"Benito Cereno" is a novella written by Herman Melville, published in 1855. It is based on the true story of a Spanish slave ship that was captured by mutineers in the late 18th century. The novella tells the story of the captain of the ship, Benito Cereno, and his experiences with the mutineers and the slaves they had taken from Africa.
At the beginning of the novella, Cereno's ship, the San Dominick, arrives in port in Chile. The ship is in a dilapidated state, and Cereno is gravely ill. The narrator of the story, a young American named Amasa Delano, is the captain of a nearby American ship, and he is asked to come aboard the San Dominick to assess the situation. Delano is initially sympathetic to Cereno and his plight, and he helps the crew make some necessary repairs to the ship.
However, as Delano spends more time on the San Dominick, he begins to notice strange behavior among the crew and the slaves. The crew is reluctant to speak openly with Delano, and the slaves seem to be in a state of fear and oppression. Delano begins to suspect that something sinister is going on, but he is unable to piece together the true nature of the situation.
Eventually, Delano learns that the slaves on the San Dominick had mutinied against their Spanish captors and taken control of the ship. The leader of the mutineers is a slave named Babo, who has forced Cereno to act as a puppet captain and keep up the appearance that everything is normal. Babo and the other mutineers have been using Cereno as a way to evade capture, but they are also using the ship as a way to traffic more slaves from Africa.
As the story progresses, Delano becomes increasingly aware of the moral implications of the situation on the San Dominick. He is torn between his loyalty to his fellow Americans and his disgust at the cruelty of the slave trade. In the end, he is forced to confront his own prejudices and biases as he tries to help Cereno and the other victims of the mutiny.
"Benito Cereno" is a powerful and thought-provoking novella that explores themes of race, power, and morality. It is a haunting tale that forces the reader to confront some difficult and uncomfortable truths about the history of slavery and the ways in which it has shaped our world.
Benito Cereno Study Guide
When Delano looks back at Cereno and Babo, he has the feeling that they have been talking about him. He offers Cereno fifty doubloons but Babo softly whispers that his master would never leave him. Cereno's apparent lack of concern for the behavior of his slaves is contradicted, however, by the appearance of a mighty black man named Meanwhile, Cereno and Babo begin to confer privately, a very unusual and grievous affront to the normal conduct of captains. Benito Cereno is one of those books better appreciated on subsequent readings. However, Delano never considers that slavery, too, is inherently piratical, since it steals people in other countries and sells them as slaves. He is always accompanied by his faithful slave Babo, who supports Cereno at all times.
Cereno's cabin is filled with eerie Catholic imagery, and his furniture suggests an Inquisition torture chamber: an ideal stage for Babo's delicate psychological torment. The hatchet-polishers sit down again and Delano notices that Cereno has fallen into the arms of his servant again. He and his men reach the ship, which they see is called the San Dominick. On the morning of September 17, 1799, Amasa Delano, the captain of an American sealer, looks out on the bay of St. Through these travels, Melville became sensitive to the plight of indigenous people oppressed by colonialism. Cereno looks dismayed and, after composing himself, tells Delano that he does indeed trust Babo.
The first mentioning of it appears in a letter of 17 April 1855 from adviser Putnam's. On a few occasions, the slaves behave violently toward the Spanish sailors, hitting them in a way that Delano believes should merit immediate punishment. After reading a page three or four times without understanding anything, smoke starts coming out of my ears. Captain Delano is a kindly man who is personally opposed to slavery, but he's also a product of his place and time. Looking anxiously at Babo, Cereno adds that he has heard the same type of comments about Spanish and Native American blood. He is white and he is wearing the captain's hat. After all, Cereno must be in charge somehow.
He believes that Cereno might have intentionally disparaged his white sailors because he knew they might reveal something of his plotting. He passes from this old salt to the part of the deck mostly taken up by African women and their babies. The reader probably understands what has happened long before the American captain we see most of the story through him does, but there is plenty enough in the revelation that has you paging backwards and stopping yourself from paging forwards. Cereno then appears and Delano asks him if he can organize the sharing of provisions, so that no one might take too many or otherwise be inefficient. Captain Delano and his crew awaken off Sta Maria Island off the Southern coast of Chile to find a Spanish ship almost adrift and in shambles as if almost a ghost ship. By re-reading the story, the reader can properly understand Cereno's behavior in any given situation. Perseverance, encounters the Spanish slave ship, the Tryal, on February 20, 1805, in a deserted bay at the island of Santa Maria.
Don Benito Cereno Character Analysis in Benito Cereno
Yet somehow it has never been a favorite with the average reader. On August 17, the San Dominick arrived at Santa Maria, casting anchor very near Delano's ship. There's suspense, there's ambiguity ambiguity galore! Cereno, however, adamantly refuses to part from Babo's side, even for a moment. The body was burned to ashes; but for many days, the head, that hive of subtlety, fixed on a pole in the Plaza, met, unabashed, the gaze of the whites; and across the Plaza looked towards St. A Glossary of Chickens Princeton University Press, 2013.
Can it be possible, Delano thinks, that Cereno, who appears so docile before Babo, is such a tyrant behind closed doors? Melville records every gesture, every thought, every oscillation from foreboding to relief that Captain Delano experiences. Melville and Cereno Herman Melville, who is best known for his classic whaling novel Moby Dick, wrote his novella Benito Cereno, a story about a revolt on a slaver ship in 1855. The Spanish captain behaves in unstable ways, alternating rude words, coughing fits, and moments of weakness in which he cannot stand. Although Cereno initially shows joy at this suggestion, he tells Delano, with a bitter voice, that he cannot go. The issue is "not his lack of intelligence, but the shape of his mind, which can process reality only through the sieve of a culturally conditioned benevolent racism," and Delano is eventually "conned by his most cherished stereotypes. With every reading the narrative voices further clarify themselves, and the problems recede even as the ambiguities accumulate. Cereno tells Delano of a cruel combination of violent storms followed by disease-filled calms, which carried away a great proportion of his crew over the course of nine months or so.
Bergmann, "Benito Cereno", "Bartleby", and "The Encantadas" were the most frequently praised by reviewers of the stories that make up The Piazza Tales. In order to ease his mind, Delano takes a turn about the deck. In 1799, an American ship captain, Amasa Delano, from Duxbury, Massachusetts, has anchored his trader ship in a bay near the coast of Chile. Melville is superb at providing an atmosphere of threat as we maneuver our way through the book's pages. Later testimony by sailors corroborates his story. I've read quite a few editorials of this book since 2014 and it seems to be one of those rare antiracist texts from a white writer, though Melville is no ordinary white writer. This was fired six times, without any other effect than cutting away the fore top-mast stay, and some other small ropes which were no hindrance to her going away.
However, Atufal refuses to ask forgiveness. He learns that the ship is called the San Dominick and meets its captain, Delano is disturbed by the incidents he observes among the hatchet polishers and oakum pickers, such as when a black boy slashes the head of a white boy with a knife. Meanwhile, Delano's questions regarding the veracity of Cereno's story return. Over time, Delano becomes increasingly annoyed by the intimacy that exists between Cereno and Babo. A follow up book, Hector Plasm: Totentanz, was published in 2009 and has the theme of Halloween celebrations around the world. Delano begins to suspect that Cereno is not a Spanish captain at all, but an imposter.
When the captain and a few men head over to investigate, they find Spanish sailors and black slaves desperate for water and supplies. People, Melville suggests, are more likely to seek confirmation of their beliefs in the world than to be open to questioning them. In saving the slaves from being murdered, Delano asserts his authority as well as his moral uprightness, by insisting that good conduct and respect of the law should be applied to everyone, regardless of race. Adopting a cheerful attitude, he asks Cereno about the strikingly close relationship the Spanish captain has with his black slave, who behaves like a personal counselor. Amasa Delano is a naïve, optimistic ship captain from Massachusetts. He notes that, although Delano spent many hours with Cereno, Delano ultimately suspected innocent Cereno—not Babo—to be a murderer. The Spanish captain is too full of contradictions for the honest, foolish Delano to trust him completely.
Benito Cereno takes place in 1799. Set in entirely different historical circumstances, Benito Cereno: the potentially oppressive nature of human law, the meaning of sin, and the possibility of moral redemption. Delano attempts to secure a private audience with Cereno in order to discuss the matter of recompense for the food and riggings. Using a similar technique to Bartleby, The Scrivener , the main character is revealed indirectly, through the eyes of a benevolent witness. This short Gothic novella begins ploddingly and quite dull but builds in tension and horror almost imperceptibly unless you already know the story to a sudden and all-encompassing tragic climax. Physically and morally exhausted by the ordeal on the San Dominick, Benito Cereno retires to a monastery following the inquest, where he often visits with Delano.
