Letter from Babo to Delano

To Delano,

You call yourself a gentleman, a kind spirited captain, and yet it took the dramatic enslavement of Cerano (a man you would consider a peer or equal) in order for you to understand the magnitude of pain inflicted on us by slavery. You do not notice the permanent shadows cast upon us by white tyrants; and yet you are incredibly sensitive to and surprised by the shadow we cast upon Cerano—simply by treating him the way we were treated. Why is it that because he looked like you, it was more difficult for you to accept his decline?

Waldstreicher talks about the ways in which we slaves are assigned identities based on our appearance. Whether we are a slave, a fugitive, a servant, or a freeman? Why do you attribute our status to how we appear, rather than to the ingenuity of our actions? Bolster was right when he said that all of you think that we, as black slaves, were acted upon, rather than acting ourselves. Sure, we were captives, but we found ways to escape. We devised plans that you, yourself—a literate genteel—could never come up with.

And so I write this as a plea to. If I am to die for this “crime” are you not equally, if not more, accountable? How can you support my death without dying yourself? How is what I did any different from you have done to my brothers and me?

Believe me when I say that you may kill me, you may kill the rebellion and our desire to be free, but you, like Cerano, will be fated to follow your leader.

Babo

Questions:

1. Is Melville’s novella a pro-slavery or abolitionist novel? What is it saying about the ability of fugitive slaves to mold their identities in order to escape oppression? Are Babo’s actions evidence of his intelligence or of a cunning/cruel nature?
2. What is the evidence that within the system of slavery, black slaves were not simply acted upon, but were actors in their own life? What role did literacy play in these acts of rebellion?