Benito Cereno by Herman Melville
"Benito Cereno" is a novella by Herman Melville that explores themes of slavery, power dynamics, and perception through the lens of a harrowing sea encounter. The narrative unfolds as Captain Amasa Delano, commanding an American ship called the Bachelor's Delight, discovers the distressed Spanish merchant vessel, the San Dominick, anchored off the coast of southern Chile. Aboard the San Dominick, Delano meets the troubled Captain Benito Cereno, who appears physically and mentally incapacitated, attended by his devoted slave, Babo. Despite the grim condition of the ship and its crew, Delano misinterprets the situation, believing Cereno is merely suffering from a severe mental disorder and that the crew—including the slaves—are not a threat.
Melville intricately weaves a tale of deception as Delano’s naivety prevents him from grasping the underlying tensions, including a previous slave mutiny that left the crew decimated. Through a series of unsettling interactions and observations, the true nature of Cereno's predicament becomes apparent, culminating in a dramatic revelation that upends Delano's understanding of the scenario. The story ultimately highlights the complexities of race, authority, and the moral dilemmas that arise from the institution of slavery, leaving readers to ponder the implications of interpretation and the nature of freedom.
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Benito Cereno by Herman Melville
First published: serial, 1855; book, collected in The Piazza Tales, 1856
Type of work: Novella
Type of plot: Adventure
Time of plot: 1799
Locale: Harbor of St. Maria, off the coast of Chile; Lima, Peru
Principal characters
Amasa Delano , an American sea captainDon Benito Cereno , a Spanish sea captainBabo , an African slave
The Story:
Captain Amasa Delano is commander of an American ship called Bachelor’s Delight, which is anchored in the harbor of St. Maria, on an island off the coast of southern Chile. While there, he sees a ship apparently in distress, and, thinking it carries a party of monks, he sets out in a whaleboat to board the vessel and supply it with food and water. When he comes aboard, he finds that the ship, the San Dominick, is a Spanish merchant ship carrying slaves. The crew is parched and moaning; the ship is filthy; the sails are rotten. Most deplorable of all, the captain, the young Don Benito Cereno, seems barely able to stand or to talk coherently. Aloof and indifferent, Cereno seems ill both physically (he coughs constantly) and mentally. He is attended by Babo, his devoted slave.
Delano sends the whaleboat back to his ship to get additional water, food, and extra sails for the San Dominick, while he remains aboard the desolate ship. He tries to talk to Cereno, but the captain’s fainting fits keep interrupting the conversation. The Spaniard seems reserved and sour, in spite of Delano’s attempts to assure the man that he is now out of danger. Delano finally assumes that Cereno is suffering from a severe mental disorder. The captain does, with great difficulty and after frequent private talks with Babo, manage to explain that the San Dominick was at sea for 190 days. They started out, Cereno explained, as a well-manned and smart vessel sailing from Buenos Aires to Lima but encountered several gales around Cape Horn, lost many officers and men, and then ran into dreadful calms and the ravages of plagues and scurvy. Most of the Spanish officers and all the passengers, including the slave owner, Don Alexandro Aranda, died of fever. Delano, who knew that the weather in recent months was not as extreme as Cereno described it, simply concludes that the Spanish officers were incompetent and did not take the proper precautions against disease. Cereno continually repeats that only the devotion of his slave, Babo, kept him alive.
Numerous other circumstances on the San Dominick begin to make the innocent Delano more suspicious. Although everything is in disorder and Cereno is obviously ill, he is dressed perfectly in a clean uniform. Six black men are sitting in the rigging holding hatchets, although Cereno says they are only cleaning them. Two are beating up a Spanish boy, but Cereno explains that this deed is simply a form of sport. The slaves are not in chains; Cereno claims they are so docile that they do not require chains. This notion pleases the humane Delano, although it also surprises him.
Every two hours, as they await the expected wind and the arrival of Delano’s whaleboat, a large African man in chains is brought before Cereno, who will ask him if he, Cereno, can be forgiven. The man will answer, “No,” and be led away. At one point, Delano begins to fear that Cereno and Babo are plotting against him, for they move away from him and whisper together. Cereno then asks Delano about his ship, requesting the number of men and the strength of arms aboard the Bachelor’s Delight. Delano thinks they might be pirates.
Nevertheless, Delano joins Cereno and Babo in Cereno’s cabin for dinner. Throughout the meal, Delano alternately gains and loses confidence in Cereno’s story. He tries, while discussing a means of getting Cereno new sails, to get Babo to leave the room, but the man and the master are apparently inseparable. After dinner, Babo, while shaving his master, cuts his cheek slightly despite the warning that was given. Babo leaves the room for a minute and returns with his own cheek cut in an imitation of his master’s. Delano thinks this episode curious and sinister, but he finally decides that the man is so devoted to Cereno that he had punished himself for inadvertently cutting his master.
At last, Delano’s whaleboat returns with more supplies. Delano, about to leave the San Dominick, promises to return with new sails the next day. When he invites Cereno to his own boat, he is surprised at the captain’s curt refusal and his failure to escort the visitor to the rail. Delano is offended at the Spaniard’s apparent lack of gratitude. As the whaleboat is about to leave, Cereno appears suddenly at the rail. He expresses his gratitude profusely and then, hastily, jumps into the whaleboat. At first Delano thinks that Cereno is about to kill him; then he sees Babo at the rail brandishing a knife. In a flash, he realizes that Babo and the other slaves were holding Cereno a captive. Delano takes Cereno back to the Bachelor’s Delight. Later they pursue the fleeing slaves. The slaves, having no guns, are easily captured by the American ship and brought back to shore.
Cereno later explains that the slaves, having mutinied shortly after the ship set out, committed horrible atrocities and killed most of the Spaniards. They murdered the mate, Raneds, for a trifling offense and committed atrocities on the dead body of Don Alexandro Aranda, whose skeleton they placed on the masthead.
On his arrival in Lima, Cereno submits a long testimony, recounting all the cruelties the slaves committed. Babo is tried and hanged. Cereno feels enormously grateful to Delano, recalling the strange innocence that somehow kept the slaves from harming him, when they had the chance, aboard the San Dominick. Cereno plans to enter a monastery; however, broken in body and spirit, he dies three months after he completes his testimony.
Bibliography
Bloom, Harold, ed. Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd,” “Benito Cereno,” “Bartleby the Scrivener,” and Other Tales. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Collects some of the best in late twentieth century views of Melville’s tale, with emphasis on postmodernist approaches to the interweaving of fiction and history and to the different types of documentation represented in the narrative.
Burkholder, Robert E., ed. Critical Essays on Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno.” New York: G. K. Hall, 1992. Contains indispensable essays on Benito Cereno in relation to nineteenth century expansionism, slavery, and other topics.
Delbanco, Andrew. Melville: His World and Work. New York: Knopf, 2005. Delbanco’s critically acclaimed biography places Melville in his time, including information about the debate over slavery and details of life in 1840’s New York. He also discusses the significance of Melville’s works at the time they were published and in the twenty-first century.
Gross, Seymour, ed. A “Benito Cereno” Handbook. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1965. Still one of the most comprehensive texts for understanding Melville’s short novel. Reprints Melville’s source, a chapter in the travel narrative of the eighteenth century ship captain Amasa Delano, as well as eleven critical articles offering historical points of view and discussions of narrative mode, style, symbolism, and theme.
Newman, Lea Bertani Vozar. A Reader’s Guide to the Short Stories of Herman Melville. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986. The section on Benito Cereno is indispensable, with sections on publication history, sources and influences, relationship to Melville’s other works, a summary of criticism, and a comprehensive bibliography of related works.
Rollyson, Carl E., and Lisa Paddock. Herman Melville A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001. Comprehensive and encyclopedic coverage of Melville’s life, works, and times; the 675 detailed entries provide information on the characters, settings, allusions, and references in his fiction, his friends and associates, and the critics and scholars who have studied his work.
Runden, John P. Melville’s “Benito Cereno”: A Text for Guided Research. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1965. An overview of responses to the story from early reviews to mid-twentieth century interpretations. Includes discussion of Melville’s source in a biography of Charles V. The text of Benito Cereno is reprinted with original pagination.
Stuckey, Sterling. African Culture and Melville’s Art: The Creative Process in “Benito Cereno” and “Moby-Dick.” New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. A new interpretation of the two works in which Stuckey argues that Melville’s worldview and his literary innovations were shaped by African cultural forms.
Spanos, William V. “Benito Cereno: The Vision of American Exceptionalism.” In Herman Melville and the American Calling: Fiction After “Moby-Dick,”1851-1857. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008. Analyzes the major works that appeared after the publication of Moby-Dick. Argues that these works share the metaphor of the orphanage: a place that represents both estrangement from a symbolic fatherland and the myth of American exceptionalism.