Essay about The Character of Captain Delano in Benito Cereno

In Zora Neale Hurston’s short story, Sweat, Delia finds herself stuck in an unbearable marriage. Her husband, Sykes, mistreats her, leaves all work to her, and is unfaithful. After being married to Sykes for 15 years, Delia has lost all hope in the marriage. The countless beatings and painful acts of Sykes have brought her over the edge. She is forced to go against her strict religious beliefs because of the life in which she has been leading since her matrimony to her husband. One passage that sums up many factions of Delia and Sykes’s relationship is as follows:

Olaudah Equiano 's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, is the story of the eponymous real-life character, Olaudah Equiano, his life, trials, tribulations and journey from slavery at an early age to freedom. For Equiano, it seems that slavery is almost a metaphysical phenomenon. His entire life is essentially characterized by the different experiences relating slavery, from Africa to the Middle Passage to plantation life in the West Indies and United States. Equiano’s views on slavery are tough to articulate and truly complex. Throughout the novel he makes reference to different ‘degrees of slavery,’ at times condemning the practice, and at other times contradicting

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.

Simms’s “Caloya” and Fredrick Douglass’s Narrative both utilize the antagonist characters, Mingo in “Caloya” and slave owners in Fredrick Douglass’s Narrative, to demonize the sexuality of the antagonists’ races; however, “Caloya” focuses on Mingo’s race and natural tendencies to represent black men as sex hungry and natural savages, while Narrative focuses on slave owners abuse of power and greed to represent white men as cruel, sex and money addicts. Throughout “Caloya”, Simms details Mingo’s life as a slave under Colonel Gillison and follows Mingo’s quest to woo a Native American Women. In Mingo’s quest to do so, readers become aware of his high sex drive, infidelity, and cunning nature. Additionally, Simms details the extent of which Colonel

The perspective the narrator uses is quite tricky as we witness events through Delano’s naïve eyes - who I might add is not entirely reliable due to his racist and paranoiac suspicion of Spanish conspiracy. Yet, when faced with the position of seeing it through Melville’s eyes, we are still unable to obtain an objective narrator of who is entirely distinguished from Delano. The narrator often seeks to humorously make a joke of Delano when not depicting the story through his own eyes, because of this, the meaning tends to change dramatically in the second reading since the audience now knows Babo is in control. This shifts the readers mindset as we perceive Delano treated more ironically. When analyzing the story once more, one notices the efficacy of Babo’s performance as Cereno’s servant as Delano even comes to admire him on several occasions for his so called “loyalty”. Every time Delano reels and falls into Babo's embrace, we assume it the embrace of death as Babo continuously hovers over Cereno like Death himself, threatening to take his life should he make one wrong

The implict rather than explict meaning of the word was Babo. The word used displays the relationship between Babo and captain Cereno. A shadow is a dark shape that always follows you around when light is blocked. Babo is the shadow that followed Cereno around. Cereno was the captain of the ship and everyone called him “master”, however Babo was the one who has complete authority which shows deceit in who has complete power on the San Dominick. Everything takes a turn when Delano realizes that there is something suspicious happening when a black slave wounds a Spanish boy. Delano doesn’t realize that Babo is the actual leader and blames Benito for the actions. Delano has deceit all throughout the book because he is tricked to believe all the lies about the captain and the slave

“At last when the ship we were in, had got in all her cargo, they made ready with many fearful noises, and we were all put under deck, so that we could not see how they managed the vessel. However, this disappointment was the least of my sorrow. The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time, and some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air; but now that the whole ship’s cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential. ” -(Olaudah Equiano) Equiano is preparing to bring you into his life during slavery. Equiano expressed one of many hard times that he had to face during his slave voyage throughout that quote. I chose that strong quote so that it would shine knowledge on those who are unsure of what was to come about the life of Equiano. This piece of literature stood out the most to me because it gave me a different view of slavery. This story allowed me to try and picture myself going through what Equiano had to face. It was hard trying to prepare myself because no one wants to imagine themselves going through the pain, neglect, beating, hunger, and etc. like the way he did. It made me realize this was told from a child’s point of view and that he showed different emotions from what I would have presented to others. This piece is relevant because this is someone’s personal life story or what I would call

Slaves were dehumanized by the constant terror they faced and their constant struggle for survival. They were tortured, starved, and shipped away from their families by white men of power. Babo understood the peril his people were in and showed no mercy to the crew of the San Dominick after he came into power. He instilled the same sense of fear and desperation in the remaining white men as they had done to the blacks. When it came to mercy, Babo showed none. He “successively killed eighteen men...who were sleeping upon deck,” threw men overboard, and requested that “the murder [of Aranda] be completed on the deck before

The ignorance of Captain Delano in Benito Cereno can be accredited to his racist convictions that guide his perception of the ship’s perilous situation. However, is Delano at fault for his racism? When rethinking the racism in Benito Cereno under the context of Althusser’s theories on ideology, racism is an ideology forcibly implemented on the subject through the social institution of slavery. Delano’s actions and thoughts throughout Benito Cereno prove that his racism is a result of a socially imposed ideology and challenge the modern ideals of racism that place the blame for racist attitudes entirely on the racist subject. Delano is the subject of a racist ideology and has been forced into that ideology through the social apparatus of slavery

Captain Delano is shown as a bit of dense character for his inability to see the truth of what happened on the San Dominick. When he meets Babo he is amused at how well he takes care of his master, Captain Cereno, he stays along side him linked by the arm. He even thinks to himself how great it is to have such slave that appears to be more of a friend or companion than a manservant ( Nixon 369). While aboard there are many things that Captain Delano sees which rise his suspicion, however he chooses to disregard or forget them as the story progresses. He sees a young slave boy hitting another young Spanish boy, to which he tells Captain Cereño hoping to get him to do something about the situation, but Captain Cereño dismisses the incident.(9, left column) In return Captain Delano also dismisses the incident and continues on with Captain Cereño. He gives all his trust to Captain Cereno, because to his belief and understanding

Captain Amasa Delano’s will to want to make a change to the suffering lifestyle of the men and women on the San Dominick is balanced between what he would dreams to happen and what will actually happen. He must strike a balance between his limitations and his hopes. He hopes that he can end everyone’s suffering and grief, but he must keep in mind the reality that no matter how much water, sails, and men he endows not everyone will be ecstatic. Captain Delano manages to maintain his dignity and remains respected by the other men because he does not go against his morals when he attempts to change the hopelessness of the people on the San Dominick. In Self Reliance, Ralph Emerson imagines a world in which everyone lives by the truth; therefore, people will begin to see the truth in others because: “It is easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak” (Emerson 11). This demonstrates that people need to be true to who they are, and to live their lives true to themselves, not trying to be someone they are not. Emerson then goes on to elaborate by explaining that if people change their perspective on life they will not longer see people for strong or weak, but see them for

He notice that Cereno was constantly followed by his young black slave Babo. When Delano ask Cereno about what happened to the ship, at first he did not want to answer but later he says that ship was then blown into the deep seas, where the wind suddenly died out, leaving the ship adrift and with little water. He also mention that the slave owner had let the slaves roam free on the deck during the conservation. Cereno ends in parsing Babo for controlling the slave and Delano also praise Babo for being good friend. Delano was a racist and thinks that black people are inferior and they cannot revolt to white.

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.

Before readers disembark with Delano on their San Dominick journey, they must understand that hatchet-wielding slaves, under slave leader Babo’s command, already executed the ship’s former owner, Don Alexandro Aranda. Correspondingly, Babo also proceeded to hold a number of Spanish officials on board the ship hostage as he commandeered the ship towards Senegal. So, because Cereno’s human cargo already took de facto control of the San Dominick, there was no way for him to effectively punish or care for them like a good patriarch might have done on a land-based colonial plantation. Then, after the slaves essentially took over the ship, they had the power to Cereno to dishonor patriarchal tradition in his unkempt appearance, indifferent mannerisms and weak rule of law. Through this forced dishonor, Babo and the slaves sought to distract Delano with Cereno’s exaggerated demeanor to gain further leadership of the vessel. As Delano reminded Cereno while Babo subjected Cereno to an uncomfortably close shave with a sharp razor, “it’s well it’s only I and not the King, that sees [the Spanish flag].” Here, Babo reversed situational domination to threaten his fallen master with the razor. In turn, he exploited Delano’s foreign naiveté to publicly shame the Spanish flag, and reinforce that traditional Spanish

In the first story, in Decameron, Ser Ciapelletto makes himslef out to have been a great and holy man in his last moments, although this was not the case. Ser Ciapellotto, who was about to die, confessed all of his sins to a holy friar, but this made him seem like a great man who had lived a virtuous life, when he was infact a wicked man. He deceived the friar, "Ser Ciappelletto, who had never been to confession, replied to him"( ). Because he deceived the friar, he was praised by many after his death. In the second story, Day 10, Story 10, The man deceived his wife by making her believe that he had sent for both of their children to be killed and then got rid of her to see if, no matter what happens, she would still try to please him and listen