Melville - Benito Cereno

The character of Captain Delano in Benito Cereno is relatively easy to associate with as a reader. He, like the reader, is an outsider to the Spainard's boat, and the thoughts going through the mind of the reader as the story progresses are supposed to be roughly the same as those that are going through Delano's mind. His observations and, almost as importantly, his thoughts are open to the reader, though the story is not exactly told from a first-person perspective. He is at times curious, skeptical, paranoid, satisfied, and mystified by Don Benito's story and the condition of the boat.

At the same time, pieces of information are hinted at by the narrative voice that Delano isn't aware of at the time that they are revealed to the reader. This happens several times early in the story as Delano is boarding the ship. One example is when Babo is first introduced. There is no dialogue, but rather Babo's name is spontaneously and unceremoniously revealed in the middle of a sentence: ". . . it was not without humane satisfaction that Captain Delano witnessed the steady good conduct of Babo." Eventually the story's perspective shifts closer to that of Delano and doesn't just summarize all of the dialogue but writes some of it out explicitly, though it's not an absolute transition.

One part that seemed particularly strange to me was a paragraph of Delano talking to himself, at the top of page 2695, beginning with "What, I, Amasa Delano - Jack of the Beach, as they called me when a lad . . ." This section is unusual from the start because long blocks of spoken words are so few in the story. At first I wasn't even sure if this was Delano talking to himself, because it seemed so out of place with the rest of the way the novel is written. Also, there are again facts that, instead of being specifically introduced, are just kind of thrown about in the middle of a sentence, such as his nickname and the memories from his childhood. It sounds partly like the reader, or perhaps the narrator, is talking to Delano to try to convince him that he's not in danger. It definitely is in the narrator's best interest for Delano to be calm, because it makes the end of the story that much more surprising.

The Raven

Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven is memorable for many different elements in its mood, images, and rhyming. One of the techniques Poe uses is extreme amounts of repetition, the simplest form being the raven's spoken word, 'Nevermore.' This shows the unavoidable desperation in the narrator, as he asks the raven over and over if things will ever get better in his life. This is just the icing on the cake, though, because Poe uses many other different kinds of repetition in many different ways in this poem.

The fourth and fifth lines end the same in every stanza, sometimes repeating up to the last six words (3rd stanza and 16th stanza). This helps to build tension within each stanza, as the last line is always shorter. This turns it into a kind of conclusion, as many stanzas build a climax with the narrator posing questions and the raven unhesitatingly rejecting them in the 6th line. Poe creates suspense within each stanza, building it up and bringing it back down.

The rhyming scheme is repetitive too, both within the context of each stanza and over the whole poem. The second, fourth, fifth and sixth lines end with a word that rhymes with 'door,' and Poe never lets off or changes this scheme. As the poem continues, it's like a nail is being driven home over and over, just as unrelenting as the raven itself.

Other techniques are used too, especially alliteration. Lines like "Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before," repeat the same sounds, and even the same words, over and over. Words are repeated multiple times in the same sentence for emphasis on several occasions. Poe repeats punctuation too: he uses five exclamation marks in the second to last stanza. All of these layers of repetition add up to create an unusual level of tension and make the poem that much more creepy. It seems like such a strange way to build up stress and drama in a poem, and it's definitely not something that is used often at the level Poe uses it, but somehow it works out.

The Group & Mercy Otis Warren

The Group by Mercy Otis Warren is technically a satirical play, though it was probably not performed when it was written. It turns out to be more like a dialogue or a series of speeches, as the physical setting is unimportant and there's no actual action or plot, or even a series of events. The characters just carry out discussions between themselves about their political views on the American Revolution.

While reading a particular passage spoken by Judge Meagre near the end, I noticed how the word 'noble' is used in two contrasting ways. The speech I'm referring to is the one we are going to focus on in class on Friday, beginning with "Let not thy soft timidty of heart" and ending with "Who would strike off the rebel neck at once." The first time it is used looks like this: "I hated Brutus for his noble stand Against the oppressors of his injured country." This time, the words have some satirical undertones. It wouldn't make sense for a person to criticize someone for being noble against oppressors. Rather, this seems more like Warren is showing that she thinks what Brutus did was noble, but the character of Meagre, who is a British supporter, hates him for being a revolutionary. This statement is a lot like several others from Meagre, who uses words like generous, utopian, virtue, and ideal to describe the revolutionaries all while going on about how much he hates them and wishes they would be stopped. The speaker in the play may be a Tory, but the actual opinion of the writer is definitely not that of a Tory.

The second place where Meagre uses the word 'noble' is when he's describing someone who could beat down and suppress the American rebels: "If we could keep our foothold in the stirrup, And, like the noble Claudia of old, Ride over the people, if they don't give way." This time, Meagre is talking about someone he agrees with and supports (in other words, exactly the opposite character of Brutus), but yet he uses the same word to describe both. I don't think the word is intended to have some kind of dual meaning, but rather it just shows how there are two speakers and two opinions at every point in the play: one is the character talking, and the other is the author, Warren.