The idea of nature in "Benito Cereno."

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

terraces of swells, and sweeping round as if leading to the grottoes

below. And overhanging all was the balustrade by his arm, which,

partly stained with pitch and partly embossed with moss, seemed

the charred ruin of some summer-house in a grand garden long

running to waste. (74) The image of a garden is especially apt here since it was a classical symbol of order. What Delano sees is, however, merely an imaginary order significantly superimposed onto a chaos of water. The scene partakes of the enchantment that Delano temporarily falls prey to, and that in turn suggests the greater "enchantment" of Delano's entire life. Delano has, it will be recalled, a "charmed eye and ear" (96; my emphasis). He is, however, in this case quickly disenchanted when, forgetting that the rotting balustrade is, after all, only a rotting balustrade, he leans his weight on it and nearly topples into the sea. The scene dramatizes Delano's nearly fatal dependence on a "nature" without objective basis, and thereby reveals the radically transformative power of Delino's vision.

As we have seen, Benito Cereno dramatizes the vast distance between Delano's idealism and reality. Barry Philips has argued that "Emerson exhibited the same defects in his vision of the world and of providence as Delano displayed in his. In Amasa Delano, more than in any other of his major characters, Melville concentrated his contempt for the optimism of the American idealist" (191-92). This is true especially of Delano's view of nature. If Melville's Delano could have read Moby-Dick, he would have realized that nature is complex and multifaceted, and that one might just as easily (and legitimately!) allegorize the triumph of diabolism as of benignity in nature. The most eloquent spokesman for this view is Queequeg, who states, ". . .de god was made shark must be one dam Ingin" (Moby-Dick 257). Moreover, Melville makes clear that Delano's attribution of transcendental benignity to nature works in the same way as does his refusal to accept "the imputation of malign evil in man" (47): both, though apparent testimonials to an ennobling faith, are ultimately a means of ignoring evil--his own as well as others'. And to ignore evil is a dangerous thing to do, for whether it is in the wilderness without or the even murkier one within, the beast in the jungle eventually leaps. (1) Delano's "innocence" is belied by his assumption of the archerypal position of dominance modeled by the satyr in the medallioned sternpiece of the San Dominick--a position mirrored by Babo, whom Delano hypocritically regards as a "ferocious pirat[e]" (99). Delano is similarly implicated in evil by his association with images of piracy, such as in the name of his boat (which was the name of the ship of buccaneer William Ambrose Cowley) and the fact that the chief mate whom he sends to retake the San Dominick was himself formerly "a privateer's man" (101). Finally, although Delano, like Babo, kills no one with his own hands, he is nevertheless responsible for the deaths caused in retaking the ship, as well as for the atrocity of re-enslaving all of the blacks aboard the San Dominick. For especially lucid and well documented discussions of these and other dimensions of Delano's evil, see Kavanagh, Emery, and Zagarell. (2) Melville gives the black women the status of active participants in the rebellion by noting in the deposition that "all the negroes, though not in the first place knowing to the design of the revolt, when it was accomplished, approved it" (111). More importantly, he heightens the inflammatory role of the black women by noting that