The idea of nature in "Benito Cereno."

Studies in Short Fiction, Spring, 1993 by Terry J. Martin

For Delano, the meaning of human experience must likewise be understood in light of this allegory of divine providence, for no act can be seen apart from the divine justice that, in his eyes, actively dispenses reward and punishment in this world. Thus, his suspicion that there is a plot to kill him oddly brings about an examination of his own internal merit, as if murder could not have its root in external aggression, but rather must signify a priori some form of karmic retribution for the victim's own past transgression(s). He asks, "Who would murder Amasa Delano? His conscience in clean. There is someone above" (77). The statement presupposes a direct empirical causality between human behavior and divine justice; with astonishing naivete Delano assumes that God would never let anything happen to the innocent (i.e., to himself), unless he had done something to deserve it. It also reveals how Delano is able to see his continued survival and good fortune as objective verification of his own innocence rather than of his cleverly disguised but nonetheless aggressive will-to-power.(1)

Delano runs into problems, however, when the events that he witnesses often point with an almost irresistible logic to meanings that are incompatible with the existence of a benevolent providence. The whispered conversations between Babo and Benito, the nasty look of the Ashantee hatchet-polishers, the numerous signs communicated to him by the Spanish sailors, and the apparently ubiquitous presence of the imposing Atufal, along with many other equally disconcerting impressions, all suggest the existence of some sinister plot that the allegory of transcendental benignity forces him to deny. Ironically, even those spectacles that most deserve Delano's unqualified trust and sympathy, such as Benito's reduced and pathetic state, also serve to inspire the American with suspicion. In a momentary vision worthy of the completely duplicitous world of The Confidence Man, Delano reflects, "For even to the degree of simulating mortal disease, the craft of some tricksters had been known to attain. To think that, under the aspect of infantile weakness, the most savage energies might be couched--those velvets of the Spaniard but the silky paw to his fangs" (64-65). Thus, no sign, no matter how apparently innocent, carries any absolute guarantee of its legitimacy. Later, Delano recollects similar accounts that he has heard of the mortally deceptive tactics of Malay pirates and that "now, as stories . . . recurred" 68)--stories that have, nonetheless, a certain power and plausibility to them that cannot easily be dismissed, and that in effect challenge his own "story."

As these examples suggest, Delano's allegorical system of understanding is not entirely self-sufficient. Although it structures and gives meaning to Delano's experience, it is also sustained by that experience--that is, it requires verification from and through his experience. It is in this way vulnerable to confutation. It is, at best, a precariously poised allegory that is in continual danger of being toppled by the logic of its tenor. And the need to read the clues around him serves to quicken the crisis of interpretation: how can he be sure that the world is not ordered according to some other allegory instead? As Delano affirms, there is in at least one sense "a difference between the idea of Don Benito's darkly pre-ordaining Captain Delano's fate, and Captain Delano's lightly arranging Don Benito's" (70); on that slender distinction rests the very nature of the world Delano inhabits.