In “Benito Cereno” a ship crew finds another crew on a sea torn vessel. For much of the story Delano and his men, the ones who found the distressed ship, are duped by slaves pretending to still be under their master’s control. The reader is right there with Delano, trying to take in clues and evaluate what the situation is on this strange boat. Many of the clues such as, “Suddenly, one of the black boys, enraged at a word dropped by one of his white companions, seized a knife, and though called to forbear by one of the oakum-pickers, struck the lad over the head, inflicting a gash from which blood flowed.”, pokes holes in both the illusion of control on the ship and the character of the blacks.
While it could be construed that Melville was sympathetic towards the abolition of slavery by his portrayal of the slaves being clever enough to hatch this plan or by showing that they are not bread for subservient living, I think he was pro slavery. It is easy to pick through the text now in retrospect and build a case for an anti slavery message, it is easier to read the story and see the blacks as violent captors and the bad guys of the story. Considering the time this was written, before the civil war, not many people viewed blacks as equals. Even many of those who didn’t believe in slavery still didn’t view blacks as equals. It is then hard to imagine that white America read this story and saw past the brutish portrayal of these black slaves. I think many took this as a warning as to what could happen if the grasp that held blacks in slavery was loosened.
No comments:
Post a Comment