Benito Cereno 1856

The story of an African slaver, generally thought to be the best of Melville’s shorter works. It
is a parable of slavery, written at the dawn of the civil war, about a black crew’s desire for
freedom.
"Benito Cereno" owes much of its popularity among literary critics to its subject
matter: slavery. "Benito" is Melville's only work of fiction that deals directly with
slavery.
figuring out Melville's attitude is nearly impossible—one could fairly argue that his
attitude is forgiving, patronizing, or contemptuous of blacks and/or slavery.
Published in 1855 (during a time of great political turmoil over the issue of slavery,
six years before the Civil War), provides that very scenario: the slaves, who are
portrayed as both brutal and cunning, revolt against their masters and are thwarted
by the efforts of well-armed white men. However, few critics believe that "Benito
Cereno" is a pro-slavery story → Melville was a product of New England, of
Massachusetts and of the Transcendentalist movement: he was in the center of
abolitionist activity.

The protagonist is Cereno himself, who falls under "the shadow of the Negro" in the
course of the tale, eventually leading to his death. The reader understands why
Cereno's eyes go glassy for a moment when Delano asks him what has happened to
his ship; Cereno is trying to remember the story Babo told him. When Babo shows
Cereno the bloody razor, the reader understands his terror—Babo is threatening him.
The process of reaching this understanding is slow, and sometimes painfully
slow, for the reader.

To anyone who knows the secret of "Benito Cereno"—and even to those that
don't—the unfolding of its mystery may seem painfully slow.
Melville's prose, which is paced rather slow and methodically, much like Captain
Delano's mind. The strange incidents begin to pile up: the young back slave hitting
the white boy without any reprimand from Cereno, the Spanish sailors seeming to
motion to him, the whispering between Cereno and Babo, and the two blacks
knocking down the sailor. Yet each time, Delano's trusting nature causes him to
dismiss his suspicions.
It is difficult to determine whether Delano is too trusting, or not trusting enough. If
Delano were more willing to let his suspicions get the best of him, or if he were a
more suspicious person in general, he might have figured out what was going on
before the end of the story. But as the reader later finds out, had Delano found out
the truth about the slaves and tried to act, he almost certainly would have been
caught by Babo and killed on the spot. By being so trusting, Delano falls for the
hastily-arranged scam that Babo concocts, and this allows Cereno to survive until he
can leap down into Delano's boat.
To a nineteenth-century man, even one from a liberal state like Massachusetts, the
idea of a group of slaves revolting, then coming up with such a complicated ruse to
fool a ship's captain, would have been a very far-fetched idea indeed. Melville's
readers would have been just as mystified by the strange events as Delano.
Delano and the Lawyer of "Bartleby the Scrivener" are actually similar characters.
They are both relatively intelligent, established, well-balanced men who are exposed
to a number of very odd events and behaviors. They remain contemplative where
most men would immediately question these events vigorously, or take immediate
action. Few lawyers would retain a copyist that refused to examine his copies, and
few captains would ever allow a black slave to strike a white man without
punishment.

When the Bachelor's Delight came near, Babo gave Cereno a story to tell, as well as
the other sailors, then set up the masquerade of himself as a servant to Cereno, so
as to keep an eye on him.

Captain Amasa Delano, while not the actual narrator of Benito Cereno, is the
character from whose perspective the story is primarily told. His "good nature" and
benevolence are remarked upon throughout the story and are partially what
make his perspective so unreliable.

Delano: a very good-natured person (confidence, faith), captain of the Bachelor's

“Captain Delano's nature was not only benign, but familiarly and humorously so. [...]
like most men of a good, blithe heart, Captain Delano took to Negroes, not
philanthropically, but genially, just as other men to Newfoundland dogs.”

→ he passage is easily read as being patronizing toward the black, claiming that
they as a race are particularly fit to be servants and have a "good humor" that makes
them pleasant to be near. Delano's equating blacks with "Newfoundland dogs"
seems to be intended to show Delano's exceptionally good opinion of blacks, but the
patronizing nature of the comment is offensive to modern readers. There may be an
ironic comment in the use of such an obviously degrading metaphor as
"Newfoundland dogs": Melville may be making fun of those who think of blacks that
way. But the passage is frustratingly ambiguous, like much of Melville's writing.

At the end of the trial, Babo is executed and his head placed on a pole. Cereno falls
into a deep misery, and a few months later he dies—he did indeed "follow his
leader." → the reader can never be sure just who Cereno's "leader" really was—his
friend Aranda, or Babo the black slave?

Delano asks him what has cast such a "shadow" upon him, and Cereno responds
"the Negro." This could mean many things. It could mean that Cereno's mind has
been ruined by the terrible ordeal he has gone through. More symbolically, it could
mean that Cereno realizes he is less intelligent than a black slave, so a "shadow" is
now cast over his own skin, making him the "black."

SYMBOL
the skeleton of Alexandro Aranda, the owner of the slaves, hung from the ship's bow.
Under the skeleton is written the words, "follow your leader," and Babo shows it to
the white sailors, commenting on how white the bones are (suggesting they are
bones from a white man). The added irony, of course, is that both blacks and whites
have bones of the same color.

THEME
Published just a few years prior to the Civil War and in the midst of a fierce national
debate over slavery, Melville must have been aware of the racial implications of his
story as he was writing it in the early 1850s. While the story is based on an actual
event, Melville embellishes the story greatly, adding many flourishes including
Captain Delano's thoughts on blacks.

[Don Benito tells Captain Delano about the slave rebellion that killed his best friend
and owner of most of the slaves, Don Alexandro Aranda. In the end, the Captain
Delano and his crew recapture the slaves and take them to port to be tried for
rebellion and executed].

MOTIF
Grayness
This is the third paragraph from "Benito Cereno":
"The morning was one peculiar to that coast. Everything was mute and calm;
everything grey. The sea, though undulated into long roods of swells, seemed fixed,
and was sleeked at the surface like waved lead that has cooled and set in the
smelter's mould. The sky seemed a grey mantle. Flights of troubled grey fowl, kith
and kin with flights of troubled grey vapors among which they were mixed, skimmed
low and fitfully over the waters, as swallows over meadows before storms. Shadows
present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to come."

The passage contains four uses of the term "grey" as well as one of "lead," which is
gray in color. These early sentences set the mood for the story, and it is fitting that
gray be the dominant color, since "Benito Cereno" defies a breakdown into
black-and-white components. The San Dominick appears before Delano's ship out of
a dusty fog, and Cereno's very face is often ashen or gray. Nothing is clear in "Benito
Cereno," and the more he moves through the story, the more confused Captain
Delano becomes. It is not until the very end that this foggy grayness parts and
Delano understands the true situation.