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Analysis Of The Poem ' Captain Delano ' Essay

Decent Essays

Zaria Jack
Professor Maresca
Global Literature
October 13th, 2016
“The morning was one peculiar to that coast. Everything was mute and calm; everything grey. The sea, though undulated into long roods of swells, seemed fixed, and was sleeked at the surface like waved lead that has cooled and set in the smelter’s mould. The sky seemed a grey mantle. Flights of troubled grey fowl, kith and kin with flights of troubled gray vapors among which they were mixed, skimmed low and fitfully over the waters, as swallows over meadows before storms. Shadows present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to come.” At this point of the novel Captain Delano is sailing his ship The Bachelor’s Delight. While the boat is anchored, the crew spots a large foreign ship at sea with torn sails that is simply floating in the water. Delano decides to send a boat over to investigate and this is where he meets Benito Cereno and a boat filled with individuals who clearly showed signs of suffering. The quote above turned out to hint to a big part of what was to come in the novel. The lack of control and leadership and obliviousness are themes in the story that led to Benito Cereno’s self-deception and downfall of his crew and Babo’s success. Additionally, this novel tells a story that was quite similar to that of the Haitian Revolution that occurred in Saint Dominique (Haiti). Babo quite smartly uses Cereno’s lack of control and leadership on the boat to aid in his organization of the slave revolt.

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