Anti-Racist?

 “Benito Cereno” by Herman Melville, 1855

This is a novella by one of the great masters of American literature, Herman Melville, who is most famous for Moby Dick.  Both are sea tales, but this one concerns slavery, which Melville seemingly hated.  A Spanish slave ship has run out of food and water rounding stormy Cape Horn and has drifted into a bay in Chile with torn sails.  It is captained by a seemingly arrogant or incompetent Spaniard, Don Benito Cereno.  Also in the bay is an 'American' sealer led by a kind and somewhat naïve Captain Delano, who comes to the ragged ship’s aid.  Yet the story is set-up as a kind of mystery.

A few remaining crew members, an ‘invalid’ captain and slaves tread the decks of the ruined San Dominick. There are many more slaves than crew, which they explain was due to the crew getting sick and dying because of their weak constitutions.  Delano provides food, pumpkin, water and cider to the ship in a ‘Republican’ fashion, yet notices some strange behavior on the part of captain Cereno, his black servant Babo, the other slaves and the remaining crew members. For instance there are no officers left except the captain. Two white crew members are thrown to the deck or cut by a blade while Delano watches.  He is surprised and can’t get an answer. He never gets straight answers to his questions from Cereno because of interruptions, coughing fits or silence.  Presiding over the decks are four grizzled Africans, sharpening hatchets incessantly.  In his time on the ship, he mulls every possible scenario but one, some very dark, then always reverting to optimism. 

Cereno tells a story about damage to the sails, men swept overboard, scurvy and fever and being becalmed for two weeks after rounding Cape Horn.  Delano notes that it would only take a day after rounding the Horn to get to this bay.  Cereno then forgets that he said he rounded the Horn.  Even more curiously, he refuses to meet with Delano alone, without his faithful servant Babo and refuses to leave the ship alone either. 

The story is told in a slow, florid and overly-detailed narrative of Delano’s thoughts and actions as he wanders the decks of the San Dominick.  Melville ends this brooding story, full of suspicions and foreboding, with a battle.  According to critics, the story highlights ‘the unreliable narrator’ concept. Like a detective story told by a biased detective, we gradually realize what is really going on.  As Delano bids adieu from his whale boat to the San Dominick to get back to his own ship, the Bachelor’s Delight,  - Cereno and the rest of the white crew suddenly jump into the sea.  Only then does Delano realize something unforeseen is up!

It was a slave rebellion all along.  Delano's crew rescue Cereno and 3 sailors and capture Babo as he has jumped after Cereno and Delano to kill them with two knives.  They give chase to the San Dominick, which is drifting away.  They succeed in retaking the ship after a battle where their arms and organization prevail, killing some 18 'pirates.' 

What follows is a long deposition of Cereno at a court in Lima, Peru, detailing the whole incident, from the slaughter of the crew and the slaves’ owner and the play-acting meant to deceive Delano.  This included fake-chaining one of the uprising’s giant ring-leaders to seem like a prisoner instead.  The ultimate goal of the mutineers was to round the Cape of Horn and reach Senegal in Africa.

What is odd about this story is that Captain Delano, who is from Massachusetts, has few thoughts about slavery itself.  He accepts it and takes a patronizing attitude towards blacks instead, seeing them as primitive but pleasant.   1855 was in the run-up to the U.S. Civil War and it was one of the burning topics in the North. Massachusetts was a hotbed of abolitionism.  Delano seems a fictional creation, a kind, liberal dimwit of sorts, a necessary foil to this plot.    

What a ‘white’ reader in 1855 might of thought during this story is not of the cruelties slavery forces on people, but that ‘Ashantees’ are duplicitous and deadly even to kind people, and anyone should be wary of them.  Melville quotes Cereno as to the ‘shadow’ here – it is “the Negro.” Babo, the leader of the revolt, is hung, his head put on a spike in Lima’s central Plaza and his body burned.  I am not sure this is an anti-racist or anti-slavery story as advertised by the lit critics! An abolitionist might think, 'well, that was inevitable, given the violence inherent in slavery.' However, to many other 'gentle' readers in 1855 it would actually inspire fear and horror, and not of slavery, but for its white victims.  

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “slavery,” “Creole Rebellion.” 

May Day Books has many volumes on the Civil War, slavery and the like.  I got this at its ‘used book’ section!

Red Frog / April 24, 2025