Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.19 AVERAGE
3.19 AVERAGE
God damnit, Melville has a hard dick for ships and stuff. And, God damnit, he gave me one, too.
This was a boring book. It was short but I feel that I was reading a 1,000-page book. Its a book that you have a slight notion of what will happen next and thus just want to reach the climax. But the climax happened to far down the book. This book made me so sleepy I almost did not want to finish it.
challenging
dark
funny
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The problem with Melville is that you need a scholar next to you reading the work with you. By itself, Benito Cerrito is boring, racist and hard to read, but with a scholar, it becomes an interesting work showing the perils of slave trade and the cunning of the underestimated.
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
"So far may even the best man err, in judging the conduct of one with the recesses of whose condition he is not acquainted. But you were forced to it; and you were in time undeceived. Would that, in both respects, it was so ever, and with all men."
I'm pretty sure the quote above summarizes Benito Cereno effectively. Let me try to explain ...
It's ironic that a slave's humanity is revealed and understood only after a seemingly inhumane and violent act of rebellion. I say seemingly because it's a matter of perspective. For Delano and Benito Cereno, the slaves' rebellion and defiant act is barbaric and brutal and unwarranted. But so is slavery, and so, from the perspective of the oppressed/enslaved, resistance is no longer an inhumane act, but, rather, a biological imperative that affirms the resister's humanity.
It's also ironic that a character like Babo can uphold and exhibit racial stereotypes and, in doing so, subvert them and completely destroy their validity. By acting and performing the stereotypes, Babo effectively fools Delano, thereby not only proving that he possesses the intelligence and cleverness to outwit the "superior" white men, but that he is also much more complex and nuanced than the animals he's compared to. And of course he is. He's not an animal. He's a human being whose intellect is much more terrifying than his meek, diminutive stature because it completely disproves the underlying assumption that morally absolves people from dehumanizing, enslaving, brutalizing, and murdering other humans beings: the assumption being that these slaves aren't human at all but are merely slightly more evolved animals.
So the quote above, initially spoken by Benito Cereno to Delano, has a double meaning: it's about Delano's snap judgement of Benito, but it's equally about his widely-believed assumptions about the slaves and what he believes are inferior races in general. So the story ends up really being a metaphor for a universal tendency to stereotype and assume things about people we know nothing about. It's reductionist when I write it out like that, but I'm pretty convinced this is the point Melville's getting at. Maybe.
Anyway, aside from the powerful message he conveys, Melville also does some pretty innovative stuff structurally: multiple POVs (of course, purposely omitting the most important one, thereby making a powerful point about the silencing of narratives), narrative shifts (e.g. slipping into Free Indirect Discourse from traditional 3rd person), narrator/authorial interjections (narrator often breaking the fourth wall). Also, heavy religious symbolism (of course!).
Definitely worth a read.
I'm pretty sure the quote above summarizes Benito Cereno effectively. Let me try to explain ...
It's ironic that a slave's humanity is revealed and understood only after a seemingly inhumane and violent act of rebellion. I say seemingly because it's a matter of perspective. For Delano and Benito Cereno, the slaves' rebellion and defiant act is barbaric and brutal and unwarranted. But so is slavery, and so, from the perspective of the oppressed/enslaved, resistance is no longer an inhumane act, but, rather, a biological imperative that affirms the resister's humanity.
It's also ironic that a character like Babo can uphold and exhibit racial stereotypes and, in doing so, subvert them and completely destroy their validity. By acting and performing the stereotypes, Babo effectively fools Delano, thereby not only proving that he possesses the intelligence and cleverness to outwit the "superior" white men, but that he is also much more complex and nuanced than the animals he's compared to. And of course he is. He's not an animal. He's a human being whose intellect is much more terrifying than his meek, diminutive stature because it completely disproves the underlying assumption that morally absolves people from dehumanizing, enslaving, brutalizing, and murdering other humans beings: the assumption being that these slaves aren't human at all but are merely slightly more evolved animals.
So the quote above, initially spoken by Benito Cereno to Delano, has a double meaning: it's about Delano's snap judgement of Benito, but it's equally about his widely-believed assumptions about the slaves and what he believes are inferior races in general. So the story ends up really being a metaphor for a universal tendency to stereotype and assume things about people we know nothing about. It's reductionist when I write it out like that, but I'm pretty convinced this is the point Melville's getting at. Maybe.
Anyway, aside from the powerful message he conveys, Melville also does some pretty innovative stuff structurally: multiple POVs (of course, purposely omitting the most important one, thereby making a powerful point about the silencing of narratives), narrative shifts (e.g. slipping into Free Indirect Discourse from traditional 3rd person), narrator/authorial interjections (narrator often breaking the fourth wall). Also, heavy religious symbolism (of course!).
Definitely worth a read.
Masterfully-written and haunting -- a lament over how we cannot, when all is said and done, ever truly understand the thoughts of another, and a deep undermining of authority.
To paraphrase a girl from my lit class: "if I didn't know this was written by Melville, I would think the author sucked."
Yeah, Melville's writing style was not for me. Did have some good snippets but for the most part did not find pleasure in reading this at all
Yeah, Melville's writing style was not for me. Did have some good snippets but for the most part did not find pleasure in reading this at all
no comments. Just that if I didn't have to read this for uni there's no way in hell I would finish it.