Appearance vs. Reality

Herman Melville proposes a point that things are not always what they seem. There are a plethora of examples that follow through with this statement, and his novela “Benito Cereno” falls into that category. With stories like this, the reader suspects one thing, but is caught off guard by another. Symbolism plays an important part in this idea.

So, a point that really stood out to me was how Melville practically screamed “death” throughout the whole story. A prime example was the San Dominick itself. If you read closely, you could tell that it symbolizes decay. For instance,“Her keel seemed laid, her ribs put together, and she launched, from Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones… Battered and moldy, the castellated forecastle seemed some ancient turret long ago taken by assault, and then left to decay…” (146- 47). The description of the ship plays an important role, merely because it foreshadows the truth that the readers find out towards the end. It also hints the reader as to what happened to Aranda's body. When a word is being repeated a copious amount of times within one paragraph, then it must mean it is important. When the ship was first discovered, the scenery was described as “grey.” For instance in the third paragraph, “The morning was one peculiar to that coast. Everything was mute and calm; everything grey. The sea, though undulated into long roods of swells, seemed fixed, and was sleeked at the surface like waved lead that has cooled and set in the smelter’s mould. The sky seemed a grey mantle. Flights of troubled grey fowl, kith and kin with flights of troubled grey vapours among which they were mixed, skimmed low and fitfully over the waters, as swallows over meadows before storms. Shadows present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to come.” But these two pieces aren't the only things that can be seen as “grey.” Just in the beginning of the novela when we are introduced to Benito Cereno, his complexion can be seen as grey because nothing seems to make sense about him, especially to Delano. Benito Cereno has mental breakdowns, which has no happy medium. This is similar to the color grey because it is a combination of black and white. Cereno's fits go from one end of the spectrum, to another. For example, “'my poor, poor master!” wringing one hand, and with the other wiping the mouth. “But be patient, Senor,” again turning to Captain Delano, “these fits do not last long; master will soon be himself.” Don Benito reviving, went on; but as this portion of the story was very brokenly delivered, the substance only will here be set down” (58). Although I perceived “grey” as having a negative connotation throughout the story, I felt it was interesting that it also tied in with race, and that is the key to the story. The book was published right before the civil war, which means that the fight over slavery was a huge issue. I thought it was interesting that since the colored and the whites were interacting, it uplifted the “greyness” a little more.

One thing I found extremely interesting was the big reveal of Aranda's bones. I felt it was ironic how his body was hung over the “follow your leader” statement that the readers were notified was apart of the San Dominick. The irony comes into play for the obvious reasons, because Aranda was the leader of all of the slaves. Another thing I found ironic was how Melville put emphasis on the color white right before Aranda's body was revealed, “whipped away the canvas shroud about the beak, suddenly revealing, as the bleached hull swung round toward the open ocean, death for the figurehead, in a human skeleton; chalky comment on the chalked words below, “Follow your leader,” and it's intriguing because there is this whole racial issue and Aranda was white aboard a slave ship, and everything just ties in so perfectly.

All of the symbolism used ties in the whole theme that not everything is always what it seems. The repetition of grey ties in with the theme in a sense that the reader will not know what to expect since grey is such a neutral color. The death and decay foreshadowed the skeleton of Aranda, which is another example of the reader unexpected the outcome. All in all the novela caught the reader by surprise.

Melville, Herman. Benito Cereno. New York, New York: Penguin Group, 1986. Print.