Benito Cereno

Second reading of this novella (1855). Once again, I was struck by the great strength of this piece: the almost cinematic style, in which small elements are brought into focus one after the other, thus increasing the suspense and especially the oppressive atmosphere. Of course, Melville knows that the reader soon realizes that there is something more going on than a ship in distress. The clever thing is how he manages to dose the threat. Incidentally, this book reminded me a lot of Edgar Allen Poe with his famous novel the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838).
The fact that the suggested cruelties on board the ship are ultimately attributed to the black slaves (steadfastly called negroes) automatically raises questions show more about the racist content of this book. Protagonist Captain Avana Delano, through whose eyes we follow the story, may be a good-natured man, but he regularly makes disparaging remarks about the ‘negroes’ (described as ‘stupids’ and with an ‘inferior mind’). The question is of course whether Melville’s opinion is being expressed here. I don’t think so, because Melville lets Delano clings to his wrong judgement and ignores the signs of a slave revolt, precisely because he does not see them as full-fledged humans. Incidentally, Delano is just as disparaging about the Spanish. I therefore follow the thesis (launched by critics) that Melville in this novella illustrates how prejudices can lead to completely wrong assessments. Commendable, although I find the final section with documents about the legal process absolutely superfluous. show less

This is an ambiguous tale in which so much is not what it seems, and one that leaves the reader with some ambiguity as to what the author is intending to say. It is an uncomfortable read, in that one wishes to be on the side of Benito Cereno and his crew, who are being held in peril of their lives, and not the mutineers, who appear to have murdered indiscriminately, yet one cannot quite forget that the mutineers are slaves being transported for sale, who are thus justified in their hatred and cruelty.

The rescuing Captain Delano, an American, seems hopelessly naive and unable to follow the obvious clues as to the peril of the situation. Published in 1855, when the question of slavery and abolition is paramount in the States, it is fairly show more easy to see Delano's refusal to see the facts as a condemnation of those who refuse to face the moral issues of slavery and whitewash over the realities of the institution and the damage it does, indeed the peril it poses, to all involved. Delano is a kind man, but it would seem more than kindness is needed.

That Melville is grappling with perhaps the largest issue of his time is obvious. The end of the story, and the fate of the ship's "cargo" highlights how little chance these people have of escape and how desperate their situation truly is--but Cerano's fate tells us something as well, that the moral turpitude leaves no one unscathed. show less

This is tense and tight and moody like some kind of cross between a Poe story and Das Boot, which I never would have expected from Melville, who can be story-focused and atmospheric, sure, but in a way that is effaced (blown out of the water Pequod- --or Don Benito's ship under fire by the Americans, in this one- --style) by his cosmic yearnings and baggymonstrosity. (Guy sends a lot of gauges up to 11!) It starts with a mystery--what's with this ship? Why are the blacks so creepily jaunty yet so eerily subdued? Who's in charge on this boat, anyway? The setup is golden. Melville limits himself to dramatizing the source material, though, and what that means is we get a novella of slave revolt on the high seas that has cannon battles and show more guys getting mutilated by the cruel negro and sympathy for the devil on a human level that gets completely subsumed within a larger allegory about global realpolitik, Delano as the early ugly naive lovable American running shit without even knowing. It's hard to let Melville of the hook for that, but I think the problem is less that he was a man of his times who saw cruelty as cruelty and slavery as a policy debate, and more that he didn't give the story time to breathe, didn't flash us back to desperate negotiations and shocking developments on a ship of poor sods that means our world entire. The thing would have been to give us the perspective of one of the Africans, and for Cereno to be the serpent and Babo to be Ahab and Delano and his men to be the brutal ex machina. And in that sense, certainly, these are just the kind of openhearted, bouncing, paranoid farmboys that went to Afghanistan. This is less about slavery per se than an metaphor for the way America's handled its involvement in foreign disputes since day one--burn the village to save the village and then get a furrow of noncomprehension when you don't turn out to be the good guy any more than the slaves or the Spaniards.

But that's ignoring--Melville's ignoring--that a story like this takes place against mass murder and rape and kidnapping and human trafficking right here in the good old US of A, acting like it's a foreign issue, pretending to a fairness that is bias itself like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. It's--ha--like that awful Black Eyed Peas song "Overseas, yeah, we try to stop terrorism / but we still got terrorists here livin' in the USA / the FBI, the CIA, the Bloods, the Crips, and the KKK". Benito Cereno simplifies like the song simplifies--the blush every time you hear those stupid lyrics analogous to the interactions racked by etiquette between the two captains, the awkwardness to death that trumps even real death all around, and the impossibility in both cases of it turning into anything other than a bloodbath of the foreigner committed again by the well-meaning and clean. The climax feels cheap because the alternative is a closer look at the psychology of it, and Melville's not up for the complete cutting loose or condemnation of his Americans that the examination would make necessary for any feeling person. show less

I've read both Moby Dick and Billy Budd, but of the Melville works I've read, it's this novella I find most impressive. There's none of the windy digressions in Moby Dick or the heavy-handed allegory of Billy Budd or The Confidence-man here. This is as close as I've found in Melville to taut, subtle writing. If I have any criticism it is that it comes dangerously close to the "idiot plot." (For this to work, one of the characters has to act like an idiot.) From here on end though, to explain what I did find awesome in this, I have to discuss spoilers. And they are spoilers. I had heard of this story, of what this was about. This is one of Melville's more famous works. And I wish I hadn't known--it's best I think to come at this story show more without knowledge, and I wouldn't read any introduction beforehand.

Spoiler below:

In a way, I wonder if it is a spoiler, because not only was the situation obvious to me but Melville signals from the start his point of view character, Captain Amasa Delano, is not to be trusted. Early on he describes him as "singularly undistrustful." This is set in 1797 during the Atlantic slave trade. The captain of an American ship, Delano, comes aboard a Spanish ship captained by Benito Cereno. From the first Delano notices that not only are the blacks on deck, who greatly outnumber the whites, unshackled, but that they are sharpening weapons. Huge clues keep coming that Captain Cereno is captive and that there has been a slave revolt on board, but Delano remains clueless. The whole novella is one of the most starkly unreliable narratives I've ever read. But here's what I find interesting. Throughout the narrative many racial, in fact very racist, comments are made. But not only are we signaled the narrator is, well, an idiot, but many of the events of the novella flat out contradict those racist assumptions--for instance docility and stupidity--for the black slaves not only successfully revolted, they're fooling Delano despite what's right before his eyes.

So, it made me wonder. Just what does Melville believe? And what does he want us to take away from this story? Given the time this was written (1855) my assumption would have been that Melville's sympathies were with the white crew, and that he'd certainly expect that's how his readers would see things. But so much in this novella subverts that easy assumption. And that I do find awesome. Even amazing given the year this was written. show less

It was somewhat of a pleasure to return to Melville's subtle, erudite and ornate style, but the pain of reading Amasa Delano's racist reflections (and knowing that a large sector of Melville's audience fully concurred) vastly reduced whatever positives had accrued. Still the richly ironic final paragraph together with his initial characterization of Captain Delano (fourth paragraph) somewhat redeems this dark tale for me.

At first seems like a sea story, then like a rather run-of-the-mill mystery novel, and then finally reveals itself (unless I'm overprojecting) to be a rather disturbing morality tale.

spoiler:
It forces us to ask to what degree Captain Delano represents ourselves, to conduct our own condemnation of the Americans but also, more importantly, of ourselves for (at least in my case) rooting for them.
end spoiler

At first I was sure this wasn't a great book. Now I can see why it is, and if I read it again I think my appreciation will be twice as great the second time around.

Oh, and this edition (Benito Cereno: A Text for Guided Research) is great because it has the actual memoirs of the real-life Amasa Delano, who is, incredibly, just as show more pigheaded as in the story, and whose story is just as bizarre. show less

Wowza. I don't even know what to say about Benito Cereno. This is my first Melville, believe it or not. I've never read his other works, and this is quite the introduction.

Melville House says, "Based on a real-life incident--the character names remain unchanged--Benito Cereno tells what happens when an American merchant ship comes upon a mysterious Spanish ship where the nearly all-black crew and their white captain are starving and yet hostile to offers of help. Melville's most focused political work, it is rife with allusions (a ship named after Santa Domingo, site of the slave revolt led by Toussaint L'Ouverture), analogies (does the good-hearted yet obtuse American captain refer to the American character itself?) and mirroring show more images that deepen our reflections on human oppression and its resultant depravities."

I'm assuming since Melville was born in New York and his grandparents hail from Boston, that he was anti-slavery. Since this was first published in 1855, my initial thoughts are that he writes this as a warning of sorts. Human oppression can only stand so much before it rises in revenge. If I understand the allusions and analogies correctly, this story is a scathing review of the naivete of the American north regarding slavery and of the emotional dependence the south has on it's slaves.

This book stirs the racially-charged pot. show less