Narrative Self-Justification: Melville and Amasa Delano
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Notes
This paper has benefitted from the comments of Jerry Phillips, Larry J. Reynolds, and Milton R. Stern.
1. E. F. Carlisle, "Captain Amasa Delano: Melville's American Fool," Criticism, 7 (1965), 355.
2. Carlisle, p. 350. For Delano as innocent American, see R. H. Fogle, Melville's Shorter Tales (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1960); S. T. Williams, "'Follow Your Leader': Melville's Benito Cereno," VQR, 23 (1947), 61-75; and Eric Sundquist, "Suspense and Tautology in Benito Cereno," Glyph, 8 (1981), 103-26. For Delano as "American fool," see Joyce Adler, War In Melville's Imagination (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1981); R. Bruce Bickley, The Method of Melville's Short Fiction (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1975); Carolyn Karcher, Shadow Over the Promised Land (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1980); and James Kavanagh, "'That Hive of Subtlety': Benito Cereno as Critique of Ideology," BuR, 29 (1984), 127-57.
3. Herman Melville, Benito Cereno, in Harrison Hayford, et al., eds., The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press), 1987, p. 47. Hereafter cited parenthetically.
4. Most of Melville's sources became victims of his anger and sarcasm. He relied on Captain Porter's Journal for part of Typee as well as for his castigation of Porter's claim that the subjugation of the Typees was necessary because "their insubordination endangered the peace of the island during his occupation." See Charles R. Anderson, Melville in the South Seas (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1939), pp. 132-35. In following this pattern, Benito Cereno directs this satire and scorn at the historic Delano's supposedly charitable and innocent self-portrait.
5. Harold Scudder, "Melville's Benito Cereno and Captain Delano's Voyages," PMLA, 43 (1928), 502.
6. Amasa Delano, Narrative of Voyages and Travels (Boston: E. G. House, 1817), p. 318. Hereafter cited in the text.
7. Citing depositions taken from various of Delano's crew held for desertion, Benito Cereno writes to the governor: Many . . . complain that he has not given them what is owed them, others . . . are greatly displeased, designating reasons for their dissent which deviate from the reasons given by him in his letter (to which I am responding here) and which degrade and humiliate him.
Is it not apparent that his men began to dissent at the island of Santa Maria? . . . Is this not clear, decisive, and conclusive proof of the deceitfulness with which he has set out to oppress me and to extract from the destruction which his obtuse malice has prepared for me such undeserved gains for his unsuccessful expedition? At the same time he denies and contradicts all harmful evidence.
See Sterling Stuckey and Joshua Leslie, "Aftermath: Captain Delano's Claim Against Benito Cereno," MP, 85 (1988), 277.
8. Three sailors whom Cereno interrogated did not remember ever hearing such an exhortation, while the others questioned all agreed that Delano informed them of Cereno's promise the day after:
[David Brown] said that he [had] heard absolutely nothing with respect to the question, but rather that Captain Amasa Delano ordered them to embark in the light boats and take the frigate "Trial." The next day he heard the captain say . . . that they now had fresh booty and that they could do with it whatever they wanted. Two days after having been on the island with the frigate "Trial," Captain Amasa Delano stepped aboard the "Trial," where the deponent was, and Delano asked him if he had heard the offer which the captain of the "Trial" had made to him of half the frigate and its cargo before taking it; when he answered that he did not hear it Delano warned him to say yes if were asked, and to tell the rest of the people to do the same (Stuckey and Leslie, pp. 279-80).
9. The case of the Amistad, with which Melville was familiar, recalls Delano's encounter with the Tryal and provides a means to assess the legality of Delano's various salvage claims and demands. See Jean Fagin Yellin, "Black Masks: Melville's Benito Cereno," AQ, 22 (1970), 678...
