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melville
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Below is one of our free research papers on melville. If the term paper below is not exactly what you're looking for, you can search our essay database for other topics.
The protagonist of a story is usually the main character acting as a hero whom the readers feel empathy toward. In Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, the three main characters are captain Asama Delano, captain Benito Cereno and the black slave Babo. However, while there are some hero qualities such as leadership, strong will, courage, intelligence and kindness displayed among those three, in my opinion, it is not possible to clearly identify a protagonist in Benito Cereno. This serves Herman Melville’s intention of hiding his stand and at the same time making his the readers contemplate about stereotype of races, slavery and using the character to symbolize for the society at that time
The first character introduced in Benito Cereno is captain Asama Delano and it is through his narrative that we learn about what happen in the story. He is an honest, trusting and kind person, which is shown when he generously helps the strangers on the San Dominick. However, he is very racist which consequently prevent him from seeing the truth. Captain Delano is nice to blacks but he does not really consider them as human being. He often categorizes the black slaves with animal and assumes that they are ill, weak and stupid. Captain Delano’s view also represents the view of white people on blacks at that time. And because that stereotype does not always true, all of his judgments turn out to be wrong. He is totally fooled by the black slaves whom he considers stupid, loyal and submissive serva...
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