Innocence Indeed?: Innocence's Dual Actors in Benito Cereno

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All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts.

—William Shakespeare, As You Like It (1623)

In Benito Cereno, Melville establishes contrasting forms of innocence. Innocence of mind lacks knowledge of wrongdoing, and, as a result, may commit and excuse heinous crimes. Innocence of action understands that to accomplish a greater good, a lesser evil must sometimes be committed. For example, Captain Delano is too naive to see the slave revolt because he imputes black people with good. Babo is innocent of wrongdoing because he realizes his revolt is necessary to prevent the white people from doing further wrong to his fellow slaves. Yet neither party is truly innocent; Captain Delano has no qualms about slave trading, and Babo pretends to be a slave to play on Delano's misconceptions and to manipulate his actions. Delano and Babo act as representatives of the white and black people. Delano sees the black people as absolutely good, animals incapable of evil, and the whites as the perpetrators of evil. However, as Melville's continual use of darkness and shadows to imply evil demonstrates, white people see all dark people as immoral. Babo realizes that white slave laws make it impossible for anyone but the whites to escape slavery and still be seen as “moral.” Babo also possessed a black double-consciousness, and realizes the contradiction in white perception and is able to use it to his advantage. In Delano and Babo, Melville presents dual, but not identical, shades of innocence—innocence of knowledge and innocence of action—and argues that innocence is not binary. Innocence of either thought or deed does not mean goodness becaus...

... middle of paper ...

...ut justified, the actor may not believe the speech, but endeavor to make the most convincing speech possible. The method does not affect whether the actor acts. He cannot help acting. The play is not reality, though reality is a play; because moral perfection is impossible, the actor will never both believe exactly what he says or act exactly how he should, though he has instructions to create reality in the script. The point is to try.

Works Cited

Melville, Herman. “Benito Cereno” The Piazza Tales. 2005. Project Gutenberg. Web. 17 Feb 2011. .

Merriam-Webster Inc. “Express.” Merriam-Webster. 13 Aug. 2010. Web. 17 Feb. 2011..

Richards, Jason. "Melville's (Inter)national Burlesque: Whiteface, Blackface, and "Benito Cereno." ATQ21.2 (2007): 73-94. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Feb. 2011. (79-80).

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