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A review by robk
Benito Cereno by Herman Melville
5.0
Here's the thing: It's sometimes hard to rate a book like this one fairly. The problem: Melville was an immensely gifted writer, whose sentences dazzle and delight--seriously, his syntax is off the hook--but certain passages are more than slightly tinged with racist sentiments.
I am not the first reviewer of Benito Cereno to grapple with this dilemma. In deed, many classic works of literature reflect values and notions abhorrent to our moral senses today. So how should these books be read?
I feel distasteful anachronisms should not entirely discount an otherwise remarkable story, especially one as well written as Benito Cereno. That being said, it is difficult to read ignorant depictions of, well, anything, but it is particularly challenging to read objectionable mischaracterizations of entire peoples or races.
But who ever said reading shouldn't be challenging? Of course we should not ignore Melville, or Benito Cereno simply because of passages like this: "Most Negroes are natural valets and hair-dressers; taking to the comb and brush congenially as to the castanets, and flourishing them apparently with almost equal satisfaction. ... When to all this is added the docility arising from the unaspiring contentment of a limited mind..." unpalatable as that passage might be.
In fact, the idea that Benito Cereno is racist may be erroneous. How can that be, given the narrator's voice in the above passage? If the narrator of Benito Cereno is taken to represent some hybridization of the characters in the story, Melville, and/or American society in general, it is unsurprising for such a person to carry these biases. The story, however, may subvert the fallacious thinking of its narrator, and, by extension, society. After all Spoiler Alert, the slaves were able to take control of the Spanish ship by means of their intelligence and planning, therefore contradicting the "limited mind" theory expressed in the text. To further illustrate the fallacy, Babo, the mastermind of the mutiny, was small in stature and would have been unable to defeat Spanish soldiers by brute force.
In other words, it's complicated. And that, I suppose is what makes reading books like this one worth while. If Benito Cereno, were merely racist propaganda, it would not survive. But the book does survive, and it survives not only because of the biases of the "canon" (which do exist), Benito Cereno survives because of Melville's incomparable grasp of language, his psychological insight, his fantastically flawed and unreliable narrator, and his control of tone and pacing. Benito Cereno is a good book, though an imperfect one. But who wants to read a perfect book anyway? That would be boring.
I am not the first reviewer of Benito Cereno to grapple with this dilemma. In deed, many classic works of literature reflect values and notions abhorrent to our moral senses today. So how should these books be read?
I feel distasteful anachronisms should not entirely discount an otherwise remarkable story, especially one as well written as Benito Cereno. That being said, it is difficult to read ignorant depictions of, well, anything, but it is particularly challenging to read objectionable mischaracterizations of entire peoples or races.
But who ever said reading shouldn't be challenging? Of course we should not ignore Melville, or Benito Cereno simply because of passages like this: "Most Negroes are natural valets and hair-dressers; taking to the comb and brush congenially as to the castanets, and flourishing them apparently with almost equal satisfaction. ... When to all this is added the docility arising from the unaspiring contentment of a limited mind..." unpalatable as that passage might be.
In fact, the idea that Benito Cereno is racist may be erroneous. How can that be, given the narrator's voice in the above passage? If the narrator of Benito Cereno is taken to represent some hybridization of the characters in the story, Melville, and/or American society in general, it is unsurprising for such a person to carry these biases. The story, however, may subvert the fallacious thinking of its narrator, and, by extension, society. After all Spoiler Alert, the slaves were able to take control of the Spanish ship by means of their intelligence and planning, therefore contradicting the "limited mind" theory expressed in the text. To further illustrate the fallacy, Babo, the mastermind of the mutiny, was small in stature and would have been unable to defeat Spanish soldiers by brute force.
In other words, it's complicated. And that, I suppose is what makes reading books like this one worth while. If Benito Cereno, were merely racist propaganda, it would not survive. But the book does survive, and it survives not only because of the biases of the "canon" (which do exist), Benito Cereno survives because of Melville's incomparable grasp of language, his psychological insight, his fantastically flawed and unreliable narrator, and his control of tone and pacing. Benito Cereno is a good book, though an imperfect one. But who wants to read a perfect book anyway? That would be boring.