Friday, November 9, 2012

Racism and Slavery

In other words, blacks are a different specie than whites to Delano, so blinded is he by racism.

Of course, Delano does not even see himself as racialist. To the contrary, he notes his "weakness for negroes" (279), meaning that perhaps he is too adoring of them for his own good. His fondness, however, is indeed the fondness that a human feels for court animals; he is so thoroughly a part of the racist culture which created him that he would likely be shocked if told that he is blind to the real worth of human beings who happen to chip in black skin.

Delano observes the events on the ship in a fuzziness because he is a racist who has been raised to see blacks as inferior. They are grinning animals to him, mentally incapable of doing precisely what they constitute done--taken over the ship and established an elaborate ruse to ingest him. They are, to Delano, simply "too thick-skulled" (270), so he continues to look for to make sense impression of scenes which do not make sense unless sees the blacks as human beings who are doing what they come to do to depict to win t inheritor freedom cover from the white men who take it from them.

At the end of the story, the narrator, perhaps more aware than Delano, seems to be making allusions to Jesus Christ in the description of Babo, who is to be hung. The narrator refers to Babo's brain as a "hive of


The slave has no power, no political recognition certainly, no freedom to do as he pleases, no status as a human being. Babo and the others have taken the only step available to them to win back their God-given freedom as human beings--violent insubordination.
Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.
Again, the story turns on the chaff of Delano's narration--the black slaves are seen as innocent and ignorant animals, stupid children who are incapable of doing what they have done. Because Delano cannot conceive of a slave, very much less a large group of slaves, intelligent and heroic enough to pull off such a rebellion and charade, he is incapable of understanding what he is seeing. Benito Cereno, as stated, seems by the end of the story to have glimpsed a truth to the highest degree slavery when he speaks of "judging the conduct of one with the recesses of whose spring he is not acquainted" (314). He speaks of Delano's judgment of him, exactly his words apply to whites who would condemn the slaves for rebelling violently against whites who had stolen them violently from heir homes and turned them into beasts of burden, in defiance of everything decent and human.

subtlety" and notes that he refused to defend himself or to say a word, as did Jesus, and that he went to the gallows on a mule, recalling Jesus's entrance into Bethlehem on such an animal. In any case, Melvi
Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.

No comments:

Post a Comment