After reading the story, I can’t think the novella depicts enslavement in a negative or a positive light because the opinions of readers are different. From Babo’s perspective, the novella positively depicts enslavement, maybe from the perspective of Spaniard or white, the opinion is opposite of Babo. There are three main characteristics, who are capital Delano, a sick man Benito, and a black man Babo. Benito and Babo are masters and servants. I think I can’t evaluate whether the behavior of each of them is correct or not because they are doing what they should do. Babo organized the blacks in the ship to plan to fight for their freedom, they don’t want to be treated unequally. They just want to be the same as Spaniards and white. The only small dream in that time is ridiculous, in the eyes of white and Spanian, the blacks are inferior who have no right to say no and they should obey their commands. However, the result of Babo is to be executed. Benito is a good leader who treats people well. He tries his best to prevent the fighting, but he does not control it. In my opinion, the relationship between Benito and Babo is very good. So why do all white and black have a good relationship like Benito and Babo? Actually, the whites and the black can’t get along well with each other at that time. After several months of Babo execution, Benito also passed away. All in all, all discriminations and unequal treatments couldn’t exist at any time, everyone has equal rights and the same.
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Hi, I agree with you that it is not a hundred percent sure whether some things in the story were depicted in positive or negative. I think this topic is very comprehensive and it has many points of view. Slavery was a bad thing. There is no doubt about it. But did Delano the right thing? Should have Delano been more aware of all negative overlaps of slavery in general? Did that era even allow him to think in this way? All of these are questions that are, in my opinion, very hard to answer. Anyway, I like your post.