Benito Cereno

Herman Melville wrote the 1855 novella Benito Cereno, a story about a revolt on a slaver ship, the San Dominick, off the coast of Chile in 1799. It is an adventure story which highlights the cruelty of slavery and the hopeless desperation that slaves experience. The tale begins when Captain Delano of the whaling ship Bachelor's Delight spots another ship approaching, floating listlessly with torn sails. Delano sends a boat to investigate, and a tale of horror unfolds about the mutiny on the San Dominick and the attempt of the mutineers to capture the Bachelor's Delight. An interesting feature of the novella is the way that Melville employs a third-person narrator to report Delano's opinions without any correction; on that account Benito Cereno has become a famous example of unreliable narration.

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