Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 10 Number 2, August 2009
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Herman Melville’s Exploitation of Cognitive Features: Amasa Delano as Paradigm of Failure
by
Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design
I. Introduction
To put this bluntly, dull people tell you what happened to them,
leaving no detail out, and often without point. Intelligent people quickly
find the essence of the experience they are conveying and try to relate it
to the topic at hand in a way that sheds light on the generalizations between them. (Schank, 1990, 234)
Cognitive Theory has given literature many interesting and useful tools to employ in our efforts to continue to engage and unfold stories that have captured our collective imagination. In this essay, we will consider the writerly strategy of using replacement theory to “over-write” an existing story in ways that highlight thematic or ethical aspects the previous story did not highlight. In this case, Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno” provides us with a perfect scenario of artistic re-rendering to heighten particular embedded aspects of the extant story.
Replacement theory may not be a familiar label, but the concept should be easily recognizable as one nearly every human being uses on a daily basis. It begins with the simple idea that telling a story “reinforces it in memory, making it easier to remember and more likely to be recalled” (Schank, 1990, 140). The repeating of a story not only makes it more memorable, but in doing so, makes it more likely to be recalled. As stories are recalled, in an innocent way, they are not recalled perfectly. They begin to shift and change through imperfect memory and similar stories’ influences brushing against the other stories. Further, as time passes, the original story may not be available in the detail it had been when freshly acquired. Through all of these imperfections the working memory of humans reveals, we cope with the gaps through filling in missing bits of information.
Since a crucial goal of human cognition is coherence, “replacement theory” explains how a rough original story gets replaced by a more coherent, filled out story. “Memory tends to lose the original [story] and keep the copy. The original events recede, and the new story takes its place.” Once the copy has been created “it tends to stick around” (Schank, 1990, 138). There are several basic reasons for this. First, it is very labor intensive to create a story. If we can avoid doing it again (or at all, for that matter) we will. The second reason these ‘hybrid’ stories have staying power is also part of the reason teachers use them in the classroom: these stories tend to contain “boiled down” versions of the original that have been elementalized in such a manner as to make them easier to keep in memory. The last reason is also a reason the stories are used in classes. They provide “a consistency” “that allows for reconstruction of missing or loosely connected details” and “it provides a constancy of lessons to be learned that needn’t be constantly reexamined” (Schank, 1990, 138-139). The details of any historical account are often incomplete and there are sections for which we have very little information. It is easier to take someone else’s version of a story than it is to deal with all of the gaps in the real story. Then, in accordance with the third reason, we use replacement theory to create a ready-made linkage between known events and loose conjecture.
Once the copy has been created “it tends to stick around” (Schank, 1990, 138). In Melville’s case, the artistic problem he found, the historical report of Captain Amasa Delano regarding a slave uprising at sea, is best addressed by imposing a new narrative, the features of which he hopes will replace the original. In Melville’s replacement of the historical Delano’s faulty narrative, Melville gains the interpretive advantage by situating himself so as to recast the moral tenor of the story and provide “a consistency” “that allows for reconstruction of missing or loosely connected details” and “it provides a constancy of lessons to be learned that needn’t be constantly reexamined” (Schank, 1990, 138-139). In the case of Melville, replacement theory was applied to a narrative so as to highlight moral and ethical issues the original narratives failed to elucidate.
Melville’s use of Delano’s deposition is a highly effective strategy in using the assets replacement theory offers as well as in sparking the reader to begin to attempt to explain his motives for doing so. By selecting an extant narrative, Melville reaps the benefit of the question inherent to his choice: why was this narrative selected? In what way is the meaning of the original incomplete? Melville further pushes this advantage by presenting his fictional Captain Delano as someone whose cognitive style is to explain only so far as to attempt to explain away anomalous actions and behaviors. Delano’s unsatisfactory narrativization acts to further prompt the reader to complete what the fictional Delano has so haltingly begun.
In this way, the emphasis of the readers’ efforts hinge upon completion of the narrative. The narrative is situated so as to prompt for completion of meaning and the reader is situated in relation to Delano so as to prompt for completion of explanation. The reader must not only figure out what is happening, but what the events mean. Thus, the reader becomes deeply implicated in the process of replacing the original narrative with his or her own (via Melville) revised version, a version that is likely to stay with the reader for the various reasons discussed above.
The artistic impulse to move towards a fuller understanding of the themes embedded in the narrative is a key element to consider in adopting a critical stance. The critic must be careful to avoid strategies that seek to undo, reduce, or fragment meaning. The effect of employing critical strategies that focus on the divisions of meaning work against the complex cognitive act of explaining fully and accurately. The complexity of Melville’s subject matter must remain intact for the communication of the scope of the social problems it addresses to be understood properly as the result of compartmentalized logical machinations.
II. Quantum Mechanics, Deconstruction, and Narration
The ability to maintain a false interpretation in the face of decisive evidence against it seems to be one of the remarkable features of literary criticism.
(van Peer & van der Knaap, 1995, 694)
[Delano is] situated in the hermeneutic position of the critic described by Hillis Miller
as “a follower who repeats the pattern [of the text] again and once again fails to
“get it right.” (Dooley, 1995, 49)
Every once in a while a literary essay will appear that mentions, alludes to, or even takes up the notion of quantum mechanics. For many literary scholars this prospect is mildly unsettling in its unfamiliarity. There is, however, a very useful concept embodied by quantum mechanics that is useful in considering the nature of literary interaction. This idea suggests that without a subjective observer, all possibility exists in the same moment. In other words, only when observed does something happen rather than everything happening, as is the case without an observer. The notion that subjective observation of phenomena is what gives an event ‘qualities’ is a concept underpinning our current understanding of how the universe functions. One of the best illustrations of how this idea functions is delineated in the story of Schroedinger’s Cat.
Shroedinger’s Cat is an unfortunate creature. The cat is in a closed box with a bowl of poison and a bowl of food. Until a person opens the box and looks inside, thus observing the cat, the cat is both dead and alive simultaneously. The cat is only either dead or alive when someone lifts the cover to check on the cat. This is the paradox of a quantum universe. All possibilities exist at once until observed. Thus, a literal everything is the natural state of things, a state only rendered particular by human eyes.
If the idea that the possible only becomes the particular when it is observed, then the popular use of the theory of deconstruction produces an unnatural result in attempting to dissipate meaning. For example, consider the plight of Melville’s Babo. In “Fixing Meaning: Babo as Sign in ‘Benito Cereno,’” Reinhold J. Dooley (1995) asserts:
The word [master] in fact terrorizes Cereno because it has been loosed from its previous meanings. He cannot help but recognize that, far from being grounded in providential meaning, the sign is a purely arbitrary human construct predicated on tentative power. It now stands unfixed, revealing its empty, mechanical functioning and by extension the fundamental instability and fluidity of language and meaning. In modern terms, the sign ‘master’ reveals itself as deconstructed. (45)
In the context of a quantum universe, however, exactly the opposite is the case. The terror for Cereno, as observer, is not that the term master has become ungrounded, is “unfixed,” or is functioning “mechanically;” the terror is that master means exactly what he always had known it to mean, but Cereno is not the master anymore. Babo, with a straight razor at Cereno’s throat, is now the master. The sign certainly is “predicated on tentative power,” but is not at all an “arbitrary construct.” What we need to do is understand that the term ‘master’ and all it denotes and connotes is not at all deconstructed. It is simply owned by someone else.
The term ‘master’ is far from undone—and certainly is not undone because an African now owns the role. In fact, such an assertion is degrading. The power of the terror in “Benito Cereno” lies in the understanding that power shifts and at any time someone new can assume the title of master. Most people who have studied a little bit of world history understand that slavery is an ancient and established practice. History also bears out that power shifts and masters become slaves. Anyone could be subjugated at any point in history. The realization that ‘master’ is so very fixed, and has been for great spans of human history, is the true source of terror.
The fixity of mastery is crucial in understanding the situation on Cereno’s ship. As readers, Melville sees our ultimate position as bearing responsibility for opening the box to check on Schroedinger’s cat. The question is can Melville get the reader to lift the lid to discover the truth? One way Melville prompts the reader in the direction of attempting to understand the state of affairs inside the box is by offering a narrator who seems perched on Delano’s shoulder. This narrator provides us with intimate access to Delano’s thoughts, views, and impressions. While Delano is very good at walking around the box and affirming, with great density, that the situation in the box is in a mild state of disarray, but now that he (Delano) has arrived, all is well; the reader must be the one to open the box. Melville believes the reader to be astute enough to accept that Delano’s interpretations and proclamations are unsatisfactory, at best, and must by tested by opening the box. Only in opening the box can the truth be determined.
For Melville, the challenge is getting his reader to the point at which they understand the nature of the puzzle and the means by which he or she might get to the truth. To this end, we find the following situation crafted: Amasa Delano (upon whose shoulder the reader is situated) stumbles upon a scene in which odd things seem to be afoot. The oddness intensifies, but can perhaps be “explained away” as Delano would have us believe. Yet, the reader remains uneasy. Why? Certainly a sea captain, arriving on board a foreign ship, should be better equipped than a twenty-first century landlubber to see a nineteenth century shipping situation for what it is. Certainly the reader should defer to Captain Delano’s superior knowledge, fortified by seafaring experience. “In a sense, it is important to know less than the next person, or at least to be certain of less, thus enabling more curiosity and less explaining away” (Schank, 1990, 231). Despite the reader’s initial trust in Delano, he or she begins to resist Delano. He seems to not be noticing, or paying proper attention to, some very concerning revelations. Slowly, the reader begins to see that perhaps Melville’s early admonition regarding Delano, “a person of a singularly undistrustful good nature, not liable except on extraordinary and repeated incentives, and hardly then, to indulge in personal alarms” (Melville, 1990, 37), is a warning, not a statement in praise of an easygoing nature. Clearly things are not the way Delano wants to believe they are. The reader sees this long before Delano understands the situation he has blundered into—but how is it that the reader reaches this point?
Both the reader and Delano (the reader as an actual cognizer, Delano as a fictional cognizer) are endowed with similar cognitive strategies. In terms of narrative, the central strategy when confronted with an unfamiliar situation is to search memory for a similar experience. “What story do I know that relates to the incoming story?” (Schank, 1990, 61). The difference, Melville hopes, is that whereas Delano finds and applies all manner of poorly suited shipping narratives to his experience on the San Dominick, the reader likely initially fails to find a suitable narrative, likely having precious few seafaring narratives of his or her own to bring to bear, and thus is forced to continue searching until the clues from the story make the actual proceedings quite clear. It is only human behavior narratives the reader needs, not shipping narratives, to decode the action. “[I]ntelligence here means being interested in explaining as much as possible rather than explaining away as much as possible” (Schank, 1990, 229). The effort to explain as much as possible as accurately as possible takes considerably longer than explaining things away. Delano is actively engaged in explaining away and consistently offers nearly immediate explanations for the anomalous activities on board the San Dominick. Unfortunately for Delano, his efforts to explain away the events do not make the underlying events go away.
In the distinction between the reader’s active pursuit of an acceptable explanation and Delano’s pursuit of making the unfamiliar events stop is a parallel with another shift in critical approach. The Freudian view of stimulus is that people want to make it stop. They “strive to reduce stimulation and that only a state of tension-free quiescence is experienced as pleasant” (Winner, 1982, 32). In contrast, Jean Piaget, Robert White, Harry Harlow, and Daniel Berlyne have all suggested “people are often motivated to increase rather than lower stimulation. Mental activity can thus be seen as an end in itself; an escape from boredom through novelty and stimulation can be viewed as a powerful drive” (Winner, 1982, 32). Melville’s recognition and subsequent use of the human mind’s desire to engage in activity and solve problems suits his design for the reader to become an active cognizer in the unfolding narrative. “Studies of the perception of art have revealed the extremely active, problem-solving stance that perceivers adopt when attempting to make sense of a work of art […].These things are things the perceiver can not help but do. They do not require conscious effort” (Winner, 1982, 386). The desire for mental stimulation also serves to help the reader understand that Captain Delano’s cognitive practices may not be up to snuff. His efforts to explain, although tending in the proper direction, fail to reach fruition. Delano latches on to the first familiar, ‘safe’ narrative that he can contrive to make fit the scene so he can dispatch the shadow of a threat as expediently as possible.
Melville’s goal in constructing a leading character with diminished cognitive capacity is to prod the reader into working to understand Delano’s misunderstanding. Melville establishes Delano as a paradigm of cognitive failure to force the reader to confront the narrative with counter-narratives that reach beyond those feebly proffered by Delano. Delano’s failure becomes the starting point for a re-vision of the narrative Melville presents as well as the starting point for a re-vision for the historical case that sparked the novella.
Melville’s strategy relies on a narrativizing mind to cope with a broken narrative. He knows he can rely upon his readership to be natural interpreters of story.
[T]he world is full of interpreters; it is impossible to live in it without repeated, if minimal, acts of interpretation; and a great many people obviously do much more than the minimum. Interpretation is the principle concern of their waking lives. So the question arises, why would we rather interpret than not? (Kermode, 1979, 49)
The answer is likely that narrativizing is a problem-solving tactic that has a biological function. The mind stores past experiences and draws upon them when encountering a new situation. Narrative framing of the past allows predictions of the future; generating imaginary narratives allows the individuals to safely (through internal fictions) explore the varied consequences of multitudinous response options. The potent adaptive value of narrative accounts for its primacy in organizing human understanding […]. Consciousness needs a narrative structure to create a sense of self based on the features of storytelling, like coherence, consequences, consecution. (Young & Saver, 2001, 78-79)
Possible paths are plotted from the current moment into the future. Actions are predicted; people’s presences or absences and their likely actions are considered. Based on these narrative imaginings, action based on thought becomes possible (Turner, 1996, 4-5). This sequence of events is necessary to a successful navigation of daily life. “If we want to study the everyday mind, we can begin by turning to the literary mind exactly because the everyday mind is essentially literary” (Turner, 1996, 7). This narrative strategy could be applied to any subject, but the important thing for my purposes is to identify the strategy and show how Melville employed it. The outcome of the reader’s process of reflection and re-engagement with the text is subject enough for a different study. In this essay, the emphasis is upon how the author ‘teaches’ the reader how to better engage with the thematic implications and to ‘discover’ those implications for themselves.
The readerly judgments we will consider are not limited to the specific episodes to which Melville prompts the reader’s response. Melville has encouraged the development of a cognitive stance by teaching the practice through repetition. Slowly, Melville introduces incidents, observations, statements, proclamations, and descriptions that erode the reader’s trust in the main character’s observations and insights. To a greater and greater extent, the reader is forced outside of the confines of the narrative to test what he or she is being told against his or her own experiences and insights. As this stepping outside the boundaries of the fictional world to test Delano’s observations reaps benefits—puzzle by puzzle solved to greater satisfaction by the reader’s inferences than by the explanations offered by Delano—the reader gains confidence in his or her strategy. The reader is learning to doubt and question, at the provocation of the author.
I maintain that what Mark Turner (1996) called ‘the literary mind’ is exactly what Melville was banking on his reader possessing. What “Benito Cereno” offers is an encoded message, a puzzle to solve, that does not necessitate familiarity with the historical case. “’Benito Cereno’ is more deliberately accessible than many of Melville’s other tales, for even without knowing Delano’s text, those who read Melville as closely as Melville read Delano could profit from his challenge” (Zagarell, 1984, 256). Most people are familiar with the notion that the human mind strives to make sense—it has almost become a cliché. But this very quality is the reason the reader sticks it out despite the lack of information and the annoying presence of Delano and Delano’s mind—elucidated in “a painstaking anatomy” (Zagarell, 1984, 245). In fact, Delano—although annoying—serves a crucial purpose. Delano is the key to the code. Far from being merely a Dr. Watson-esque incompetent, he is the foil against which we are challenged to counter-narrativize. To see how this works, we shall closely examine “four curious points” (Melville, 1990, 68) Melville has Delano return to for further reflection. Concurrently, we will also attend to Delano’s attempts to narrativize the situation in which he finds himself, as well as the resistance and counter-narrativizing this provokes in the reader.
III. Narrativizing and Failure
[C]ognitive artifacts encompass material as well as mental objects—calendars and spreadsheets as well as proverbs and rules of thumb. All such artifacts can be used for the purposes for which they were initially designed or else for novel, unanticipated purposes[…]. (Herman, 2003, 166)
Melville’s use of Amasa Delano’s narrative and deposition is an example of the use of a cognitive artifact for a novel and unanticipated purpose. “Delano’s Narrative purports to be a representation of certain historical events, but it is, as Melville recognizes, an interpretation, open to reinterpretation” (Zagarell, 1984, 254). Through Melville’s focus on a purportedly historical account he not only solves his artistic problem of the mode of engaging his subject, but also finds his style and presentation.
[T]he triple categories of authorial problem-solving intentions, a particular cognitive style selected as a means of problem-solving, and a method of presentation as its discursive manifestation or embodiment go a long way towards offering a better link or transition between the actual and the fictional than any putative authorial second self. (Margolin, 2003, 277)
With the cognitive categories for authorial problem-solving applied, the writer is positioned freely to engage with the reader in the most direct manner possible: through the text. Thus, Melville can engage the reader’s mind through Delano. “Delano, as the peculiar point of view illustrates, is thus a conspicuous reader throughout the tale” (Dooly, 1995, 42). As such, the reader can see a reading process in action and judge its efficacy.
The engagement of judgment is precisely the mental stance Melville needs to activate in order to cause the reader to re-read the story of Amasa Delano. “[I]n ‘“Benito Cereno”’ Melville subjects a panoply of American cultural codes and assumptions to intense critical pressure in order to expose gaps in his countrymen’s knowledge and characteristic modes of thought” (Zagarell, 1984, 246). The benefit of Delano’s character is that Melville can put the codes and assumptions in the mind of a character who is not practicing thorough cognition. The reader has the benefit, then, of seeing a set of cultural beliefs held by a man who clearly has limited capacity for insight or reflection, much less the day to day problem-solving skills that allow him to understand the actions and motives of people around him.
Delano’s character is convincing because he is sufficiently like us. He observes and he reflects—his problem is that he does not do it well enough to produce accurate interpretations.
[S]ince we cannot yet conceive of narrative agents as human or human-like, it is a basic cognitive requirement of ours that we attribute to them information-processing activities and internal knowledge representations […]. Even if the story is behavioristic in its manner of portrayal and provides no information about the cognitive functioning of storyworld participants, readers need to formulate hypotheses about the minds of agents and ascribe to them mental functioning in order to make sense of their doings in terms of human actions and interactions. (Margolin, 2003, 284)
Melville paints Delano as sufficiently human in his thoughts as his ship approaches the wreck of the San Dominick that we have no cause to be immediately suspicious. In fact, Melville skillfully uses the role of Delano as sea captain to impart an air of particular authority. There is added weight for Delano’s character in his position of authority in commanding a ship. Most readers will assume he has skills that make him particularly suited for the task of managing a ship and protecting the lives of his crew. We would hope that he has a special insight into life on the seas as well as acuity of perception that heads off dangers.
[W]hen authors set out to write in a particular genre, they themselves draw on features, hierarchies, and contrastive prototypes, as well as salient examples. Authors also follow scripts. Both authors and readers rely on procedural schemas, including schemas particular to literature (e.g., schemas regarding certain sorts of narrative inference). (Hogan, 2003, 47)
Melville’s script, genre, and prototype are ready made in the historical Delano’s narrative. Where Melville deviates from the original, however, is in his casting of the Captain. “People of a particular character are expected to inhabit similar roles in different stories. We can develop a categorization of kinds of character—generous, selfish, brave, submissive, and so on” (Turner, 1996, 133). The fact that the reader expects certain character traits and insights on the part of a sea captain allows Melville the opportunity slowly to reveal the shortcomings of Delano, thus allowing the reader to discover the true story for him or herself.
If the strategy simply relied upon Delano’s self-disclosure, the reader may or may not reach the understanding that he is not the sharpest tack in the board. With only one side reporting and rationalizing events, there is no sense of perspective against which the reader can compare information. What Melville adds to provide that perspective is a narrator who is very close to, but not identical to, Delano. “[W]e may treat the what and the how, the matter and the manner of the narrator’s discourse, as indicators of his or her cognitive mental functioning, all the more so since reporting consists by definition of processing and judging information” (Margolin, 2003, 278). It is this voice that describes events in a neutral manner, prior to the presentation of Delano’s explanations for them.
When a narrative has an overall impersonal and omniscient narrating voice, a report by this voice about any part of the narrated domain serves as the standard of factual truth against which individual perspectival visions as psychological facts are compared for their specific bias. (Margolin, 2003, 283)
Melville situates the narrator so its presence is very near Delano’s own vantage point, as if the narrator were hovering near Delano’s shoulder. The reader has the sense that this narrator and Delano are privy to the same situational input. However, the discrepancies arise in that the neutral reporting of events, some of them quite alarming, are immediately subjected to Delano’s cognitive processes, which, as we have discussed, are geared towards explaining away as much as possible.
The important thing that this subtly bifocal presentation of information allows is the retention of the norms of genre and character while impugning the cognition of Delano. Melville does not need to, nor would it be productive to, undercut the structural norms that accompany seafaring fiction. Such a maneuver would not satisfy the artistic goals of developing thematic nuance.
Now all speech and vision in a literary text stems from its author; yet, in the case of defamiliarization originating with a textually inscribed and individuated narrator or with a character, it is conventional to speak in the mimetic mode not of the author refusing to employ standard familiar categories as an artistic ploy, but rather of the narrator’s or character’s actually lacking them in their mental make-up. This, in turn, is motivated by making these narrators or characters themselves “nonstandard,” e.g., strangers, children, or individuals limited or distorted in their mental capacity for some reason. (Margolin, 2003, 278)
Melville needs to ensure that the storyworld is stable so the notion of corrupt and inappropriate value systems can be the issue of concern for the reader. The only source of distortion can be Delano’s ‘view’ (both literally and figuratively) if the message is to be clear that what is wrong in this story is encapsulated in the view Delano brings to it.
Although the reader’s initial impulse is to assume Delano is worthy and wise, as readers tend to trust the leading personality in a tale, Melville must work to chip away at this trust. Melville understands that the reader will and should begin the story by sympathizing with Delano if he or she is to become concerned for his safety (even when he isn’t concerned for his own safety) and feel the burden of correctly ‘reading’ the situation on board the San Dominick. However, Melville cannot allow the reader to remain sided with Delano if the ultimate goal is to prod the reader into realizing the folly of his beliefs. “[I]n instances of unreliable narration…the authorial and narrative audiences diverge, producing a split or bifurcated anchoring process. Indeed, a narrator’s unreliability is perceptible only because of this divergence or bifurcation” (Herman, 2002, 336). Melville must slowly wean the reader from identifying with Delano so as to show the rupture between Delano’s slavery interests and a more appropriate humanist stance, all the while carefully crafting events so as to maintain some sympathy for Delano so the reader still feels the pressure of and wishes Delano to succeed in correctly understanding that he is standing in the middle of a slave revolt. “[Michael Paul] Rogin demonstrates Melville’s concern with both the character of American society and with the ways Americans conceptualized that character” (Zagarell, 1984, 246). Melville’s use of both the narrator and Delano, in conjunction, work to situate the reader so as to consider the issues of social character in terms of their own beliefs. Only in this way can Melville evoke a change in his readership. We can learn from the stories of others, but only if what we hear relates strongly to something we already know. We can learn from these stories to the extent that they have caused us to rethink our own stories. But mostly we learn from a reexamination of our own stories. (Schank, 1990, 83)
We know many other stories: seafaring fiction, pirate stories, slavery stories, rebellion stories. However, no impersonal narrative has the power to cause a person to re-evaluate his or her own beliefs as does causing a person to re-engage his or her personal stories. Melville makes the reader step out of the story that is Delano’s and sort through his or her own personal stories to find one sufficiently like the experiences seen on the San Dominick. What the reader will encounter is an understanding that is “an internal realism that has been learned, a unit of knowledge that is more reliable and thus more real than perception and at the same time less concrete, because it goes beyond sensory information” (Ludwig, 2002, 13). Delano’s attempt to narrativize the components of the scene before him fails to such an extent that the reader must move into his or her own mental space to attempt his or her own narrative process. This is how Melville makes us access our own stories, rethink our own stories, and hopefully reconsider our belief systems as a result of that active engagement with the narrative.
Ultimately, Melville’s strongest strategy is the failed narrativization attempts on the part of Amasa Delano. Delano’s character serves the purpose of reminding the reader that there are different levels of cognitive practice. Delano participates in the lower level process of interpreting events in terms of things he already knows and believes, thus explaining them away. The only way to avoid this potentially dangerous, possibly deadly, trap is to push one’s mind to engage in the higher level cognitive practice of going beyond the familiar, easy explanation to arrive at an explanation that has a higher likelihood of being accurate. “When intelligent people see an action they try to see it as different from what they know rather than similar to what they know (if they are interested in that action, of course, otherwise they can ignore it like everybody else)” (Schank, 1990, 229). The challenge is to not ignore and not explain away, but to behave in a more intelligent manner that accepts that we may know less than the next person, but are willing to work harder to understand.
In this scheme, intelligence is not what you know, but how willing you are to think. Delano is not terribly interested in engaging with the bizarre behavior that surrounds him, thus his cognition fails to bring his to a point at which he is able to see the life and death consequences of his every word. The fictional presentation of cognitive mechanisms in action, especially of their breakdown or failure, is itself a powerful cognitive tool which may make us aware of actual cognitive mechanisms, and, more specifically, of our own mental functioning. (Margolin, 2003, 278)
The ability not only to explain failure but often simply to recognize failure of cognitive processes is not always an easy thing to do. “To learn to explain failure ([…] to predict correctly what would happen next […]), one must practice” (Schank, 1990, 231). Practice is exactly what Melville’s slow progression through episode after episode aboard the San Dominick allows the reader to do. We have repeated opportunities to understand Delano’s failure so that we might arrive at a place where we can recognize the failure for what it is. “Failure is valuable because it encourages explanation” (Schank, 1990, 231). Once we have recognized failure, we are able to do what Melville has wished for us from the outset—to explain the events, to teach ourselves, based on our own narratives and experiences, what has gone so wrong in Delano’s world and how a systemic and cultural failure to successfully cognize has created a human tragedy.
IV. Deposition
Some disclosures therein were at the time held dubious, for both learned and natural reasons. (Melville, 1990, 92)
The deposition of events on board Benito Cereno’s ship is the alpha and the omega of Melville’s narrative. The novella not only finds its genesis in the historical record of events, but also ends with the deposing of the witnesses. For many readers, the note on which the story ends feels anticlimactic. The recording of witness reports in dry legal language is a far cry from the exciting revelation of the mutiny, yet it serves a most crucial purpose. With the original deposition, Melville recognized that “[a]ll narratives have world-creating power, even though, depending on the kind of narrative involved, interpreters bring to bear on those storyworlds different evaluative criteria” (Herman, 2002, 16). If Melville were to grant a pass to the historical Delano’s rendition of events, Delano’s narrative could stand unchallenged and lend validity to his world view. If Melville wished for others to see that the world represented and reinforced in Delano’s version of events was inherently flawed, Melville would have to retell the tale. “Insight is often the recognition (note the word ‘recognition’ means, literally, ‘cognizing again’) that an old story could have a new use” (Schank, 1990, 226). Melville recognizes that Delano’s old story could have a very good use in addressing some of the cultural damage slavery’s proponents had wrought.
The question then becomes: how can Melville use the old story to suit his new purpose? “[T]he tricky part comes when one has to adapt an old story that one has found in such a way as to make it useful for processing a new story” (Schank, 1990, 226). The main problem in addressing the adaptation of the old story is a question of how to bridge the gaps between the old value system and the value system Melville would like to have replace it. The problem is one of typification, which is “the problem of how to balance expectations against outcomes” (Herman, 2003, 179). Melville, in order to reframe the worldview presented in Delano’s narrative, must find a way to challenge typifications inherent in the text. As “typifications are a means of preprocessing the world” (Herman, 2003, 179), Melville must dissuade the reader from falling back on this cognitive shortcut. To do this, Melville shows Delano’s typifications failing. The result is a need for the reader to work with Melville to produce a fitting narrative that addresses the failures of the typification. “Stories fill the breach when typification fails […] narrative is a means of redressing problems that arise when anticipated similar experiences do not materialize” (Herman, 2003, 180). The role of the new narrative is of the utmost importance in undoing the value systems and world-view presented in the historical Delano’s account because, crucially, “the narrative representation of anomalous or typical events can in turn reshape a culture’s or community’s sense of what is normal or typical, and thereby help build new models for understanding the world” (Herman, 2003, 179). Thus, through the fictional Delano’s cognitive failings, Melville encourages his readers actively to reframe the events he relates in order to participate in the construction of a revised ethical system.
Recasting the narrative is not sufficient, however. Many of the cognitive strategies Melville undertakes are geared towards preparing the reader to remember what he or she has learned. Fixing information in memory can be enhanced through the use of two strategies. One is to encourage reflection on the new story; the other is to have provided more than one vantage point from which the story is conveyed.
In the case of the latter, Melville employs the narrator in addition to Delano in reporting events on the San Dominick. For some readers familiar with the historical Delano’s Narrative, there is an added doubling between the historical Delano’s story and Melville’s. There is also an opportunity for the reader to compare his or her view of events with events as they are deposed at the end of Melville’s novella. “You can remember better what you have understood more completely, that is, what you have seen from many different vantage points” (Schank, 1990, 224). The opportunity to compare and contrast different perspectives gives a critical mind the resources by which to attempt to account for the differences between views. Cognitively, these differences can be accounted for by differences in labeling events (Schank, 1990, 224). By attempting to understand how one viewer has labeled an event, the reader can better understand the limitations of the minds they see portrayed. For example, Delano’s label of Babo as “attentive slave” stands in stark contrast to the reader’s label of Babo as “attentive master.” In this way, the reader can develop an understanding of difference and begin to put that difference into perspective based on the relative success or failure of each party’s attempt to generate a successful narrative.
The final step in the process is that of reflection. The recognition of differences in labeling is the fodder for the thought that the reader must apply to what he or she has seen. Because, “if you don’t think about something you aren’t likely to remember much” (Schank, 1990, 223), Melville also must encourage the reader to think about what has just been read. The deposition and brief dialogue following it work to that very purpose. “Unexamined experiences may contain many possible lessons for future use, but they remain there dormant unless discussed with others or discussed with oneself” (Schank, 1990, 236). The reader has a first opportunity to “discuss” the text with him or her self in reviewing the deposition of events. The deposition is a chance for the reader to compare his or her thoughts and feelings about events on the San Dominick against those that are reported in the “official” version of the story. The second prompt for discussion comes immediately after the deposition, when Captain Delano and Captain Cereno meet again. The discussion between the two captains is unsatisfactory in the extreme, again patterning a system of failure against which to contrast readerly expectations. Benito Cereno attempts to find the truth in the situation. Amasa Delano actively waves him off of that course.
“You generalize, Don Benito; and mournfully enough. But the past is passed; why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright sun has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned over new leaves.”
“Because they have no memory,” he dejectedly replied; “because they are not human.” (Melville, 1990, 102)
Melville reminds us that memory is a distinctly and importantly human capacity that must be used if we are to retain our humanity. The implied threat is that if we become like Delano, and opt not to reflect upon events in our lives, we will be less than fully human.
V. Conclusion
“But you were forced to it, and you were in time undeceived.” (Melville, 1990, 103)
There is a basic human story here—the story of a person recognizing a story.
(Turner, 1996, 117)
Delano and Cereno’s brief conversation ends abruptly. We hear no more from Cereno, who dies soon after. Babo would not speak prior to his execution. The novella ends with a deafening silence. “Melville does not deliver a final answer on the meanings of race or madness” nor does he “attempt to erect a new edifice over the gaps opened up by collapses of certitude. […] it is with those silent darknesses that Melvill leaves us” (Reiss 1996). There are no ‘correct answers’ proffered by the narrator. Delano certainly does not undergo an epiphany. The question for the reader is what will you do with the silence?
As a good teacher does, Melville also leaves the responsibility for making meaning with his students. He has provided every opportunity for his readers to understand the situation, and that in a number of different cognitive styles for his readers to assimilate. The reader follows Melville through his story, but is ultimately left to his or her own devices when it comes time to make meaning. “The teacher cannot simply transmit his knowledge to the student, but he has to ‘learn’ him, which indicates a much more active and experiential role of the student in this process of interaction—not just between teacher and student, but also of both vis-à-vis the object of knowledge (or ‘reality’)” (Ludwig, 2002, 14). The student must be ‘activated’ to the process so as to be involved with the attainment of understanding. There is no understanding from rote lessons. Demented and brain damaged individuals often are able to repeat set phrases and rhymes learned earlier in life, but these words have no meaning. Meaning is dynamic and reflexive, demanding a great deal of thought, reflection, and effort.
This learning is psychological and experiential rather than philological; that is, the predominant circularity involved is not one of hermeneutic interpretation, but is concerned with the acquisition of knowledge through cybernetic feedback. This circularity focuses on adaptation processes between experience and knowledge; it is more vertical than horizontal in its nature. (Ludwig, 2002, 14)
The idea that there is adaptive value in the relationship between experience and knowledge is at the heart of the development of the human mind. The pursuit of greater and more refined sets of understanding is not only basic and dynamic, but also subject to the dangers of processes that pursue new limits: they sometimes fail. “Learning depends upon a system venturing beyond known borders into places where rules may not be so clear cut and where failure may occur. But this venturing out will never take place unless some failure has occurred that would motivate it” (Schank, 1990, 231). Melville provides us with a narrative in which the rules seem to be shifting and Delano’s interpretive powers are failing. The story world Melville offers gives the reader the space into which he or she can venture to investigate the nature of the failure. Melville has provided the opportunity; it is up to the reader to do something with it, to make the experience meaningful.
Melville also offers the opportunity not only to make sense of an anomaly but to indulge our curiosity. It is likely that Melville was aware that he could capitalize on the human mind’s interest in unusual and unexplained events to engage his readers in the text. This engagement, the pursuit of our curiosity, is also a step down the path of becoming increasingly creative.
To be creative, we would be wise to acquire the disposition to see anomalies and the ability to take pleasure in exploring them. In short, what we need is curiosity. And curiosity leads us to value the process of search itself and to prefer the sort of answers that generate even more unexpected questions. (Schank, 1990, xxxvi)
The application of curiosity to unusual situations allows us to apply creativity in seeking similar narratives of which we are aware to attempt to explain the anomalous event. This may or may not succeed, depending upon how unusual the new situation is, however, unlike Delano, the curious and creative mind will not be stymied into ‘explaining away.’ The pursuit of solid explanations is part of the joy of thinking and “quite simply, the more there is to think about, the more you think” (Schank, 1990, 229). The more you think, the more you reflect on narrative. The process is cyclic, but builds as new configurations are added to the dynamic between narrative and experience. It is possible to gain understanding if one perseveres in the process.
Narrative is utterly indispensable to the making of meaning and the comprehension of experience. It is the basic unit of storing experience in memory and it is the basic unit of relating that experience to others and to relevant situations. “[N]arrative is both an instrument for multiplying and detailing the perspectives that can be adopted on a given set of events, and also for enriching the total store of past, present, and (possible) future events that constitutes humans’ knowledge base” (Herman, 2002, 184). By immersing the reader in not only a historical narrative, but a narrative which allows the reader an active role, Melville engages the reader directly with the chief meaning-making mechanism of the human mind. “Stories are a way of preserving the connectivity of events that would otherwise be dissociated over time. One reason we tell stories, therefore, is to help ourselves in remembering them” (Schank, 1990, 124). When we remember a story, it is our own to call upon as needed, to use in processing a new or similar story. Once a story is committed to memory, we ‘own’ it; it forms part of the way we understand ourselves. Narratives are:
Ways of understanding who we are, what it means to be us, to have a particular life. The inability to locate one’s own focus, viewpoint, role, and character with respect to conventional stories of leading a life is thought to be pathological and deeply distressing. (Turner, 1996, 134)
Narrative as the mode by which we find self-context is crucial to human experience. It is also crucial that, as humans, we reach beyond ourselves to see the larger picture.
Much of Delano’s cognitive ineptitude is based in his inability to go beyond his own belief system and his own experiences. Narrative cannot work solely to construct ones’ self, it must also work to contextualize that self in a society. “As sensory beings, our view is always single and local because we have a single life and not a general life…we constantly construct meaning designed to transcend that singularity. We integrate over singularities” (Turner, 1996, 117). Melville shows the importance of integrating over singularities through the character of Amasa Delano. In Delano’s failings, we see the extent to which his inability to see others reduces his ability to see meaning. Only by actively attending to opportunities to reach beyond the confines of our singular perspective can we learn what is truly meaningful.
[T]he wide array of kinds and types of mental functioning displayed in narrative fiction enriches our store of conceivable models of human experientiality, suggests various views about its underlying features and regularities, and enlarges, through example rather than theory, our sense of what it may mean to be human. (Margolin, 2003, 285)
Here emerges the humanist concern that not only arises from cognitive approaches to literature, but also from Melville’s narrative. Narrative invites the human mind to reach outside of itself, while still free to retreat inwards to make evaluations, in such a way as to foster a sense that each of us may not be as isolated in our thoughts and feelings as modern society leads us to believe. “[N]arrative at once reflects and reinforces the supra-individual nature of intelligence—i.e., the inextricable interconnection between trying to make sense of and being within an environment that extends beyond the self” (Herman, 2002, 183). The reduction of borders separating self from other is at the heart of Delano’s problem. It not only prevents him from understanding that he is in grave danger, but also that there is not much difference at all between himself and the ‘cargo’ he carries on his slave ship.
Roger Schank (1990) says that humans as “understanders” aim to “gather evidence about the world so that we can formulate better beliefs, ones that will equip us better to deal with the real world” (82). This goal is probably almost identical to Melville’s goal for “Benito Cereno.” If Melville’s reader leaves the story, having learned how to test one’s assumptions so as to produce “better beliefs,” I think Melville would feel he had written a successful story.
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