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(1st part: ) Written in 1855; published in three installments in October, November, December 1855 Putnam’s Monthly Magazine 1st installment: pgs. after Delano offers to buy Babo) 2nd installment: pgs. (whale-boat anchored next to San Dominick) 3rd installment: pgs. (end of story, plus legal documents)Return to course schedule
A story about interpretive violence—the necessity of imposing meaning and order upon a chaotic and uncertain world. Also a story about how the interplay between interpretation, will, and force—and of the consequences of living in a world where one’s interpretations conflict with others. Also a story about the American habit of willed optimism—overlooking signs of impending tragedy or catastrophe. 1. What do you know about this story before reading it? What expectations do you bring to it once you read the title? source--Delano's Narrative. Cereno's character.
- Reader's situation in 1855: Putnam's anonymity.
- 2. What type/genre of story is this? what does it seem to be like? what would it seem to be like to contemporary readers? history behind it-- Delano's Narrative.
- 3. Who's telling the story? --what's his version of the story (who's the hero?): why? --does this version hold up? How does Melville's text undercut it? Delano v. Cereno v. Babo (D's text) --breaks in the text, gaps in characterizations, details
- 4. Other stories within? Babo's? what sort of person is he? story demands second reading.
- 4a. Can we point with accuracy to the actual story? why not?
- 5. Is the Deposition actually Cereno's story? --how many layers does it filter through? --textual gaps --deliberate misrepresentations
- 6. symbols: figurehead and sternpiece and knot
- 7.Narrators (all of 'em) re-arrange history and other's stories to accord with their purposes and desires-- exercise of narrative power finds analogies in other more obvious exercises or impositions of power, control, or violence.
- 8. Moreover, story forces readers into this play of narrative violence by demanding interpretation rather than passive acceptance.
This emphasis starts early: setting on 1179 is indistinct, gray. Approaching ship is indistinct, hard to perceive, make sense of.. Narrator’s account of Delano? If one believes this, is Delano a suspicious person? 1180: Narrator points to Delano’s “surmising” 1181: Stern-piece and figure-head (which are Melville’s additions to Delano’s Narrative); continuing gradual revelation of the San Dominick—does truth appear all at once, or does it appear, or reveal itself in stages? 1182-83: Delano’s attempt to take it all in at once; made “mark”; Narrator’s explanation of his thought-processes 1183—Delano left alone on San Dominick 1184—1188 Cereno’s story, told in “broken fashion” with interruptions and assistance, to Delano. Why do you think Cereno acts this way? How does Delano account for the Spaniard’s actions? 1186-87: note the dashes and Cereno’s difficulties. What effect does Babo’s assistance have on Delano (if we are to believe the narrator?) 1189: Narrator again describes Delano’s thought processes: “drowning criticism in compassion”; makes 1st promise. What is Cereno’s spoken response? 1189—Does Delano seem afraid at any point? Does he act on or become conscious of this fear? 1193: Why is Delano offended by Babo’s “conversational familiarities”? 1194: Delano becomes suspicious—narrator dismisses these suspicions as not coming from a “train of thought” Hm . . . . 1195: Cereno’s questions—what are they, and what must have led him to ask them at that moment? What is Delano’s response? After this discussion, what do Cereno and his slave do? 1196: What does Delano see? How does he account for it? “involuntary suspicion” (1196) What does Delano do? What is Cereno’s reaction to Delano’s statement? 1196: Delano begins thinking “wrapped in thought” tries to make sense of what was going on between suspicious fellow and captain (1197); “his mind revolved the strange questions put to him concerning his ship” (1197). 1197: Ship fallen into a current beyond its control, drifting seaward; how does this mirror Delano’s quaking “at thoughts which he barely durst confess to himself”? 1197-1198: Delano’s reasoning over suspicions. (which the narrator tries to undermine slightly) brings notion of slumbering revolt-—like Santo Domingo in Haiti. “But if that story was not true, what was the truth?” 1198: If Don Benito’s story was, throughout, an invention . . . With what thought does Delano tranquilize his doubts? (“On some benevolent plea . . .”) Sees boat advancing 1199-1205 : Delano left to his own devices while Cereno and his slave are below . .. 1199: what makes the old suspicions return? 1200: truth in figures—chess analogy Delano’s attempts to talk to the Spanish sailors, why do they fail? How does the narrator account for them? 1201: How does Delano account for the old sailor’s bad attitude? What associations does the sight of the “slumbering negress” awaken within Delano? 1202: What does Delano see as he is wandering around the ship on the balustrade? Why does it bother him? 1203: As Delano nearly falls off the ship, how does he try to figure out what’s going on? What’s his reasoning? The knot (key symbol) 1204: Spanish sailor gives Delano a puzzle and speaks directly to him in English. But Delano’s a knot-head Delano tries to ignore the symptoms of strangeness . . . Sees his boat, Rover (irony . . .) and feels reassured, once again on safer waters 1205: Appearances once again deceiving as ship continues to drift away from land . . . 1205: attempt to retain his mental bearings—avoid being swept away by evil speculations . . . the four points of strangeness. 1206: Crisis moment: Delano exercises “good-natured authority” Rapid cry comes from Don Benito—what might be happening here? 1208: What’s the problem with Cereno? What does the narrator suggest that Cereno might be about to do? 1208-1213: The Shaving Scene—note when it occurs and how Cereno responds to this unusual shaving time. 1209: “grotesque engine of torment” 1209-1210: Narrator’s comments about “something about negro” “as though God had set the whole negro to some pleasant tune”? Narrator associates this with Delano’s racial attitudes—takes to Blacks in the same way that he takes to Newfoundland dogs . . . “All his old weakness for negroes returned” 1210: salt water for shaving??!!! 1211: Delano notices what that colored flag is 1211: Babo repeats a phrase three times—what is it?--and then encourages Cereno to continue on with his story. “involuntary expression”—the razor drew blood” 1212: Acting out some juggling play—“what could be the object of enacting this paly of the barber before him?” 1213: The negro seemed a Nubian sculptor—an artist of a sort: Cereno “the creature of his own tasteful hands” “Ah, this slavery breeds ugly passions in man,--Poor fellow” (allusion to Jefferson, and many other writers—just a toss-off phrase??) Part Two: Reflection: If, as Melville explores in “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” it is almost impossible for someone walled-in to seeing the world in one limited perspective to break through that wall and “see” or understand someone else, under what circumstances can these “break-throughs” occur? Return to page 1182 and Delano’s attempt to “take it all in at once”—does it work? Why not? Can you list some of the factors that limit his ability to make sense of what he sees on board the San Dominick? When does he finally recognize what has indeed been occurring before him all day? Do you think Delano is ever able to understand what Don Benito has been through? Is there evidence in the text to suggest to a careful reader Don Benito’s attempts to “break through” to Delano before the crucial scene where he leaps overboard? Why do you think Babo remains silent—and Melville chooses to have him remain silent? Stern Piece and the Climax: notice how the climax repeats, with the addition of Delano, the image of the stern piece. Is there any way out of this vision of history as an endlessly aggressive struggle for dominance? According to Jean Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, and George Friedrich Hegel, humanity begins when man “seeks more than his material satisfaction. He aspires to a recognition of his value which can only come to him from the gaze of others. Recognition: that is the term Hegel uses to designate what Rousseau called ‘consideration’ and Smith ‘attention.’ … “At the same time that a man demands recognition from the other, he demands it from me … . In order for one of us to obtain recognition, the other must lose it. The demand for recognition is a struggle. And, since for humans, recognition is a value superior to life (since men are willing to die for heroism, etc.), it can become a life-and-death struggle …. Since each one of the two partners is ready to risk his life rather than give in, their meeting can only be a fight to the death and a fight to the death for pure prestige … . Thus the idea of recognition [in Hegel, etc.] is unfailingly attached to the idea of the struggle for power” i.e. Melville’s image of the stern-piece: follow your leader, without end. Hegel concluded that “Man was Born and History began with the first fight that ended in the appearance of a Master and a Slave” (H/K 43). The history of humanity is none other—for Hegelians—than the evolution of this master/slave relationship. Is there a way out? Could there be any other way for human history to proceed? Any other way for Delano to have acted? Or, for Americans to have acted in the 1850s if they had chosen to recognize the humanity of the southern slaves and the different world-views of the white southerners. The fanatical care with which Melville plotted the story as one that almost demands re-reading or at least re-thinking suggests one way out of Delano’s bind of trying to make sense of everything he knows all at once, trying to take it all in at once: a careful, step-by-step process of perception, analysis, and above all, reflection and adjustment. Of course, had Delano been this kind of character, the story would have turned out much differently. For that matter, had the U.S. been that kind of nation, perhaps the history of the 1850s and 60s might have turned out differently also . . .