Herman Melville: Literary works

Herman Melville’s writing was, most of all, influenced by the strict Calvinism of the Dutch Reformed Church with its doctrine of predestination. He could never free himself from the sense of man’s imperfection and ominous fate looming over man’s life. Another important influences are the sea voyages he took aboard a series of whalers, which provided material for his books and gave a definite shape to his thought. He had a great affinity for the exotic and the fantastic, as well as for the spacious and mysterious aspects of nature. The sea itself, the drastic changes in the seascape, the cruelty, the threat of mutinies, the injustice and cruelty of justice, the exotic, the pastoral and the idyllic existence of the natives were all part of Melville’s experience that he brought into his works. His experience as a common sailor made Melville believe that no mind could ever be free from the sense of imperfection and ill fate that the Calvinistic idea of the original sin emphasizes. In 1850 he stated this attitude in his work, “Hawthorne and His Mosses.” Melville’s works were highly influenced by Hawthorne’s, as the two were very close and shared similar philosophies.

Having returned from the South Seas, Melville wrote seven novels in six years. The first two novels, Typee and Omoo are both picaresque tales based on Melville’s own sea experiences, full of vivid descriptions and memorable documentation of evils wrought by the Christianizers. In both novels he gives detailed descriptions of primitive man and his customs, his government and religion. They both depict man’s everlasting quest for the Garden of Eden and glorify Rousseau’s idea of the noble savage. However, the Eden proves to be illusory and Melville’s protagonists cannot survive in such world, devoid of any life of the mind or of the spirit.

Mardy is his next romance, published in 1849. In this mixture of a conventional adventure tale, mild satire and allegory, Melville describes an imaginary archipelago in the South Pacific, which is supposed to represent various countries. The central character is in a search of a symbol of innocence, beauty and perfection, which is reminiscent of the quest for the Holy Grail. However, he discovers that there is a difference between appearance and reality and that the world of mortals is evil, both physically and morally. The book is today almost unreadable except for a rarely dedicated lover of antiquarian literary, philosophical, metaphysical and political mixture.

The search for certitude, truth and moral harmony continues in the next two novels, Redburn and White Jacket. Fictional autobiographies based on Melville’s experiences. Both novels deal with initiation of young men into the world of evil and abound in realistic detail, even though the journey is more important for the moral quest that the realistic descriptions. The discovery of the self is reached through a direct confrontation with the harsh reality; the journey ends with the destruction of the old self and rebirth into the world of adulthood. Both books were reminiscent of Robinson Crusoe and other works by Daniel Defoe.

Moby Dick, Melville’s masterpiece, was published in 1851. At first it was not very well accepted as the audience thought it to be a plain sea-story spoiled by frequent, irrelevant, gloomy meditations. However, it is an American epic based on the archetypical myth of the frontier and the quest for ideal, about the alienation brought about by the search of the ideal, a book about the Emersonian ideal of self-reliance

and individualism, epic that celebrates the ideals of equality and brotherhood. Above all, it is a metaphysical search of the absolute order of things as they stand in the mind of God, or a God-like man. It is difficult to classify it into one genre, as here we have mixed straightforward narrative, fictionalized autobiography, factual accounts of whaling, scientific realism, along with the legends and mythology, moral and philosophical speculations, dramatic techniques and, above all, epic. As an American epic, it celebrates customs, ideas occupations, people and the ideals that characterize the 19th century American scene. The courageousness, skill, expediency, self-sufficiency the coarseness, strength, inquisitiveness, and above all the restless, nervous energy and the dominant and rebellious individualism of the main protagonists epitomize the basic traits of the American frontier character.

The next novel, Pierre, deals with love, incest and death. Rather that placing his characters in the sea setting, Melville chooses to place them in real situations, where they deal with their everyday involvements and moral dilemmas. During the 1850, Melville wrote stories for magazines. They were collected and published in 1856 in The Piazza Tales, and among them the most successful and famous ones are “Bartleby the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno.” Bartleby the Scrivener is as autobiographical work dramatizing Melville’s literary failure. At the same time it communicates man’s sense of alienation and inability to establish meaningful communication with other men and mocks the absurdity of Thoreau’s idea of civil disobedience. Benito Cereno was written under the threat of the Civil War and is Melville’s contribution to the great slavery debate. The thematic structure of the story transcends the immediate political and social occasion and essentially deals with the nature of evil that springs from the dichotomy of appearance and reality. It is a story of deception and self-deception and the evil that the story embodies derives its overwhelming terror from the fact that its source is hidden behind the masked world which makes it impossible to deal with.

After The Piazza tales, Melville published The Confidence Man, a pessimistic book of a disillusioned man, written in the form of a comedy. Melville here questions the value of the entire moral system of Western man. His last work, Billy Budd was published posthumously, in 1924. The story is set in Europe, after the French Revolution, and it offers Melville’s final statement of his chief themes- the relation between good and evil and the relationship between innocence and experience. The epitome of Melville’s final vision of human predicament might be considered to be his long, philosophical poem Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. It is regarded as America’s most thoughtful contribution to the conflict of religious faith and Darwinism scepticism that obsessed English contemporaries. Its main protagonist is another of Melville’s seekers for truth. The journey ends with a realization that all men, if they are to accept their humanity and remain human, must become living cross-bearers, balanced, rather that defiant and destructive, not withdrawing, but involved, life-living and intricately wise.

The character of Captain Delano

Captain Amasa Delano is one of the three central characters in Melville’s story “Benito Cereno”. Even though he is not the title character, Delano is in the focus of the story, as the narration is limited to his point of view. The function of this is to provide the dramatic irony, but more importantly to enable the

readers to explore his thought process and understanding, or rather misunderstanding of the conditions on board the San Dominick.

The plot of the story begins when Captain Delano boards the ship in order to help the crew and the passengers, but he does not realise that in fact there has been a mutiny before his arrival on the ship and that the situation is not in fact as it seems. The implication that Captain is a trusting, good-hearted sort of fellow, given at the beginning, starts to sound ironic and as the narration progresses, we start to question his innocence, for it appears that it does not apply to all things. For example, he compares Negros at one occasion to Newfoundland dogs and calls them “stupid”, expressing his prejudice that Whites are superior to the “Negroes”. We can also see the intra-white racism at work when he judges of the Spanish Captain, Cereno. Delano’s racism is even more evident when he praises the mulatto who serves them lunch by suggesting that mixing white blood with black improves the black. However, Melville does not criticise his behaviour openly, but rather leaves it for the readers to decide whether Delano’s nature is truly innocent or not.

Delano does notice a few unusual occurrences: the lack of discipline, strange proportion of whites in comparison to blacks, poor maintenance of the vessel, and ominous attitude of the six Ashantees who polish their rusty hatchets, and so on. Thus, from the very beginning Delano has a problem of trying to make sense of the signs around him. Delano relies on his reasoning and experience, but they only offer the illusion of reality and certainty. Different rationalisations of the signs he makes lead to the misinterpretation of the whole situation. These rationalisations become the focus of the story, as we try to understand why he makes them and why he responds to the whole situation in the way he does.

The disorder he notices on board Delano ascribes to the Spaniard’s poor leadership. According to Delano, Cereno displays lack of energy and conviction, characteristic of the aristocratic Catholic “Old World”. On the other hand, Delano is attracted to his Negro servant’s fidelity, that is, according to him, an expression of natural order. Such racist reasoning and behaviour are in a way reasonable and understandable if we keep in mind that the story is set in 1799, the time when nobody in Delano’s position could have suspected that the Spanish captain was in constant and immediate danger of losing his life if he had given the slightest indication that the things were not as they seemed. Who would have thought that an uneducated black slave from Africa could have organized a rebellion and established order on the ship? Thus, captain’s behaviour results from the common world view of the Northerners of the time: ignorance of the blacks, the feeling of superiority over others and optimism. New World or not, the rationalisations he makes have failed him. Even more striking is the fact that he, after everything is revealed at the end seems to have learned nothing, and his character remained equally clueless as it was in the beginning.

Captain Delano’s character served as a mirror to the American readers of the time when the story was written. They themselves possessed similar racial prejudices that spoiled their reasoning. Melville thus, by depicting Delano’s character, here warns his readers of the power of expectations and appearance in forming opinions, but also how these opinions are difficult, or even impossible to change once formed.

There is no doubt that Delano saw America itself as an ascendant trading and military power, and Spain as fading Imperial one. However, what Melville is trying to do is to warn his American reader that the same may happen to them if they are not cautious. Melville deliberately depicts Cereno’s ship so as to symbolically resemble America, but Captain Delano does not notice the similarity. The symbolism of the words “follow your leader”, written in chalk on the ship might read as follows: if you follow your leader (America following Spain, where Spain in this case stands for Europe) in struggling to subdue those different from yourself (other races represented by the dark satyr hanging from the ship) you will finish only in a struggle to death (as the figures show). The suggestion that America risks going the way of the San Dominick if it follows the Spanish in its reliance to slavery is powerful and explicit.

Benito Cereno: The Character of Benito

This man is the main protagonist and the bearer of the title of the novella “Benito Cereno”. It is a story by Herman Melville concerning the behavior of slave owners towards the slaves, meaning the black people. It was written in 1855 at the time when people were discussing whether slavery should be abolished or not. It is often thought that slave trade was started by America, but actually the Europeans were the ones who started this tradition.

Our central point in this essay will be Benito himself. He comes from Spain where he made his fortune on selling human beings, more precisely, slaves. Actually, Benito is not the owner of the ship we encounter him on, but only a servant himself. He is the lead in charge of the ship. Consequently, he seems more of a victim then a villain.

In the beginning Cerano seems rather a strange man, very nervous and strangely aloof; his behavior confuses Delano, the captain of another ship. However, Delano understands that Cereno's behavior is a result of the trouble Cereno and his ship have suffered. Don Benito, as he is often called, is constantly assisted by his Negro servant, Babo. Babo seems like a faithful dog, and never does he leave his master on his own.

However, there is something very odd about the relationship between Babo and Benito. The reader understands why Cereno's eyes go glassy for a moment when Delano asks him what has happened to his ship; Cereno is trying to remember the story Babo told him to tell if asked. When Babo shows Cereno the bloody razor, the reader understands his terror - Babo is threatening him. This situation is not easy to notice because one would expect that a white person would have authority over a black one, but obviously the situation is different. So, the reader is tricked into believing that Babo simply maintains the images of other slaves of the day. Melville uses these slave conventions as a literary tool to create a non-conformist character of color.

Benito was extremely shattered after all this evil, he could not bear to look at Babo anymore. Also, he could not bring himself to go home, but rather retired to a monastery accompanied by the monk Infelez. His knowledge of evil has robbed him even of the will to live and because of this fact, three months later Benito dies. Captain Delano tries to comfort him before passing away, telling him to forget about the

situation which is tormenting him, but Captain Benito answers that those who are not tormented by their memories, those who forget them are not human. This problem Benito Cereno has is caused by being a Yankee representative where he does not allow himself to be dragged out of his self-complacency. He constructs his vision of the world upon his belief in the intellectual superiority of the white man as well as moral superiority of Americans versus Europeans. Cereno sees the blacks as natural servants, because they are as he says of a limited mind. Some would consider Belano a good man, someone who is being tormented and ‘terrorized’, but can he really be viewed that way? In reality, not. How can someone who is originally trading slaves be a good person of fragile feelings?

When one first start reading this story, one thinks that the main character is captain Delano but this is not right because his character does not change during the story, only his awakening to the true relationship of Cereno and the slaves. Rather, the protagonist is Cereno himself, who falls under "the shadow of the Negro" in the course of the tale, eventually leading to his death. But upon a first reading, until the very end, it seems almost certain that the story is going to be Delano's, and Cereno will be revealed to be some sort of villain. By re-reading the story, the reader can properly understand Cereno's behavior in any given situation.

Benito is all in all a representation and embodiment of Europe, Spain and the old world. He brings to us their thoughts, attitudes and views on all important questions and situations of the time.

Only two sides of a three way story are represented here. Babo is the only one who has no chance to present his point of view and he has no influence on our opinion.