Symbolism In Benito Cereno

Just when the reader had thought it couldn’t get worse for the troubled boy, he aches, “we were soon deprived of even the small comfort of weeping together.” Even after he shares with us that he has been thrown in a sack and basically deprived of his basic human rights, this was a new rock bottom for Equiano. No love, no shelter, no family. It’s the horrible details Equiano writes about that gives the reader mental images of him being torn from his family and village and sold into slavery with his sister in North America and West Indies.

In Herman Melville’s mysterious novella, “Benito Cereno”, Captain Amasa Delano observes, what appears to be, a distressed Spanish slave ship navigating into the harbor of St. Maria. Disregarding the opposition from his crew, Captain Delano leaves his ship, Bachelor's Delight, and approaches the foreign vessel, San Dominick, via a whaleboat. In addition to offering water and provisions to the vessel in distress, Captain Delano encounters—who appears to be in command of the vessel—Don Benito Cereno, and his “faithful” negro servant Babo. Throughout the novella, Captain Delano witnesses many suspicious behaviors from Benito Cereno, Babo, and the other slaves on board. Although Captain Delano has mixed feelings about Benito Cereno, in which he often views him as a “paper captain” who has “little of command but the name”, Captain Delano fails to latch onto his intuition of who is truly in command of the ship until it’s almost too late.

Equiano’s luck soon shifted when he was once again kidnapped and sold as a slave, this time he would have to endure the notoriously dreadful journey across the sea to America. Knowing that this was a pivotal point in his life and that he would become a gudgeon to the harshness of slavery, Equiano attempted to prepare himself for what lay ahead. However, the sight of the inhumane acts he witnessed on the African coast, while being transported, were new to Equiano and instilled fear into his consciousness.

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.

“Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men 's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact” (Lyndon B. Johnson). Frederick Douglas and Herman Melville lived in the same time for almost the same length of time. Herman Melville lived from August, 1819 – September 28, 1891, while Frederick Douglass lived from February, 1818 – February 20, 1895. Yet these two narratives couldn’t have been more different. While taking a look at the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas and Benito Cerano we can see these two insights of their world. I will be delving into how these two narratives show the condoning of racialized slavery, the endorsing of rebellion, and their individual perspectives. There is one thing that combines these two and that is their education. Education is what shifts the mind from the mind of a brute regardless of color to the level of where color and racism don’t exist.

Early American Literature reflects many conflicting differences in the presentation of slavery during that time period. Through the two chosen texts, the reader is presented with two different perspectives of slavery; Frederick Douglass’s narrative provides a look at a slave’s life through the eyes if a slave while Benito Cereno showcases the tale of a slave uprising from the viewpoint of the slave owner.. Benito Cereno’s work shows the stereotypical attitude towards African-American slaves and the immorality of that outlook according to Douglass’s narrative. Cereno portrays the typical white slave owner of his time, while Douglass’ narrative shows the thoughts of the slaves. The two stories together show that white Americans are oblivious to the ramifications and overall effects of slavery. These texts assist a moralistic purpose in trying to open up America’s eyes to the true nature of slavery by revealing it’s inhumanity and depicting the cruelty that was allowed.

His captors complexions, hair and language were different than any he had heard. Equiano saw many black people chained together. He fainted from the over powering horror and anguish. The black slave traders sold him. He was given liquor, which made him sick. Then the slave traders abandoned him and left the ship. When the white men offered him food, he refused and they beat him severely. The conditions on board were horrible. People died from the stench and filth. The white people described their land to Equiano and told him he would work there. The passage was suffocating and he prayed for death but could not escape.

The main argument of the book ‘The Sea-Wolf’ is about opposing behaviors of human being depicted by the role of nature in revealing the inner self of a person. In this regard, London uses two of his main characters to demonstrate the distinct opposing sides of human beings. The first part is about Humphrey, who is a young Dutch struggling with his demons and difficulties in the sea as he hope to change his life and those of fellow crews . Humphrey is initially weak, rich and naïve, and with straight morals . Humphrey believes on fairness, compassion, and all through the story despite being close to the evil Larsen he refuses to follow his footsteps .

The caramel rebozo is referred to a “Mexican shawl.” () Throughout the story, the one item that Soledad and Celaya admire so much is this Carmelo rebozo. This rebozo is one that Soledad’s mother was working on before she died. Her mother never got a chance to finish the shawl, but it was given to Soledad. Celaya always wanted the rebozo for herself, and when her father tries to buy her a silk shawl, the evil grandmother says that there is no way a girl like Celaya will ever appreciate such a beautiful shawl. But, when the grandmother passes away, the rebozo is passed down to Celaya, and she treasures this item just as her grandmother did. In the novel Caramelo, by Sandra Cisneros, Cisneros utilizes the symbols of the caramelo rebozo in order to signify destiny, truth and lies, and fights to show the family and its members’ relationships and traditions. Cisneros uses each of these significances in order to show multiple people and events describe a theme. The caramelo rebozo is one of the most important symbols of the novel. It not only ties itself to the theme of security, safety, and leadership, but also to the other symbols presented.

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.

Ghostly representations of “the other” imagine a social evil that has not been put to rest. These images reoccur in the Western canon, marking the persistence of slavery long after its abolition. Haunting, ghosts and skeletons in Benito Cereno act as a vehicle through which the suppressed return to the stage with a message. The ghosts carry with them all that the imperialists wanted to control, including emotions, and more precisely, the emotions of the oppressed. I argue that ghosts and skeletons comprise an area of tension in which the appearance of the “other” reveals that the dominant party’s control is incomplete. Yet, the presence is merely ghostly due to the constant policing and lack of respect for the Other. These ghosts also break through the boundaries of the dominant culture’s paradigms and identities (Harpham 17), signaling potential political crisis. This text signals the fear of the retaliation of the Other through ghostly representations by projecting on to the other, their own identities of brutality and irrationality. “Benito Cereno” by Herman Melville overturns the racist images of the colonized by relocating evil in the order of slavery. Hauntings carry the perspectives and powers of the slaves by preserving the dead amidst the living and the past amidst the present, they muddle up the concept of time and therefore defy the Western dream of complete control.

Herman Melville was born in New York in 1819 so he grew up in a time where slavery was still common and accepted, but in an area in which blacks were treated with much more respect than they were in the south. His father 's relatives could be traced back to a man who was a part of the Boston Tea Party and both his mother and father had relatives who fought with the union in the Revolutionary war (Johnson). Melville had many jobs growing up, including teaching, being a bank clerk, and sailing on a whaling ship, which is what jump started his writing career (Johnson). Many of the stories that Melville writes take place out on the sea and tend to be quite adventurous and unexpected, much like Benito Cereno. This style is more than likely

In Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda, Mr. Vincent, a slave-owning Creole, is an example of the racialized otherness in the novel. Because he is Creole, it is assumed that he has “moral flaws,” and even the narrator says he is “totally deficient” of reasoning (218). Unintentionally reflecting the bias of her time in Belinda, Maria Edgeworth portrays Mr. Vincent to be a morally deficient character simply because he is Creole, which results in his ruin.

of the practice (86). Adler does not accept Schiffman's color analysis. She contends that black

Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote is a masterpiece in many senses of the word: at the time of its conception, it was hailed as a revolutionary work of literature that defined a genre, in later centuries regarded as an acerbic social commentary, a slightly misshapen romantic tragedy, and even as a synthesis of existentialist and post-modernist features. At the centre of this Spanish satirical chronicle is the perplexing character Don Quixote. Don Quixote’s personality and perspective is rapidly established fromsince the beginning of the novel, revealing unabashedly to readers that he is mad. The source of his madness lies in the extent to which Don Quixote acts on his delusions and projections unto reality as he saunters through Cervantes’ Andalusia. Don Quixote’s delusions have two primary functions in the novel: demonstrating the reality and tragedy of Cervantes’ manifestation of idyllic themes of love and chivalry, and revealing certain characteristics about narration.