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Herman Melville

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Benito Cereno Paperback – November 6, 2012

by Herman Melville (Author)

4.2 97 ratings

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Benito Cereno is a story by Herman Melville that features some of the author’s most action packed storytelling presented in this new edition of the great classic.

Print length

86 pages
Language

English
Publication date

November 6, 2012
Dimensions

6 x 0.2 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1480255319
ISBN-13

978-1480255319
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Editorial Reviews

Review

''In our own time of terror and torture, Benito Cereno has emerged as the most salient of Melville's works: a tale of desperate men in the grip of a vengeful fury that those whom they hate cannot begin to understand.'' --Andrew Delbanco, author, Melville: His World and Work

''The noblest short story in American literature.'' --Edward J. O'Brien, American author and short-story anthologist

''Superficially, this is a story of slavery and mutiny on the high seas, but beneath the adventure-charged plot lies Melville's examination of that subject which so fascinated him: the confrontation of extreme forces of good and evil in the universe.'' --Masterpieces of World Literature

About the Author

HERMAN MELVILLE (1819-1891) was born in New York. Family hardships forced him to leave school for various occupations, including shipping as a cabin boy to Liverpool in 1839--a voyage that sparked his love for the sea. A shrewd social critic and philosopher in his fiction, he is considered an outstanding writer of the sea and a great stylist who mastered both realistic narrative and a rich, rhythmical prose.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (November 6, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 86 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1480255319
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1480255319
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.2 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #505,342 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #12,297 in Classic Literature & Fiction

Customer Reviews:
4.2 97 ratings

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Herman Melville

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The writing career of Herman Melville (1819 - 1891) peaked early, with his early novels, such as Typee becoming best sellers. By the mid-1850s his poularity declined sharply, and by the time he died he had been largely forgotten. Yet in time his novel Moby Dick came to be regarded as one of the finest works of American, and indeed world, literature, as was Billy Budd, which was not published until long after his death, in 1924.

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4.2 out of 5

97 global ratings

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RobC

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2016

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One of Melville's best. Though, this is an odd edition - not published by a recognizable publisher.

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2014

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Melville's character, Captain Delano is the flip side of his great Ahab character. For this alone, the book offers insights into the author's wide rage of human understanding. His Captain Delano is personable, good hearted, and fundamentally trustworthy and trustful of his fellow man. When he encounters a slave ship, under distress, his encounter with its captain, stresses the whole makeup of this good man. Melville the novelist is very clever in releasing information, which feeds Delano's skepticism about the story presented to him by Captain Cereno, but his own good nature suppresses his own doubts.

We are fed the story from Delano's eyes. This is a literary strategy which keeps the reader glued to each page of his novella. I won't spoil the outcome for the reader, but it's enough to say that there IS ONE...a dramatic one...and that Melville is interested here in human nature, and the process of human perception of information, and its consequences.

Now, the elevated language and sentence construction is of Melville's time, so it requires a bit to get one's self accustomed, but for me, it happened quickly, and is worth the effort. The issue of slavery, in different form, is still on our plate today as it was in Melville's. As such, Melville's treatment might seem a bit opaque for today's reader. Though the author is keen on displaying the humanity of everyone, a story on slavery was never the author's aim. But if one wants more, for a further accounting of the slave side of this story, I can recommend the comprehensive, The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World .

I would have wished for an introduction for this edition. An Introduction would have added to the perspective of the real life episode, which inspired Melville.

10 people found this helpful

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Debs

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2016

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Craziest book ever! Its a one sit read! Impossible to put it down!

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Groessler Fam

Less words, more mystery needed

Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2020

I don't understand why this was written in this style. Maybe because I was, but this made me feel like I was reading the book of a literary scholar with an extremely large vocabulary. That isn't enjoyable to me. It's a simple story that didn't require all the confusion of complicated descriptions. Why do that to your readers? More subtle clues could have been added instead of all the convoluted dialogue. It was a good story, but definitely not a pleasurable read. This was required reading for my literature class.

3 people found this helpful

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Brian lambaren

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2015

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Great book and great condition

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BobBill

Decent edition good copy

Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2015

Verified Purchase

Melville is Melville...

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Karl Janssen

Suspense on a slave ship

Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2021

Herman Melville’s novella Benito Cereno was first serialized in three issues of Putnam’s Monthly magazine in 1855. It was later included in Melville’s 1856 short story collection The Piazza Tales after being slightly revised. It is this latter version that I read. Melville loosely based his novella on actual historical events.

In 1799, Captain Amasa Delano (a real historical figure) of the American sealing ship Bachelor’s Delight anchors his ship in the bay of Santa Maria, on the coast of Chile. He notices the approach of a second ship moving in a peculiarly listless manner, as if in distress. To investigate, Delano boards the ship, named the San Dominick, and is met by its captain, a Spaniard named Benito Cereno. The ship’s primary cargo consists of over a hundred Black slaves, who are watched over by what appears to be an understaffed crew of whites. Unlike just about any slave ship I’ve ever heard of, the slaves are not chained up below but rather allowed to move freely about the deck. Delano, however, doesn’t seem to find this unusual. Cereno explains that a combination of bad weather and illness has reduced both crew and cargo. He needs food and fresh water to continue his journey to a safe and sizable port. Delano agrees to supply the San Dominick with provisions. He is troubled, however, by the odd behavior of Cereno, who exhibits poor social graces and a lack of gentlemanly breeding bordering on outright rudeness.

This novella is notable for its depiction of slavery and its questioning of white Americans’ attitudes towards the slave trade and African Americans. Melville’s narrative illuminates the arguments over slavery that would soon lead to the American Civil War. I have always been impressed by Melville’s lack of racism compared to other white writers of his era. Whether he’s describing the native islanders in Typee or characters such as Queequeg, Daggoo, and Pip in Moby-Dick, Melville consistently treats people of color with dignity and respect. In Benito Cereno, the African slaves are seen indirectly through the eyes and attitudes of Delano and Cereno, who often view the Blacks with fear and mistrust. Through plot details and third-person narration, however, Melville reveals his own sympathies towards the Africans who have been stolen from their homelands and subjugated by an oppressive system.

While the meanings and motives behind the novella may deserve praise and admiration, the narrative itself can make for a somewhat tedious and disappointing reading experience at times. Melville errs on the side of too much descriptive minutiae, calling to mind the more verbose writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Joseph Conrad. In the first half of Benito Cereno in particular, Melville repetitively emphasizes the “peculiar” behavior of the title character, describing every twitch, blink, and bead of sweat until the plot positively crawls.

The second half of the story is a marked improvement in pacing. The whole plot trajectory, however, seems intended to deliver a climactic surprise, but I could see it coming from the very beginning. Perhaps it was Melville’s intention that the reader would always be two steps ahead of Delano in solving the riddle of Benito Cereno’s unusual behavior, but if so it considerably lessens the impact of the plot’s eventual revelations. Other than Moby-Dick, Benito Cereno may be the Melville work that has received the most acclaim from critics and literary scholars. This may have much to do with its historical commentary and Melville’s enlightened views on race. Judging by storytelling alone, however, I didn’t find this novella as compelling as Moby-Dick, Typee, or Bartleby, the Scrivener.

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