Essay on Importance of Setting in Benito Cereno

The black slaves resisted and tried to run away they wouldn’t give up. Even though there was laws in trying to stop the blacks from running away, they still ran away. There were laws made that if anyone were to find black slave they should do to them what they feel be appropriate. Man slaves were killed or burnt in the book there was a case were a black slave was burnt in a slow fire for 8-10 hours. In some cases both white and black slaves ran way together but the punishment wouldn’t be the same white would only extend there period of serving as slaves and the black salves were hanged or killed. Even then they could see racism how the whites that committed the same crime would get treated differently then the black slaves. The black salves couldn’t do anything besides being slaves, so thought the white people. Even the white servants were treated different, not only were they working for a set period of time, but they were treated as humans and they had rights, and would receive land and pay at the end of their term. The white people justified their own slave trade because in Africa slavery existed too. This was

     He led many expeditions into South America. Most were unsuccessful because they met many hostile tribes and he didn’t have

Every Story has geography, no matter if it is set in outer space or revolutionary France there is always geography and it will steer the course and structure of its story. When telling a story of a grand adventure and its obstacles it would not completely be based in a jail cell, or even a story of a poet’s uprising wouldn’t be set in prehistoric times where literacy has not even been thought of. If a story is to be told right it must be placed right. Questions about a story of who, what, how, when, are not as important as the question of where. Writers use geography to compose stories through pre existing thoughts and influences of those areas to develop their text, select characters in The Crucible develop in response to the geography and setting, and finally geography has an influence on me because it shapes our opinion and generally accepted actions.

El Rincon Del Mundo: The Spanish believed that California was the place of great mystery and perhaps even paradise. Before the eighteenth century it was too far north from the Spanish that they thought it might be at the edge at the world. At one point the even thought it might had been an island ruled by Calafia, an Amazon Queen.

Captain Delano is a benevolent racist. He does not hate blacks people or the slaves; he rather likes them. However, he likes them for absolutely degrading reasons. He thinks of Babo, for instance, to be a childish slave of limited intelligence. Melville writes that Delano takes to blacks "not philanthropically, but genially, just as other men to Newfoundland dogs.

At the end of the 1800, Spain had lost almost all of their new world land except Cuba and Puerto Rico. Many Cubans did not want to be under the rule of Spain, so they would leave Cuba and fee to Florida to escape the Spaniard oppression. They would run to Florida Keys or to

This way, the reader becomes aware of these actions and is informed of their effects, but does not

Although there were many hints that Melville was spinning a web of deceit in the novella, the quote that best captures the most crucial clue in the text is Captain Delano witnessing Babo attempting to stab Benito Cereno: “Glancing down at his feet, Captain Delano saw the freed hand of the servant aiming with a second dagger—a small one, before concealed in his wool—with this he

“The Book of Negroes is a master piece, daring and impressive in its geographic, historical and human reach, convincing in its narrative art and detail, necessary for imagining the real beyond the traces left by history.” I completely agree with The Globe and Mail’s interpretation of this story. One could almost see the desolate conditions of the slave boats and feel the pain of every person brought into slavery. Lawrence Hill created a compelling story that depicts the hard ships, emotional turmoil and bravery when he wrote The Book of Negroes.

That is probably due to his past working on the sea. Herman had a life experience that would shape the rest of it forever. He went through troubling times and persevered. Herman Melville experienced life changing things, created several famous books, and gave several lectures in his later years.(“Herman Melville”, 2015).

The works of Herman Melville and Frederick Douglass are both centered on the topic of slavery. Although both texts are similar in the sense that they focus directly on the theme of slavery, the functions of each work differ drastically. The differences in the works stem from both the style of the text, and the way that this style functions in accordance with the reader. Although Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno is drawn from an actual event, Melville embellishes and alters the event in the style of prose. The prose style used by Melville invites the reader to question the story while understanding that the majority of the work is fictional. The confusion of Captain Delano is brought onto the reader, and therefore engages the reader because of the limited point of view the story is told in. Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass tells of actual events that occurred using twentieth and twenty-first century plain style. This style of writing does not ask the reader to question what he is saying, but feel his emotions as they read the narrative. Although readers may understand both works to be stories about slavery written differently in terms of style, I argue that the way the texts are written sets up the readers interpretation of them. Melville and Douglass differ because Melville’s work invites the reader to think, whereas Douglass’s work invites the reader to feel.

Captain Amasa Delano is an interesting embodiment of white complacency about slavery and it's perpetuation. Delano is a human metaphor for white sentiment of the time. His deepest sensibilities of order and hierarchy make it impossible for him to see the realities of slavery. Delano's blindness to the mutiny is a metaphor for his blindness to the moral depravity of slavery. The examination of Captain Delano's views of nature, beauty, and humanity, allow us to see his often confusing system of hierarchical order which cripples his ability to see the mutiny and the injustice of slavery.

A major example of the grayness in this story is in this excerpt: "The morning was one peculiar to that coast. Everything was mute and calm; everything gray. 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 gray surtout. Flights of troubled gray 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 (Melville)." Captain Delano believed that blacks were kind-hearted and humble people and may have had good intentions, but he still found nothing wrong with the slaves aboard the San Dominick. He even thought Babo as an ideal servant for Captain Cereno, saying he was submissive, yet happy (Richards). Delano may have good thoughts about the slaves he still believes nothing is wrong with the idea of them and that kind of thinking settles more on the bad side of things. While Benito Cereno and Babo on the other hand are what really create the gray in the story. Benito Cereno was a captain of a slave ship, so there was no question that he was in favor of slavery also considering that he had a personal slave servant. Babo was a slave on this ship, he was enslaved, like all the other slaves, for no reason other than that the whites thought they

He does not find them capable until the ending of the story when he sees Babo and the others in action. Interesting enough Putnam's Monthly had taken a radical change against slavery publishing works to not necessarily strike fear into slave owners, but to express power slaves hold hidden ( Yellen 679). It is also suggested that the text stereotypes the abolitionists belief of the slaves to be docile and harmless so to speak ( Welsh 556)

He argues that Melville wrote a moral tale, not an abolitionist story. At the end of the essay, Schiffman contradicts himself by proclaiming that Babo's head being "unabashed" as Benito Cereno, the slave trader, "follow[s] his leader" is an indictment of slavery.