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3.19 AVERAGE
3.19 AVERAGE
adventurous
informative
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
bro likes his nautical stories I'll tell you that
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I didn't really understand what was happening until the very end, and by that point, I was just too confused to care.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Slavery
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Summary: This fictional story, inspired by real events, centers on the interaction of a ship captain, Captain Delano, with a captain of another run-down slave ship that has just docked in the same harbor. At first, Delano notices nothing out of place on this ship, but, as the story progresses, there are glimpses of something more mysterious.
Not Melville's best, indeed. It is a somewhat passive story whose "pot-aux-roses" is fairly quickly predictable. Still, it never ceases to reveal itself to the detriment of the real story and the circumstances of the mutiny, about which we will not ultimately know much. But, once again, we remain in awe of Melville's ability to invent and tell such different human stories in a maritime and exotic context. Incidentally, I am surprised that some readers reject this book under the pretext of the systematic use of the word negro. Indeed, we must place it in the context of its time and its history, still largely imbued with colonialism, slavery, and racism. Who are the writers of this era who escaped this terrible apartheid? Mark Twain, maybe? Should we burn others for simply using a word considered - rightly - here and now as infamous?
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Silly me, thinking that a 19th century book about a slave revolt would be about anything except the white men surviving the brutal "negroes" that overtook the ship. For a short novel, this dragged for me. The first chunk of it is clearly meant to provoke intrigue, but I just had trouble getting attached to the various sailors and the narrators' cold, anthropological observations of slaves on the ship. And then the actual action of the story is introduced, it's all reported in a cold, recap of someone just reciting facts.