"In 'Benito Cereno,' Melville retold these events with some significant changes. Omitting what Grandin calls 'Delano’s nearly yearlong hounding' of the Spaniard for what he considered his due compensation for the rescue, he emphasized Cereno’s lingering shock and Delano’s impenetrable insouciance. He focused on the leader of the slave rebellion, whose corpse, after his trial and hanging, was decapitated, with the head impaled on a spike in the main plaza of Lima so all could contemplate his 'voiceless end.'"
Andrew Delbanco in The New York Times reviews Greg Grandin’s Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment