Herman Melville uses Benito Cereno as a voice for his observations and comments on the state of America and its people. He uses the two captains to represent two opposing attitudes toward slavery adopted by his pre-Civil War audience, and his own ideas about where the country is headed.
In the end of the story, Captain Delano seems to learn that things are not necessarily always as they seem, but that is about all he learns. Even this, he seems to label as purely circumstantial and not to be applied to every situation. There does come a moment of clarity during the struggle between Don Benito and Babo right after the two have jumped into Captain Delanos boat, and later during his discussion of these events with Don Benito, when the good Captain becomes aware of what is actually going on and the faults in his assumptions. Instead of changing his assumptions however, Delano simply says what good luck it was that he was so nave to what was really going on because if he had been more suspicious he would have tried to remedy the situation and may have only added to the mess.
Before he sets foot on the San Dominick, Delano knows that something is not right with the ship. He knows he is in a bad place for anything to go wrong because no one is around to help him, and that there are stories surrounding the area that should make him nervous. He is not nervous however, because he is, a person of a singularly undistrustful nature, not liable, except in extensive and repeated incentives, and hardly then, to indulge in personal alarms, any way involving the imputation of malign evil in man.(2372) I believe this is actually an understatement.
Even in the extreme and repeated incentives he encounters on the San Dominick, any alarm that he experiences he immediately rationalizes and ignores. When Benitos story falls apart, and the servant, who apparently makes him so nervous in the scene in his cabin when Babo is shaving Benito, wont leave his side and after watching the two conference together over every step the captain takes, not even when Benito starts asking him all about the crew and fire power, and supplies on his ship, not even then does Delano take heed of these obvious alarms. He would rather think Don Benito was crazy than think that either Benito or Babo had anything but good intentions for him and his crew, as well as for each other.
Several times he uses the setting to dispel any misgivings he has regarding his situation on the San Dominick. At first he says that he only feels uneasy because of the eerie atmosphere. The perfect calm of the place and the bleak gray sky dont give him much hope of getting either the Bachelors Delight or the San Dominick safely to port, and the lack of a good wind prolongs his stay with the strangers because his boat cannot use sails. Later, after the wind picks up a little, and after spending a little more time on the ship observing the strange way it is run and Don Benitos more apparent lack of control, he uses the wind to cheer himself. He thinks that surely his own boat will return soon with supplies and that this wind will serve him well, that he will save the ailing Don Benito and his ship, and that any uneasiness he experienced was mere foolishness and everything will soon be as it should be just because the wind has picked up.
When he tries to cheer Don Benito with news of the wind, he gets no response. Delano thinks he does not welcome this change in the weather because he does not believe it will last owing to the story he has been told of their journey. A story Delano didnt completely believe, but he is not suspicious of this, he just feels sorry for the poor affected captain. In reality, Benito does not welcome the wind because he knows that either Captain Delano will leave and he will lose control of his ship to Babo again, or Babo will follow through with his plan to take the Bachelors Delight. However, Delano is so unsuspecting that this goes unnoticed.
Part of the reason for Delano being so unaware of the situation is, as Melville says, he is by nature a very trusting man. He has a lot of faith in the general goodness of the human race. The other part of his problem, I believe, lies in the assumptions he makes about Babo and the rest of the Africans on the ship. He doesnt think they are capable of outwitting the Spaniards and taking control of the ship. After all, they are the slaves and the Spaniards are the masters, it is ridiculous to him to think that the roles might be reversed. On observing Don Benito praising the blacks and speaking poorly of his own sailors, he thinks, The whites, too, by nature were the shrewder race.
A man with some evil design, would he not be likely to speak well of that stupidity which was blind to his depravity, and malign that intelligence from which it might not be hidden?(2395) He thinks that if anyone is plotting anything, it must be Don Benito, not that he seems very capable, Delano has already said that he thinks he might be affected mentally by the stress of the fictitious voyage. However, as unlikely a character as Benito is to be plotting anything, it is the only explanation open to Delano, because anything else would put the whites in a position of submission to the blacks, and this is inconceivable to Delano.
On the voyage to Lima, Don Benito finally puts all the pieces together for Delano, explaining Babos role as conspirator and the captains necessity of conforming to his former slaves will. Still, Delano is unwilling to change his assumptions about the Africans intelligence and cunning. He simply says how lucky they are that everything turned out the way it did, and that they should forget about it. He makes the comment to Benito that, the past is past, why moralize upon it?(2426) He says that the sun has forgotten about it, that the sea and the sky have turned over new leaves, and that he and Benito should do the same. Benito replies that this is because, they have no memory they are not human.(2426)
The American and the Spaniard play opposite each other here, as they do throughout the story. Delanos physical health and friendly altruistic attitude represent all the things missing in Don Benito. Similarly, the sickly, introverted, suspicious captain of the San Dominick is a reflection of all the qualities missing in Delano, including the thoughtful contemplation that serves both to make him aware of his world, and to give him his grimmer outlook on the world. Both captains can be used to represent aspects of Melvilles audience.
For the most part, his readers would have identified with Delano. He represents the general pre-Civil War American public. Several times Melville refers to him as, the American and we can easily make the transition to a more general reading of this title. As a preface to the excerpts from the trial, we are told that, at first, many of the events as Don Benito recalled them were not taken seriously because of his disturbed mental state. It says he, raved of some things which could never have happened.(2417) This reaction is indicative of many of the assumptions Delano makes regarding the cunning of the blacks aboard the ship.
The American public at the time was very content in thinking that their African slaves were mentally inferior and wanted nothing more that to please their masters the way Babo appears to desire the health and happiness of his master. The reality, however, as Don Benito is all too aware, is that, not only are they cunning enough to want something more, but they can take this inane assumption and use it to their advantage the way Babo does to fool our good Captain Delano. The American public may think that they are learning something along with Captain Delano, specifically that things are not always as they seem, but if they never apply this to their assumptions about the mental capacity of their slaves, they are missing the point.
Leaving it up to the reader to determine exactly what it is that Delano learns at the end of the tale propagates this ambiguity. If the reader is willing to analyze the story as more than a story, he will eventually see that his assumptions are wrong, however, it is more likely that he will just pass it off as an entertaining story. Another reason for Delanos unwillingness to give the blacks credit for their cunning is that this would imply something evil about slavery. If the blacks actually are not happily living a purposeful life serving their masters, they must want something else and be capable of more. If this is true, slavery is no longer the natural order of things, the weak inferior race serving the superiors, instead it is maligning nature and is inherently evil.
The small portion of the American public who would have identified with Don Benito at the end of the novel are those who look deeper into the meaning of the story. They would notice that although the Spanish Captains tale was brushed aside at first, it was later supported by the testimony of the remaining sailors. They might learn, along with Delano and the others, that appearances can be deceiving, but they would realize that this applies to Delanos assumptions about the intelligence of the blacks on the ship, and consequently to their own assumptions about the state of their own black slaves in the South. They would then realize that the ways of their world are dieing along with Don Benito, and that this novel really foretells the passing of an age.
In the opening paragraphs, after describing the unusually trusting disposition of Captain Delano, Melville comments, Whether in view of what humanity is capable, such a trait implies, along with a benevolent heart, more than ordinary quickness and accuracy of intellectual perception, may be left to the wise to determine.(2372) Melville is asking us to look deeper into his story, saying that it has not been written just for entertainment, and he would have favored Don Benitos interpretation of events over Delanos no matter how bleak and unappealing it may seem.
He saw that the reality of slavery and the direction America was headed was very bleak and unappealing, and it wouldnt do any good to ignore the reality of it any longer. He doesnt come out and directly say this to his audience however, because it would not have been received very well. By making these implications more ambiguous than we would like, he is actually reaching a wider audience and not risking offending them so much that they would right him off as crazy they way Delano and the court were ready to do with Don Benito.