The idea of nature in Benito Cereno

Abstract

Although many critics have analyzed specific natural images in Melville's Benito Cereno, no one has yet focused exclusively on the role of in the novella, nor looked fully at its problematic relation to Delano. Such an examination can both reveal much about Melville's artistry and enhance our understanding of the protagonist's special kind of self-delusion. Midway through the novella, Delano performs an act that is at once typical and revelatory of his ideology: overwhelmed fears for his life and doubts about providence, he turns to for reassurance: As [Delano] saw the benign aspect of nature, taking her innocent repose in the evening, the screened sun in the quiet camp of the west shining out like the mild light from Abraham's tent--as charmed eye and ear took in all these, with the chained figure of the black, clenched jaw and hand relaxed. (96-97) The personal qualities that Delano attributes to (i.e., its benign[ity] and innocen[ce]), together with the religious associations that the sight evokes, reveal a kind of Emersonian belief in the transcendent goodness and moral providence of nature. It is, in other words, God's benignity that Delano sees suffused throughout the scene. Delano is not a thoroughgoing pantheist; he retains the idea of a personal God, noticeable especially when he later declares, There is someone above (77). Nevertheless, for Delano, just as for Emerson, this transcendent spirit is shadowed forth in phenomenal nature, and Delano would no doubt agree with Emerson that natural are symbols of particular spiritual facts (13). This belief in effect turns into a vast allegory of the divine spirit. For Delano, the mere appearance of benignity in warrants belief in the transcendent reality of benignity. Delano turns to not only for reassurance but also for guidance and support. Nature seems for Delano to exhibit a direct interest in human affairs, in which it actively intervenes. Thus, even the most trivial occurrence, such as a pleasant tropical breeze, may convey a moral message to Delano. As Delano affirms to a despairing Cereno, These mild that now fan your cheek, do they not come with a human-like healing to you? Warm friends steadfast friends are the Trades (116). Delano assumes that if is constant in its beneficence, then Cereno's desperation must be essentially wrong and misguided. Nature seems to concur, and in Delano's estimation it openly rebukes Cereno for his moodiness: Meantime the sound of the parted waters came more and more gurglingly and merrily in at the windows; as reproaching him for his dark spleen; as telling him that, sulk as he might, and go mad with it, cared not a jot; since, whose fault was it, pray? (95) Delano even holds up as a model of human behavior. In his effort to persuade Cereno to forget the past, Delano points conclusively to the conduct of natural objects: See, yon bright sun has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned over new leaves (116). If forgets the past, then no doubt man ought to do so too. Delano's belief that possesses a transcendent moral order legitimates for him the interpretation of natural signs. To be sure, Delano's behavior is no different from that of most of his contemporaries when he interprets, for example, the color of skin according to this ideal order. If all things signify. then surely white, being the opposite of black, must entail different spiritual characteristics as well. Indeed, Delano has only to look to nature to find objective corroboration for his belief that whites are by . . . the shrewder race (75) and therefore naturally superior to blacks: the (apparent) dominance of the whites and servitude of the blacks on the San Dominick offers sufficient proof of Delano's premise. …