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Veining and Fleshing Veining and Fleshing
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A Skeleton of Actual Reality A Skeleton of Actual Reality
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Unbuilding Allegory Unbuilding Allegory
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Unbuilding Fiction Unbuilding Fiction
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Two “Some Things Which Could Never Have Happened”
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Published:March 2016
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Abstract
The numerous interpretations of Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno show a sharp divide between nervousness about the apparent racism of its representation of rebelling slaves (inferred from its emphasis on their violence, which includes an insinuation of cannibalism) and the belief that the story challenges us to cultivate sympathy for their plight. The chapter argues that this hermeneutic controversy ignores the tale’s central feature, the main embellishment Melville added to his source: the skeleton of the slave owner placed on the prow of the ship and covered throughout most of the action. The introduction of this device transforms the narrative into a dramatization of a fundamental American contradiction noted by Tocqueville, between the “sympathy” that pervades exchanges between people of all social levels and the “cruelty” with which Americans treat their slaves. Melville’s gesture converts democratizing “sympathy” itself into cruelty, by exposing its racialized basis.
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