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sbenzell 's review for:
Benito Cereno
by Herman Melville
Good and surprising narrative about a (self-statsfiededly) ethical Yankee captain helping another ship adrift at sea, off the coast of Peru in 1799.
On its face the novalla is out of date in its racial politics. But I think there is a surprisingly modern reading underneath. The Yankee captain, though styling himself clever, good and 'saved' routinely fails to understand the situation he is entering. While certainly well intentioned, he is blind to issues that are outside his narrow range of ethical concerns (i.e. that slavery is bad). With Yankee forthrightness and a can-do attitude, he insinuates himself into the situation, (overcoming anxieties he labels as supernatural, romantic or paranoid) mucking things up further. The complex knot thrown at the captain by a Spanish sailor (and immediately ignored by the Yankee captain) could just as well represent the moral complexity of the situation as the practical mystery.
A great novella about blind-spots, both practical and ethical.
On its face the novalla is out of date in its racial politics. But I think there is a surprisingly modern reading underneath. The Yankee captain, though styling himself clever, good and 'saved' routinely fails to understand the situation he is entering. While certainly well intentioned, he is blind to issues that are outside his narrow range of ethical concerns (i.e. that slavery is bad). With Yankee forthrightness and a can-do attitude, he insinuates himself into the situation, (overcoming anxieties he labels as supernatural, romantic or paranoid) mucking things up further. The complex knot thrown at the captain by a Spanish sailor (and immediately ignored by the Yankee captain) could just as well represent the moral complexity of the situation as the practical mystery.
A great novella about blind-spots, both practical and ethical.