The gaze of history in 'Benito Cereno.'

Studies in Short Fiction, Spring, 1995 by Dennis Pahl

Aligning himself with what he believes to be the strict laws of nature, Delano will romanticize all human events as conforming to a wholly "natural" order: hence signaling a desire to turn away from material history and, instead, embrace a kind of Emersonian idealism.(4) He initially believes, for instance, that the miserable conditions aboard the San Dominick, far from having any basis in social or political reality, could only have been caused by the sea's terrible storms and "obstinate" calms (69). For Delano misery is part of the universal law; as he believes: "In armies, in cities, in families, in nature herself; nothing more relaxes good order than misery" (51-52; emphasis added). Such naturalizing of events occurs as well in his repeated attempts to repress all potentially destabilizing aspects of the ship by transforming what he sees into purely domestic images. Thus he witnesses the death-ship as a kind of "summer-house" (74); and, in the deck cabin, site of an otherwise terrifying scene of Babo holding a blade to Cereno's neck, he imagines "the hall of some bachelor squire in the country" (82).

If Delano tries at every step to domesticate the San Dominick, even more so does he try to assimilate the strangeness of Benito Cereno. Like the ship itself, Cereno appears ghostly, "cadaverous" (94), without much to remark upon his status as an authority figure except his captain's title and uniform. It is only through these latter "signs" - the barest evidences of authority - that Delano can comprehend Cereno and thus locate him within a familiar world. But such signs offer Delano only the most provisional sense of order, inasmuch as they are constantly contradicted by the many enigmatic events around him, events whose main effect is to force Delano always to reinterpret the precise nature and intentions of his unpredictable Spanish host. Ever searching for a stable view of Cereno, Delano resembles the lawyer-narrator of "Bartleby the Scrivener," who, in trying to understand the inscrutable actions (or non-actions) of Bartleby, can do so only through the most rigorous methods of rationalization and acts of repression. In the same way that the lawyer finds "reasons" (by turns psychological, physical, and metaphysical) for Bartleby's preferences "not to" work, or move, or respond with direct answers, Delano similarly attempts to impose on Cereno's behavior a set of values that allows him to make perfect sense - "natural" sense - of the seemingly inscrutable Spaniard.

In Delano's mind, it is at first the natural hardships endured at sea that make Cereno seem "half-lunatic" (52, 53). After vacillating in his opinions, Delano tries to reduce the problem of deciphering Cereno to a simple moral opposition: either Cereno represents "innocent lunacy, or wicked imposture" (64). But even here such reasoning becomes but another way for Delano to domesticate the whole question of Cereno. For in his very formulation regarding the Spaniard, Delano effectively obscures the more accurate understanding of the situation: that Cereno's behavior really points to a case of innocent imposture (forced as Cereno is to "play" his role of captain). No doubt for one who is inclined to see the world in black-and-white terms - in terms of good and evil - such a possibility would be too "unnatural" even to contemplate.