Herman Melville maintained deeply complex, evolving views on slavery, holding personal and familial antipathy toward the institution of chattel slavery while operating within a deeply racially stratified 19th-century America. Rather than writing direct abolitionist tracts, his literary works—most notably Benito Cereno and Moby-Dick—subtly interrogate, subvert, and critique the moral hypocrisy, systemic violence, and psychological corruption wrought by slavery upon both the oppressed and the oppressors.