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Benito Cereno

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A most powerful story by a most powerful author. The suspense will force you to skip pages, just to see what all the "building up" of emotion and doubt is all about. Highly satisfying. Don't be surprised to find yourself thinking about this story for weeks after you've completed it.

Joseph Conrad's famous story of the Congo was written decades after Melville's story of a mutiny, and it's extremely unlikely that Conrad was thinking of Benito Cereno when he wrote Heart of Darkness, but the two extended stories have a lot in common: scenes of human depravity, ambiguities about good and evil, nightmarish descriptions, an atmosphere of suspended horror. "Benito Cereno" contains some of Herman Melville's most vivid action writing, though the action is all suspense and premonition until the climax. I'm not at all certain why this story hasn't been acclaimed more widely; it would capture the imagination of a 'young reader' in a tighter grip than Billy Budd.

More historically-informed readers will surely guess the mystery of Captain Cereno's behavior on his ghastly ship long before the good-natured American Captain Delano. Readers of Melville's era, recalling the news of the ship Amistad, would have guessed even quicker and more certainly. In fact, the tension between the reader's aroused suspicions and the benevolent opacity of Captain Delano is at the core of the reading experience. The 'Good' seldom have much insight into the "Wicked". But wait, don't rush to judgement about wickedness when you read Herman Melville! Is mutiny a greater wickedness than slavery, and is violence in the act of self-liberation less or more justified than violence in defense of property? And is Captain Delano's good-natured racism, based on his assumption that blacks are docile and unintelligent, not the basis for his nearly disastrous lack of acumen? Babo, the ringleader of the mutiny, may be a horrid beast in Delano's mind but he's surely the smartest Homo sapiens on the scene, a representation that can't have been unintended by Melville.

Apparently Melville used the memoirs of a real Captain Amasa Delano as the inspiration for this spine-tingling story of terror on a becalmed sailing ship. The denouement of the tale is told in the form of court depositions, lending a journalistic credibility to the narrative. Some critics have found that structure disjointed and anticlimactic. I didn't, but even if it were so, the larger part of the novella is every bit as spooky as Conrad's masterpiece. "Don Alejandro, he dead!"

It is around 1800. An American sealer on the South Chile coast meets a Spanish slave ship in disarray. Captain Delano from the US ship goes on board the Spaniard and finds things rather disorganized, to say the least. The Spanish captain is not well. His story is about storms and scurvy and fever, which decimated most of the whites and many of the blacks on board and destroyed most of the boats that the ship had. Delano is of best intentions and tries to help, but in the course of time begins to have grave doubts about honesty and capability of the Spaniard, while he is positively impressed by the behaviour of the blacks on the ship.

Finally we find out that the Spaniard has been a hostage all along, that the slaves have mutinied and taken the ship, killing most of the whites in the process.
The US ship overwhelms the mutinous ship and takes it to Peru, where the mutiny survivors are put to trial.

The narration has two parts: the experience of the American captain boarding the mutinous ship without understanding what happens on it, and then the recapitalution 'what really happened' mainly via the court deposition of the title hero Benito Cereno, who is the Spanish captain.

I would like to put aside all considerations of the moral question whether a mutiny of slaves on a transport ship is the same as a mutiny of sailors. Obviously not, and I see no need to go into this aspect further. Of course the narration takes us in on the side of the slave owners. Leave it at that, it is history.

The fascinating part of the story is the first one, when we follow Delano in his blind attempt at understanding what is happening on the ship in distress. He sees what he sees with the eyes of his personal expectations and prejudices. He is an optimist who likes to see the good side in people. Hence he is happy about the jolly good behaviour of the blacks on the ship. He is disappointed in the less than virile stance of the Spaniard. He never even half suspects the truth. Rather he thinks that the captain may be a pirate in collaboration with the black population on board.
This story is a deeply pessimistic one. We can not understand the world. Our benevolent assumptions are likely to be disappointed. The truth is worse than we can expect. Sunshine is an illusion.

If you want a taste of Melville's brilliance, but aren't up to the task of slogging through 600+ pages of "Moby Dick," try "Benito Cereno" - a masterpiece of mystery, suspense and intrigue. But, as with Melville's white-whale classic, "BC" ultimately climbs the peaks and plumbs the depths of human spirit and human depravity on multiple levels while taking the reader down a twisting and puzzling path. That so much can be crammed into a "short story" (well, perhaps a novella) illustrates the author's true genius.

It is 1799, and an American sea Captain Amasa Delano has harbored at St. Maria island off the extreme southern coast of Chile to take on fresh water. Sighting a ship without colors on the horizon, Delano with a crew take the whale boat to investigate, finding a near-derelict Spanish slave ship drifting aimlessly on a calm sea. Upon boarding, Dalano finds the ship's captain, Benito Cerino, near death and the ship's human cargo - men, women, and children - unconstrained topside. Cerino is constantly tended to by "Babo," a young Spanish-speaking slave, who never leaves the captain's side, catering to his every wish - the extent that the ship's half-starved inhabitants can accommodate. Cerino tells Delano a harrowing tale of violent storms encountered after leaving Buenos Aires en route to Lima, rounding the Cape and encountering two months of deadly calm that made navigation impossible - drownings, scurvy, and lack of water decimated the crew. Delano finds Cerino's tale dubious, especially since so few of the Spanish crew have survived, taking a much lower toll on the slaves. More troubling is the relationship between Babo and Cerino, which Delano considers beyond odd. The trusting and possibly naïve Delano silently questions Cerino's motives, and several times fears for his own life, each time to be subsequently placated, writing his fear off as mere paranoia induced by the freakish conditions on board the vessel. Tension builds, the enigma grows, and by now, the reader, puzzled by the contradictions, is undoubtedly tempted to jump ahead to see where Melville is taking us.

Melville's writing falls just short of epic poetry, and as such, "Benito Cerino" requires some work and concentration. Much of the jargon is unfamiliar nautical terms or 19th century prose that is now archaic. But the diligent reader will be rewarded with beautiful prose than spins a surprisingly surrealistic atmosphere - an authentic portrait of life at sea at the turn of the 18th century while capturing the period's views of race and slavery. Melville never preaches or cajoles, is never heavy handed, but instead weaves complex relationships and cultural issues so deeply in the fabric that multiple reads will certainly yield fresh insight and new meaning - the kind of story that invokes that "did I really read this?" moment. In short, a powerful short story that deserves more attention - my candidate to replace - or at least complement - "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" or "A Tale of Two Cites" on high school readers' list of required classics.

Having fallen asleep with a book in my lap, an occurrence that oft times happens to me even with the best of books, dreaming I found myself in front of a gothic edifice of some kind. Looking through the fog it appeared to be a monastery of some sort for I could see black cowled figures moving inside through the windows. The ground beneath me began to roll and toss and I just caught a whiff of sea air when I awoke with a start. I peered down at the title of the book in my lap it was Benito Cereno by Herman Melville. Captain Delano on approaching the Spanish ship San Dominick, though not in a dream state as I was, felt the ship "appeared like a whitewashed monastery after a thunder-storm" and for just a minute he thought "that nothing less than a ship-load of monks was before him. Peering over the bulwarks were what really seemed, in the hazy distance, throngs of dark cowls; while, fitfully revealed through the open port-holes, other dark moving figures were dimly descried, as of Black Friars pacing the cloisters." One of the main themes Melville has on display here is that human perception is unreliable - what we think we see is many times something other - that confidence in our own opinion is often misplaced. Delano sees that the shield like stern piece of the ship has carved into it two masked figures a satyr and a person on the ground with the former's foot on top of him. Symbolically serving double duty the stern piece represents Cereno and Babo oppressor oppressed swapping roles and the carved figures are literally acted out by Delano and Babo at one point in the narrative. The masks, well things on board are not what they seem the truth hidden under masks of willful deception. On boarding the vessel Captain Delano meets Captain Cereno. Melville takes the monastic imagery a little further describing Cereno "like some hypochondriac abbot he moved slowly about". As Delano notices the slaves on deck clashing their hatchets together like cymbals I am glad I woke from my slumber lest my dream turn to nightmare. Ultimately it is Babo who is the tragic hero of this story with his many deeds all aimed at getting himself and his people home. His head mounted on a pole Babo looks unabashed at a plaza of gawking people sure they peered at the head of a criminal just as sure as Babo had known within "that hive of subtlety" that he had been the one wronged. I urge you gentle reader to board the San Dominick and take this dark tour into a masterpiece of literature.