immersive images that read more like poetry than like prose. I'd heard horror stories about Moby Dick, and so was apprehensive about this story, but I was glad to be proved wrong in thinking the prose would be boring. The use of free indirect discourse was also a cool choice, since the reader, despite being told the story by an omniscient third-person narrator, was kept in the dark about what was really going on along Captain Delano--even if he was a really annoying protagonist for how many times he switched back and forth between thinking there was something strange going on, and convincing himself he was wrong.
I was horrified by the racism when I first read the story. The number of times that Delano compared enslaved Black people to animals was horrifying, and every word was steeped in racism to a degree where it oozed from the pages. My professor's explanation that the racism was a tactic used by Melville to communicate the ignorance of his protagonist was interesting, though. I am not sure I buy it; it seems distinctly possible that Melville was just racist and an uprising of enslaved people on a ship was the most frightening and gothic thing he could think of. I would be curious to hear a Critical Race Theory scholar's take on the was that the racism was framed by FID, though, because other aspects of this story are so intelligent that I'd like to think Melville had more going on than just bigotry in his depiction of Black people.
Quotes:
"Splenetic disrelish."
Words:
Evinced (v) to reveal the presence of (a quality or feeling)
Inveigled (v) to persuade someone to do something by means of deception or flattery
Apostatize (v) to totally abandon or reject one's religion
Conge (n) an unceremonious rejection or dismissal of someone
Jocose (adj) playful or humorous
Pecuniary (adj) concerning or involving money
Askance (adj) with an attitude or look of suspicion or disapproval
Deponent (n) an individual whose deposition is taken during a discovery process