
Benito Cereno
'Benito Cereno ' Summary
"Benito Cereno" is a novella by Herman Melville, a fictionalized account about the revolt on a Spanish slave ship captained by Don Benito Cereno, first published in three installments in Putnam's Monthly in 1855. The tale, slightly revised, was included in his short story collection The Piazza Tales that appeared in May 1856. According to scholar Merton M. Sealts Jr., the story is "an oblique comment on those prevailing attitudes toward blacks and slavery in the United States that would ultimately precipitate civil war between North and South". The famous question of what had cast such a shadow upon Cereno was used by American author Ralph Ellison as an epigraph to his 1952 novel Invisible Man, excluding Cereno's answer, "The negro." Over time, Melville's story has been "increasingly recognized as among his greatest achievements".
In 1799 off the coast of Chile, captain Amasa Delano of the American sealer and merchant ship Bachelor's Delight visits the San Dominick, a Spanish slave ship apparently in distress. After learning from its captain Benito Cereno that a storm has taken many crewmembers and provisions, Delano offers to help out. He notices that Cereno acts awkwardly passive for a captain and the slaves display remarkably inappropriate behavior, and though this piques his suspicion he ultimately decides he is being paranoid. When he leaves the San Dominick and captain Cereno jumps after him, he finally discovers that the slaves have taken command of the ship, and forced the surviving crew to act as usual. Employing a third-person narrator who reports Delano's point of view without any correction, the story has become a famous example of unreliable narration.
Book Details
Authors

Herman Melville
United States
Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick (1851), which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, T...
Books by Herman MelvilleDownload eBooks
Listen/Download Audiobook
- Select Speed
Related books

Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway
It is a compelling collection of short stories that delves into the complexities of masculinity, love, and loneliness. This book captures the essence...

The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car by Laura Lee Hope
In "The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car, Or The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley", one of the girls has learned to run a big motor car and she invites th...

The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island by Laura Lee Hope
The Bobbsey twins are off to spend a summer full of fun and adventures on Blueberry Island. They will encounter a cave, and gypsies, and other things...

Armageddon- 2419 A.D. by Philip Francis Nowlan
In the year 2419 A.D., the world has been ravaged by centuries of war and conquest. The Mongolians, a ruthless and technologically advanced empire, ha...

Tedric by E. E. Smith
Tedric is a powerful and resolute hero who rebels against the cruel demands of the god Sarpedion. In a far-future setting blending science fiction an...

Sand Doom by Murray Leinster
The problem was as neat a circle as one could ask for; without repair parts, they couldn’t bring in the ship that carried the repair parts!

Ὁμήρου Ὀδύσσεια (Ραψῳδία 01) - The Odyssey (Book 01) by Homer
The Odyssey is an epic poem attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer. It tells the story of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, who, after the Trojan War, is...

Phantom Death and Other Stories by William Clark Russell
A haunting collection of nautical ghost stories set on the high seas, evoking the eerie atmosphere and strange occurrences that can befall those who t...

New Lamps by Robert Moore Williams
Ronson came to the Red Planet on the strangest mission of all ... he only knew he wanted to see Les Ro, but he didn't know exactly why. It was because...

The Story of a Bold Tin Soldier by Laura Lee Hope
Imagine a tin soldier with only one leg who falls in love with a paper ballerina. That's the story of Laura Lee Hope's heartwarming classic, The Story...
Reviews for Benito Cereno
No reviews posted or approved, yet...