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Benito Cerreno Allusions

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Aluel Mayen Mr. Mason Making/Remaking Race 2 June 2024. Reasons for why The Black Tom ballad is a clear allusion to Benito Cereno. Victor LaValle’s thorough and purposeful allusions to Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno in The Ballad of Black Tom enhance the novel’s themes and intensify its condemnation of racism. Benito Cereno is not a well-known author, but his investigations into slavery, racial power relations, and the nature of perception are highly relevant to Lavalle’s themes. LaValle adds a layer of significance to highlight the enduring and pernicious nature of racism in the historical background of racial oppression. Between both novels, similarities and themes can be traced to one another. Benito Cereno is a tale of a Spanish ship …show more content…

In Benito Cereno, Delano's blindness to the truth about the circumstances aboard the ship is a reflection of a larger cultural ignorance about the actual circumstances and experiences of those on the margins. Similar to this, the white characters in The Ballad of Black Tom frequently overlook or deny the institutionalized racism that exists in their society. This analogy emphasizes how persistent the problems of society's ignorance and the unwillingness to acknowledge or comprehend the suffering of the oppressed are. LaValle challenges readers to address these blind spots in their own views through the use of this intertextual reference. For example, “People who move to New York always make the same mistake. They can’t see the place. They look at the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the FDR Drive–everything big and famous. They miss the whole thing.” () This phrase exposes Melville’s subject of neglecting the underlying facts and highlights how systemic racism is frequently disregarded in favor of more conspicuous manifestations. Furthermore, LaValle's reference to Benito Cereno heightens the narrative's horror components. The underlying evils of slavery are reflected in Melville's novel, which is full of suspense and the persistent danger of violence. This tension is translated by LaValle into his framework of cosmic horror, where racism's monstrous nature is as pervasive and overwhelming as any entity from Lovecraft. The allusion implies that the actual terror is found in the very real, all-pervasive force of racial oppression, not in the otherworldly

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