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“Benito Cereno” by Herman Melville was published in 1855, seven years after the US-Mexican War. The novel was set in 1799 purposely because this year preceded the various wars of independence of Spain’s colonies. The story is from the perspective of American Captain Amos Delano, whose ship is anchored in a harbor on the coast of Chile. His ship encounters another ship that seemed to be in trouble. The ship was Spanish and under the supposed command of Don Benito Cereno. Delano sails out to the ship and finds out from its captain that it was in “sad disrepair”(146) because of an outbreak of scurvy and the depletion of their water reserves (147). The first thing that Delano noticed upon his approach to the Spanish vessel was the prow. “Whether the ship had a figurehead…was not quite certain, owing to canvas wrapped about that part…Rudely painted or chalked…along the forward side of a sort of pedestal below the canvas, was the sentence, SEGUID VUESTRO JEFE (‘follow your leader’)”(147). As for Don Cereno, “…the Spanish captain, a gentlemanly, reserved-looking, and rather young man to a stranger’s eye, dressed with singular richness [and showed] plain traces of recent sleepless cares and disquietudes”(149). On the distressed Spanish vessel, half of the whites on board had died, and the cargo of slaves were constantly on deck doing some sort of chore, which Captain Delano was surprised at because slaves were usually kept below decks. Delano merely assumed they were there to replace the dead sailors. Also, a black slave named Babo was constantly attending to Don Cereno, still recovering from what Captain Delano believed was a case of scurvy. Another person to mention is Atufal, a slave kept in chains for some unknown offense to Don Cereno, at least as far as Captain Delano knew. Delano observes these two peculiar slaves specifically, and others included the hatchet shiners, oakum pickers, and the female slave who was tending to her child, both of whom Delano discriminatingly refers to as being animal-like: she was “like a doe in the shade of a woodland… [with] her fawn …its hands, like two paws…”(174). Other observations that puzzled Captain Delano included: the way the slaves took much more of the food that he gave to Don Cereno when normally, the slaves would not get very much of the food for themselves; and the way a young slave struck a Spanish boy and received no rebuke from Cereno. “Here, passing from one suspicious thing to another, his mind revolved the strange questions put to him concerning [Cereno’s] ship”(168).
In the end and to Captain Delano’s surprise, he learns that the slaves had revolted against the vessel’s crew, killing most of them and all of the white passengers in their struggle. Babo was the leader the revolt and Atufal was his second-in-command. They plotted to force the ship to return them to their country, and when Captain Delano and his much-needed help came along, it was necessary for the slaves to pretend that the Spaniards were still in control. To be sure that the Spaniards didn’t try anything, Babo stuck like glue to Cereno so that Cereno was forced to keep silent about their troubles when speaking with Captain Delano or else Babo would hear him. This surprise ending explains many oddities about the situation on the Spanish vessel, including why Cereno gave all the food to the slaves (except for a single jug of cider). Since, unbeknownst at the time to Delano, the slaves had control over the Spaniards, to deny them food would be dangerous because the slaves might hurt or kill them after Delano’s departure. Eventually, Captain Delano helped Don Cereno regain control of the ship once the true story came out when Don Cereno leapt from the Spanish ship into Delano’s boat in an attempt to get away from Babo and the slaves onboard. The significance of the ship’s prow was that the covered figurehead was the body of the original captain of the ship. The words SEGUID VUESTRO JEFE had a different meaning than Delano may have assumed. “…Negro Babo…[had] said words to this effect [to Cereno and his crew]: ‘Keep faith with the blacks from here to Senegal, or you shall in spirit, as now in body, follow your leader…”(214). So the covered figurehead and motto were warnings to the Spaniards onboard to not try taking the ship back or else the slaves would kill them, too.
The fact that the two ships met off the coast of a Latin American country, Chile, has significance. Just as the year 1799 alluded to the period before the wars of independence by Spain’s colonies, the site where the ships meet also alludes to the Latin American colonies. Also, the lack of wind to move the struggling Spanish ship symbolizes Spain’s inability to prosper, which is part of their colonies’ motives for seeking independence. The book not only alludes to the wars of independence, but also discusses slavery and the way Americans and Spaniards recognized it. Some would argue that the author’s intention was to promote abolition using free indirect discourse, but in this case it is unclear whether Melville was actually pushing for abolition or merely weaving an interesting tale with characters realistic to the time period. One member of our group believes the story is not targeted as an abolitionist text because of the vagueness about whether or not Melville used free indirect discourse.
We do acknowledge the possibility that, with enough examination of Captain Delano’s words and thoughts, one could see where Melville might be projecting anti-slavery views through his characters rather than leaving them to direct discourse. An example of Delano’s words, later contradicted by the plot twist in the end, in which Delano gives some stereotypical or negative views of black slaves is as follows: “By [Cereno’s] side stood a black of small stature, in whose rude face, as occasionally, like a shepherd’s dog, he mutely turned it up into the Spaniard’s, sorrow and affection were equally blended”(149). By referring to Babo, who later certainly proved to be very unaffectionate of Cereno when he tried to stab him, as a dog, Delano has given his stereotypical and negative view of blacks as being like faithful dogs. When the surprise ending contradicts his racially biased view, some readers may interpret this contradiction as a means of using free indirect discourse to promote abolitionist views.
While the Black/White/Spanish relationship with regard to cultural characteristics isn’t the clearest, we think that ultimately the Spaniards garnered most of the attention for their once-extravagant ship and the state of decay and disorder that has come upon it. Part of the negative attention received by the Spaniards is due to the “Black Legend,” which is an accumulation of stories/tales spread around the world about Spain’s problems with and poor treatment of black slaves in the past as discussed in the lecture. While the characters never have a discourse over Spain’s problems with slavery, the images of the slave ship and the references made to its former glory show that the characters of the time still remember the “Black Legend” and they understand its effect upon their area. The fact that Melville mentions it shows that the authors of the 19th Century were unwilling or unable to forget about it as well.