Benito Cereno by Herman Melville

Suspense on a slave ship

Herman Melville’s novella Benito Cereno was first serialized in three issues of Putnam’s Monthly magazine in 1855. It was later included in Melville’s 1856 short story collection The Piazza Tales after being slightly revised. It is this latter version that I read. Melville loosely based his novella on actual historical events.

In 1799, Captain Amasa Delano (a real historical figure) of the American sealing ship Bachelor’s Delight anchors his ship in the bay of Santa Maria, on the coast of Chile. He notices the approach of a second ship moving in a peculiarly listless manner, as if in distress. To investigate, Delano boards the ship, named the San Dominick, and is met by its captain, a Spaniard named Benito Cereno. The ship’s primary cargo consists of over a hundred Black slaves, who are watched over by what appears to be an understaffed crew of whites. Unlike just about any slave ship I’ve ever heard of, the slaves are not chained up below but rather allowed to move freely about the deck. Delano, however, doesn’t seem to find this unusual. Cereno explains that a combination of bad weather and illness has reduced both crew and cargo. He needs food and fresh water to continue his journey to a safe and sizable port. Delano agrees to supply the San Dominick with provisions. He is troubled, however, by the odd behavior of Cereno, who exhibits poor social graces and a lack of gentlemanly breeding bordering on outright rudeness.

This novella is notable for its depiction of slavery and its questioning of white Americans’ attitudes towards the slave trade and African Americans. Melville’s narrative illuminates the arguments over slavery that would soon lead to the American Civil War. I have always been impressed by Melville’s lack of racism compared to other white writers of his era. Whether he’s describing the native islanders in Typee or characters such as Queequeg, Daggoo, and Pip in Moby-Dick, Melville consistently treats people of color with dignity and respect. In Benito Cereno, the African slaves are seen indirectly through the eyes and attitudes of Delano and Cereno, who often view the Blacks with fear and mistrust. Through plot details and third-person narration, however, Melville reveals his own sympathies towards the Africans who have been stolen from their homelands and subjugated by an oppressive system.

While the meanings and motives behind the novella may deserve praise and admiration, the narrative itself can make for a somewhat tedious and disappointing reading experience at times. Melville errs on the side of too much descriptive minutiae, calling to mind the more verbose writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Joseph Conrad. In the first half of Benito Cereno in particular, Melville repetitively emphasizes the “peculiar” behavior of the title character, describing every twitch, blink, and bead of sweat until the plot positively crawls.

The second half of the story is a marked improvement in pacing. The whole plot trajectory, however, seems intended to deliver a climactic surprise, but I could see it coming from the very beginning. Perhaps it was Melville’s intention that the reader would always be two steps ahead of Delano in solving the riddle of Benito Cereno’s unusual behavior, but if so it considerably lessens the impact of the plot’s eventual revelations. Other than Moby-Dick, Benito Cereno may be the Melville work that has received the most acclaim from critics and literary scholars. This may have much to do with its historical commentary and Melville’s enlightened views on race. Judging by storytelling alone, however, I didn’t find this novella as compelling as Moby-Dick, Typee, or Bartleby, the Scrivener.
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