Benito Cereno

(1855)

Captain Amasa Delano and his U.S. ship the Bachelor’s Delight encounter a strange Spanish vessel, the San Dominick, a slave ship that seems to be in distress and is populated by a mainly black crew. When Delano goes aboard to investigate and offer help, he hears a tale of sickness, death, and destructive bad weather from Benito Cereno, the obviously distraught captain of the Spanish vessel, who is always accompanied by Babo, a devoted slave who seems to attend faithfully to his captain’s every need. Only when Delano is about to return to his own ship does a frantic Cereno jump into Delano’s boat and reveal the truth: The San Dominick had experienced a slave mutiny led by the brutal Babo; most of the whites have been ruthlessly slaughtered; and Cereno has been tormented by Babo, who is himself killed as he tries to take vengeance on the terrified Spaniard.

This novella (which, like much of Melville’s fiction, is based on a real historical incident) is typical of Melville’s work in many ways, including such features as its focus on a central observer (Delano), whose limited perspective is part of the fascination of the tale; its ambiguous exploration of complex moral and social issues; and its concern with the way the same events can be described in different kinds of discourse (such as the third-person narrative of most of the work and the legal “testimony” of Cereno himself that consumes much of the end of the story). The novella is one of the most ironic works Melville ever composed, and it succeeds in creating an air of claustrophobic mystery and growing suspense while also generating real uncertainty about who (if anyone) deserves our sympathy in a tale that sometimes is seen as strongly opposed to slavery and sometimes is seen as reinforcing white racial prejudice. Babo, in particular, has been seen by some readers as a clever, resourceful, and even heroic figure, while others regard him as an embodiment of dark evil—a sadist who tortures both minds and bodies. As have many of Melville’s works, this one has inspired intense debate and perplexed thought.

“Benito Cereno” begins, significantly enough, by emphasizing the color gray: “Everything was mute and calm; everything gray.... The sky seemed a gray surtout. Flights of troubled gray fowl, kith and kin with flights of troubled gray vapors among which they were mixed, skimmed low and fitfully over the waters”. In a story so much concerned with the complicated relations between blacks and whites, and in a tale so morally complex and so ambiguous in its presentation of limited points of view, this opening stress on such a colorless color seems perfectly fitting, as does Melville’s use of such similar descriptions as “shadows, ” “misgivings, ” “clouds, ” “baffling, ” “uncertainty, ” “fog, ” “decay, ” “masked, ” and “faded grandeur, ” which are all employed just within the first few pages of the work. Immediately he sets a tone of puzzlement, but the complexity of the atmosphere and setting contrasts with the simplicity of Delano, whose perspective on events is limited by his “singularly undistrustful good nature, not liable, except on extraordinary and repeated incentives, and hardly then, to indulge in personal alarms, any way involving the imputation of malign evil in man.” Melville, typically, leaves it to each reader to decide whether, “in view of what humanity is capable, such a trait implies, along with a benevolent heart, more than ordinary quickness and accuracy of intellectual perception”. By the end of the tale (in fact, long before then), it will be clear to most readers that Delano’s “good nature” and “benevolent heart” prevent him from perceiving very quickly the true character of the circumstances in which he finds himself.

In her superb overview of scholarship on “Benito Cereno, ” Lea Newman surveys the various ways in which Delano and his tale have been interpreted. Most of the controversy, she notes, has revolved around whether the story should be read primarily as “a metaphysical examination of evil” or mainly as “a sociological exploration of slavery, ” and then around whether the rebellious blacks should be perceived favorably or unfavorably and therefore whether the tale should be seen as opposing or accepting the fact of slavery. Much of this controversy centers on the figure of Babo, who has been seen variously as a symbolic embodimet of the deepest impulses of human evil; as an almost beastly, baboon like creature who is nevertheless capable of feline cunning; as a kind of satanic being who may, ironically, represent the darkest nature of all people; or as an implicit rebuke to any whites who naively considered blacks childlike beings—natural slaves who will passively accept their lot. Melville, according to some scholars, made the blacks in his story much less sympathetic and more vicious than they had appeared in his source, while he also made the Spanish sailors and their captain more appealing figures than they were in real life. By allegedly making such changes, he made the story (at least according to some analysts) more a philosophical meditation on evil than a political reflection on slavery.

Alternatively, many other critics have contended that Melville presents Babo in a favorable light—as an intelligent, courageous leader who does what it takes to free himself and his comrades from slavery; as a heroic liberator who is willing to die for his righteous cause; as an implied warning to Americans of the kind of leaders who would someday rise up and throw off the yokes of slavery in the United States if the country did not abolish slavery on its own; and as the first admirably assertive black militant in the history of American literature. According to these interpretations, Melville clearly shows his sympathies with the abolitionist cause. On the other hand, some critics have seen Babo as representing, for Melville, the primitive, potentially violent nature of blacks; or as reflecting Melville’s tendency to use blacks merely as literary symbols rather than as fully complex human beings; or as symbolizing his worries that some whites might (like Cereno) be too lax and naive in dealing with blacks and thus be unprepared for the violence the slaves might someday attempt to unleash. Finally, some critics have seen in Melville’s story a reflection of the ways in which slavery dehumanizes both the slaves and their masters. Thus the story reverses the traditional roles of Babo and Cereno by making the first an abusive tormentor and the second a cowering, terrified victim.

Not all commentary, of course, has revolved around Babo. Delano, for instance, has been viewed as symbol of a naive and philosophically unsophisticated American culture, unprepared by background or temperament to recognize or confront real evil. Many readers consider him a fool, although a few critics admire his good nature, innocence, and open-mindedness. Cereno, the Spanish captain, has likewise been interpreted in contradictory ways: Some analysts see him as a representative of Old World corruption and effete decadence and impotence (symbolized by his empty scabbard); for some readers, Babo is Cereno’s dark shadow, always at the captain’s side because he symbolizes the darkest aspects of the Spaniard’s own character and culture. Other readers, however, find Cereno a more sympathetic (or certainly pathetic) figure, whose crucial mistake was to treat his slaves with too much trust and insufficient supervision. Interestingly enough, the same kinds of controversy that have swirled around the central characters of the story have also been reflected in assessments of its quality as a work of art. Some readers have found it a labored, overelaborate, and ultimately tedious piece of writing, but most critics have hailed it as one of Melville’s finest works, especially in the way it builds suspense and integrates all the various aspects of its artistry.

FOR DISCUSSION OR WRITING

1. Melville was strongly influenced by Shakespeare. Compare and contrast Moby-Dick with a great Shakespearean tragedy, such as King Lear. How are the two works similar in themes, plot, characterization, and style? What kinds of sympathy do we feel for Lear and Ahab? Is either man a more tragic fi gure than the other?

2. Melville was a great admirer of Hawthorne. How does Ahab in Moby-Dick resemble Aylmer in “The Birth-mark, ” particularly in terms of motivation, character, behavior, and ultimate fate? How do the two characters differ? In what way is each destructive? Is there any way in which each is admirable?

3. Moby-Dick has often been called an epic in prose. Examine some common defi nitions of the epic genre and read about some famous examples of epic poems (such as Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Divine Comedy, or Milton’s Paradise Lost) and then discuss the ways in which Melville’s novel exhibits epic elements. How does Ahab, for instance, resemble or differ from Homer’s Odysseus or Milton’s Satan?

4. Discuss how Moby-Dick deals with the ideals of democracy. In what respects is the novel specifically American, and in what respects is it relevant to people throughout the world?

5. How is Moby-Dick both similar to and different from MARK TWAIN’s (Samuel Langhorne Clemens’s) Huckleberry Finn, especially in its use of colloquial language, its use of humor, its use of the motif of a journey, and its presentation of relations among people of different cultures and races?

6. Four of Melville’s most famous characters are captains of ships—Ahab in Moby-Dick, Vere in Billy Budd, and the two captains in Benito Cereno. What similarities or contrasts exist among these fi gures? How are Melville’s depictions of these various captains relevant to issues of proper leadership? Which (if any) of these captains does Melville seem to admire and/or disdain, and why?

7. Women do not often seem to fi gure signifi cantly in Melville’s most famous works of fiction. Examine the references to women in (say) Moby Dick or Billy Budd to determine whether there are any patterns in those references. Examine other works by Melville (such as Typee or Pierre) in which women play more prominent roles, and compare and contrast those works with the more male-centered books for which Melville is most famous.

8. Using dictionaries or encyclopedias of symbolism, explore the archetypal meanings often associated with the sea in world literature, and then discuss Melville’s use of sea symbolism in some of his writings. How do Melville’s depictions of the ocean reflect (or depart from) the ways the sea has been depicted by other writers?

9. Read one or more of the works Melville composed before he wrote Moby Dick (such as Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, or White-Jacket) and discuss the ways in which those earlier writings foreshadow the later masterpiece, such as in themes, style, method, structure, or characterization. How does Moby Dick differ from those earlier works? Why is it generally considered a “greater” book?

10. Choose one specifi c passage from one particular work by Melville and discuss the elements that make it an effective piece of writing. For instance, you might focus on such matters as alliteration, assonance, rhythm, imagery, diction, sentence structure, tone, connotation, and symbolism.

11. Many of Melville’s works were written in the decade and a half preceding the Civil War, when issues of slavery, race, national purpose, and ethnic identity were much debated. Trace one or more of these issues in one or more of Melville’s works of this period, and then discuss how his writing reflects and comments on the tensions brewing in the America of his day.

12. Moby-Dick was preceded by two other significant works set at sea by American writers— Two Years before the Mast (by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.) and The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym (by Edgar Allan Poe). Compare and contrast Melville’s novel with one or both of those earlier works; how are they similar or different in style, themes, methods, purpose, and/or accomplishment?

13. Transcendentalism was a signifi cant infl uence on the writings and writers of Melville’s time, especially in the work of such authors as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. What was transcendentalism, and how does Melville seem to react to it in one or more of his works? In what ways might Melville himself be seen as a transcendentalist, and in what ways may he have been skeptical of transcendentalist thinking?

14. Note the description of the Pequod in Chapter 16, “The Ship, ” in the archive. How does Ishmael characterize the ship and its crew? What does he mean when he says that the Pequod is “a cannibal of a craft”? How is this related to the idea of the “ship of state”?

15. How would you describe the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg in Chapter 10, “A Bosom Friend, ” in the archive? Why should the two of them be “a cosy, loving pair”? How does Ishmael seem to feel about Queequeg’s religious beliefs?

16. Why might Melville have chosen to tell the story of Ahab and the white whale from Ishmael’s point of view? How do Ishmael’s judgments and perspectives affect your understanding of Ahab’s quest? And why begin the novel with the line “Call me Ishmael, ” as if the reader is not privy to the narrator’s true name?

17. Read carefully Ahab’s diatribe against Moby Dick in “The Quarter-Deck.” He says that “all visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks, ” that the whale is like “the wall” that hems in a prisoner, and that “that inscrutable thing [in the whale] is chiefly what I hate.” In the midst of a whale-hunt, why bring up pasteboard masks and prison walls? What does Ahab mean by “inscrutable”? What is the relationship between Ahab’s speech and Ishmael’s later assertion that Ahab identifies Moby-Dick with “all [Ahab’s] intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them”?

18. In “The Whiteness of the Whale, ” Ishmael continues his assessment of Moby-Dick. He concludes that the whiteness presents “a dumb blankness, full of meaning.” According to Ishmael, what is the significance of the whiteness of the whale?

19. In what sense does Moby-Dick fit Melville’s discussion of literature in “Hawthorne and His Mosses”?

20. Melville wrote many texts that can be considered social critiques in a more clear-cut way than Moby-Dick. Read “Bartleby, the Scrivener, ” Billy Budd, Sailor, and Benito Cereno; then use the social critique in those texts to develop an interpretation of Moby Dick as a social critique.

21. Use Melville’s essay as a guide for interpreting some of Hawthorne’s short stories, such as “The Birth-mark” or “Young Goodman Brown.” How do Melville’s ideas about theme, character, tone, and purpose seem to apply to these works? At one point Melville says that although “it is that blackness in Hawthorne, of which I have spoken, that so fixes and fascinates me, ” it is nevertheless possible that such darkness “is too largely developed in him. Perhaps he does not give us a ray of his light for every shade of his dark”. Is this comment relevant at all to the two stories just mentioned?

22. How are such Shakespearean characters as Hamlet, Timon, Lear, and Iago relevant to our understanding of Melville’s fi ction, especially Moby-Dick? How does Ahab (for instance) resemble Lear? How does Fedallah resemble Iago? Does any character in Moby-Dick resemble Hamlet? Do any themes from Hamlet and King Lear seem relevant to Moby-Dick?

23. Track down the historical source on which Melville based Young Goodman Brown and compare and contrast his piece of fiction with Delano’s autobiographical report. How does the story differ from the source? Why did Melville make the changes he made, and what are some of the effects of those changes?

2. Compare and contrast Melville’s tale with Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Fall of the House of Usher, ” particularly in terms of setting, atmosphere, and outcome. How does Cereno resemble Usher? In what senses are both works “gothic”? How is suspense built and employed in both tales? Does one work have greater moral impact than the other? Justify your answer.

3. How is Melville’s story similar to Hawthorne’s tale “Young Goodman Brown, ” especially in their emphasis on a confrontation with evil, in their atmosphere of mystery, and in their use of religious symbolism?