Benito Cereno

Although I found the story interesting, what struck me most about the play is Melville's take on the human spirit. Through studying and analyzing Hawthorne, it can easily be said that he considered human nature to be this dark driving force that was the underlying evil in most individuals. Hawthorne gave off the impression that there was a little bit of evil in even the best of people. However, I see Melville as offering a new approach. In reading Benito Cereno, I see Melville as portraying the human spirit, at least the spirit in Delano, as innately good. His kind -natured protagonist has a good heart and tends to believe the best of people, almost to a point of naivety.
In several instances, Melville references how Delano dismissed thoughts or suspicion solely because he wanted to believe the best in people. For example, even when Delano first encounters Cereno, he is left baffled by his strange antics but he dismisses strange antics of the San Dominick's captain as the product of all of the troubles he had just encountered. The reader later learns that his antics were caused by his troubles but not troubles due to bad weather. Delano even goes as far to express his envy of Bano's and Cereno's relationship as he seems to forget the typical relationship between whites and Africans of the day. Despite his intuitive feelings, Delano continues to dismiss all of the odd occurrences and comes up with off-the-wall reasoning to compensate for them. In fact, the only time Delano does speak up is when he vocalizes his dislike of Cereno keeping Atufal in chains because the slave was so well mannered and polite. Once again, this demonstrates Melville's display of an innately good human spirit through Delano. I believe the supreme show of Delano's good-heartedness is when he begins to speculate that Cereno may even be planning an attack; but, ignoring his, his ship's, and his crew's safety, again dismisses it as silliness.
However, the supreme difference in Hawthorne and Melville is the fact that Melville didn't necessarily allow Delano's kind nature to get the best of him. I believe Hawthorne would have continuously referred to his nature as naive and immature and would have created a scenario where everyone suffered brutal deaths and Cereno was the epitome of evil. Melville, on the other hand, permitted some truth to Delano's belief to be somewhat accurate; Cereno was the victim, not the perpetrator.