Setting the Mood in Benito Cereno

From the very beginning of Benito Cereno, Herman Melville uses an extensive amount of detail to describe the setting of the uninhabited St. Maria harbor. Throughout the story, Melville maintains the readers’ attention by leading them through the mystery of the curious circumstances surrounding Benito Cereno however, in the very beginning of the story, before Cereno is even introduced, Melville uses the details of the surrounding to convey the same sense of mystery and intrigue.

The broadest aspect Melville employs to create a sense of mystery is the day itself. Melville states that this specific day is “peculiar.” Everything seems to possess an abnormal amount of calm. Here, by creating a lack of all action, the day is perfectly set for the coming of something dramatic in order to fill the void caused by the “mute and calm” of the morning. Throughout literature, the presence of an ominous brooding storm is constantly seen as a symbol for approaching trouble. Though Melville does not directly incorporate an approaching storm in Benito Cereno the reader is told that the birds flying over the water are behaving “ as swallows over meadows before storms.” In fact, the birds themselves provide yet another aspect of a forthcoming mystery. Melville repeatedly describes the different birds as “grey,” a color without real definition. It is neither black nor white. It lies between these two colors and cannot be clearly defined as going one way or the other. These unclassifiable birds as well as the unclassifiable, “peculiar” day mimic the mystery that will come with the San Dominick.

Once the San Dominick arrives, Melville continues to create a mysterious tone for the story using Delano’s description of the ship. Primarily, suspense and mystery is created because the ship is stationed a fair distance away from Delano’s Batchelor’s Delight. Because the ship is so far away, Delano is forced to conjecture about its purpose or motives. Just as Delano cannot mentally grasp the circumstances of the ship it is also physically out of his reach. Another interesting way Melville creates mystery regarding the San Dominick can be seen in his word choice describing it. Before Delano reaches the boat is constantly referred to as “the stranger.” In fact the first word used to describe the boat is “strange.” The reader desires clarity; Melville’s vagueness creates a need in the reader to clear up the situation, essentially to solve the mystery. Delano feels this same need. In a way of further prodding the desires of the reader, Melville has Delano begin to unravel this puzzle by forming two contrasting theories about the identity of the strange ship. Delano observes that the boat is either “peaceful” or “lawless” and then remembers “the sort of stories…associated with [these] seas.” The reader is left wondering how to classify the San Dominick. As with the day, Melville also uses color in creating intrigue in the San Dominick. Delano notes that the ship “flew no colors.” Having no color at all creates an effect very similar to the grey of the birds or the two possible motives Delano posits about the ship—the reader cannot clearly define the situation so a mystery ensues.

Melville both satisfies as well as irks the reader by moving Delano on board the San Dominick. Though one step is taken towards understanding the ship, many more confusing atmospheric traits are added. Delano observes that the ship is damaged but offers no observation as to a motive. Melville creates a condition but refuses to explain this condition. This ambiguity is heightened by the contrast with other aspects of the ship. Great attention is paid in describing all the parts of the ship in as complete detail as possible so when the reader is then presented with an incomplete description of the damage (incomplete because there is no explanation to causation) the desire for clarity and completion again takes hold of the reader, irking them onward. The reader also gets a literally incomplete view of the figure-head of the boat as it is quite literally shrouded and hidden from view. Additionally, Melville again uses color to add to the mystery. Delano notes that the balance of white men to black men is significantly skewed on the San Dominick. That is, as a combined entity, the crew of the ship is the wrong color. Delano tells the reader that the color scheme is unusual for the boat; it does not fall into existing categories. Instead the crew, like the ship itself, falls into a grey area. Rather than clear up any immediate mysteries, the details Melville adds aboard the ship serve only to further tantalize the readers’ need for understanding.

Throughout Benito Cereno Melville provides clues leading up towards the final revelation at the end but these clues are not the only attributes that make this story a mystery. Melville uses tonal description of the day, the distant San Dominick, and the deck of the San Dominick to create a mood that is exceedingly mysterious. Melville describes factors that defy categorization or simply leaves out details in order to engage the reader in trying to solve this mystery. After only a few pages of explication, the mood is completely set in order to support the rising action of Benito Cereno.

The Group - Not Worth Seeing

Mercy Otis Warren's The Group is clearly not a play meant to be performed. Any company taking on this project would be doomed for failure. It lacks nearly every necessary component for successful theater. The lack of engaging dialogue and action does not serve to further an engaging plot. The setting is bland. And, the characters lack personality.

The action in a play is driven forward by a combination of characters' dialogue as well as characters' action. Generally speaking it is the action of a play that grabs the audience's attention and maintains their interest throughout the show. The Group fails as a means of typical theatrical entertainment because it fails to create a driving plot for the reader to invest their attention. While most plays undergo dynamic changes in action (explication, rising action, climax, denouement) The Group remains mostly stagnant. In fact in the end of the play, where Shakespeare would have put a sword-fight or an unexpected reversal full of fast paced action and dialogue, Warren maintains the dense, long-winded dialogue that she has used throughout the entire work.

A look at the setting of The Group is equally lackluster. Act 1 Scene 1 takes place in "a little dark parlor." The description here serves little more than to add a mood to discussion that will follow. Darkness accompanies secrecy or uncertainty. And, as follows, the characters are in a private debate regarding the American colonies. The parlor is meant to be any of a hundred similar dark parlors across the American colonies. Though setting Act 1 in a parlor does give it universality, it also leaves much to be desired as far as visual stimulation goes. Though the characters have been placed in the parlor, there is no action (besides topic for discussion) to suggest that they are in fact in a parlor. The designation of the location of Act 1 can be seen mostly as arbitrary. Act 2 Scene 1 is a little more specific. Warren places these characters in "a large dining room. The table furnished with bowls, bottles, glasses, and cards...In one corner of the room is discovered a small cabinet of books, for the use of the studious and contemplative." She then goes on to list off the books on the dining room's shelves. Just as before, this description of setting is intended much more to set a mood than to be an actual component of the action of the play. Exemplifying this idea is Warren's specific detail in describing which books to put on the shelves. Though Colonial theaters were undoubtedly smaller than modern standards, the idea that someone in the back row would be able to read the spine of a book on a shelf on stage is still far fetched. Warren chose books to represent the heritage of the characters in debate as well as demonstrate the sources of some of their ideas. Much like in Act 1, the setting here has little bearing on the development of the play and has little pertinence to an audience.

Just as Warren has failed by providing static dialogue and setting, she also fails to engage the audience (or reader) by depicting flat characters. Even the characters in The Group who represent real individuals are presented on page with one unwavering point of view. This is because the characters are not meant to be real people, but rather stereotypes that represent a group of people or a way of thinking. The two most obvious examples of Warren’s stereotyped characters are Hateall and Simple. In both cases, the name says it all. Hateall, is a character built around an ultimate faith in the British military and as violence as the answer. Other characters may push for a more peaceful solution but he hates all calling for “brutal force on quick destruction, misery and death.” Simple Sapling is an equally flat character. He describes himself using adjectives like “feeble,” “slender,” and “humble.” His concern with regards to conflict with the colonists is to “rural peace,” showing that he represents the lesser-to-do British man. Characters like Hateall and Simple are a good way of conveying stereotypes but lack all forms of humanity. These flat, character shells fail to meet the standard necessary for engaging an audience.

No colonists in Mercy Otis Warren’s time would have gone to see The Group. But this is not because of its lack of dynamic change, its bland, nondescript sets, or its soulless characters. No one would have seen The Group because it didn’t need to be put on in order for Warren’s point to get across. The Group completely fails as a work of theater, but as piece of political satire writing, it certainly hits its mark. The lack of change allows Warren to analyze the different British points of view on the American colonies laterally rather than worrying about any type of forward progression, giving a more complete vision of the current state of affairs. The settings and the characters are bland because they are not important. Their nondescript or stereotypical qualities make them universal so that Warren’s message applied to all the colonists. Warren’s message is the most important part of The Group and as such, it certainly stands out as the work’s strongest ingredient.

Portrait of the Artist in a Young Country

In her attack on the developing American nation, Abbe Reynal challenges that “America has not yet produced one good poet.” In his Notes on the State of Virginia Thomas Jefferson, counters this attack by showing all of the great men that America has produced. He cites Washington as a great soldier, Rittenhouse as a great astronomer, and Franklin as a great physicist. Though his point is solid, Jefferson did not need to look any further than to Benjamin Franklin to prove that America had indeed produced at least “one good poet.” A dissection of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin shows the development of Franklin, not only as a physicist but also as a writer.

The Kunstlerroman is a sub-group of the Bildungsdroman; rather than tracing the development of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, the Kunstlerroman traces the development into an artist. Much like Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or Wolfe’s more American Look Homeward, Angel, Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography also traces his transformation from a boy employed as a chandler’s assistant to a brilliant wordsmith. Like Joyce and Wolfe, Franklin’s art is his writing. Throughout his autobiography Franklin provides the reader with a portrait of his development from an inexperienced, aspiring newspaper columnist to one of the greatest essayists in history.

A crucial factor in the Kunslerroman is the act of development. Throughout Franklin’s life he shows dynamic changes in his relationship with writing. In his youth he is apprenticed to his brother as a typesetter. The words he publishes are not original. However, Franklin does not stay in this subordinate position long. In 1723, after five years with his brother James, he runs away to Philadelphia to pursue his own talent as a writer. He continues to rise in prominence and eventually arrives at the point where he is in charge of his own publications containing his own thoughts and words. The changes in Franklin’s writing can also be seen by the outside world’s relationship with his writing. In his younger years, Franklin is forced to write his Silence Dogood letters, hiding behind a pseudonym. However, years later, as a well-connected, well-known, global citizen. Franklin’s letters become respected documents, both in the minds of the forming American nation as well as in the minds of the world.

With respect to his art, Franklin is constantly trying to improve his talent as a writer. The stylization exercises he performs with The Spectator as a youth, the formation of his poetry circle as a young adult, and his creation of Junto as a man are all examples of Franklin’s constant drive for the betterment of his mind, and in effect, his pen. In Part Two of his autobiography, Franklin comments that he lives his life under the assumption that his “writings” will be eventually “collected.” This assumption changes the way that Franklin lives his life. Given the fact that Franklin is recording his own life, he must then live his life in a manner that he would wish to write about. Franklin is the main character in the masterpiece of his life. To shape himself into the role of protagonist he aims at eliminating negative qualities from his life. He creates his thorough thirteen step plan to becoming virtuous and he also tries to remove all types of nonproductive activities from his life. He refuses to be “tempt[ed]” into playing chess “unless on this condition, that the victor in every game should have a right to impose a task, either in parts of the grammar to be got by heart, or in translations, etc..” Just as Franklin is constantly working on improving his writing methods, he is also constantly working on improving his life so that he can have something commendable to write about.

One quality Franklin shares with both Joyce and Wolfe as a developing writer is a sense of displacement. Wolfe more so than any of the three feels constantly out of place in the world believing that as a developing artist he belongs “perhaps to an older and simpler race of men…the Mythmakers.” In Look Homeward, Angel, Eliza Gant sees “the hunger for voyages in [Wolfe’s] face.” This kind of longing parallels Franklin’s “strong inclination for the sea.” Though, Franklin looses his desire to be constantly sea bound, he does maintain a tendency towards travel, making many trips over seas and throughout the colonies in his life. In Angel, Wolfe’s nomadic persona reflects the isolation he feels as a “Mythmaker.” Though Franklin, possesses a great deal more humility than Wolfe, and would never openly claim to be a “Mythmaker,” he is certainly a larger than life character who undoubtedly feels some of the same displacement as Wolfe.

In Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist and Franklin’s autobiography, the artists’ separation from society manifests itself in a spiritual form as well. Joyce, raised Irish-Catholic, ends up rejecting the Church based on the fire and brimstone sermons preached in his school. Likewise, Franklin separates himself from the Christianity practiced in most of the colonists in America in favor of Deism a more philosophical theistic belief. Franklin also separates himself from the bourgeoisie society by creating the Junto society, available by invitation only. The same decisive factor Franklin sees between himself and the rest of common society is the same distinguishing factor between the Kunstlerroman and the Bildungsroman, that is, the distinction between an artist and a normal man.

Benjamin Franklin begins his Last Will and Testament by describing himself first and foremost as a “printer.” Though Benjamin Franklin will be remembered as a dignitary, an inventor, and a statesman, he personally considers himself to be a “printer.” Like Joyce and Wolfe, his art is in his words and an exploration of his life shows the many events that led to his development as a wordsmith.

Byrd and Women -- All in a Knight's Work

“All the people in the neighborhood…looked upon us as a troop of knights errant who were running this great risk of our lives.”

Arthur had Guinevere, Quixote had Dulcinea, but who does William Byrd have? Which damsel does Byrd keep in mind as he treks through the forests of America? The obvious answer would be his wife Maria Taylor. However, there is very little textual evidence within The History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina or The Secret History of the Line that would suggest Maria to be his inspiration. In fact, Maria is barely mentioned until the final paragraph of the journal. Byrd writes about the wives of other men, but he fails to comment on his own wife. Even in the secret passages from The History…which give a harsher, and more vulnerable point of view on the trek, Byrd fails to talk about his wife. If not Maria, then who is the William Byrd’s muse? What maiden is in need of Byrd’s rescue? I believe the answer is uniquely American: William Byrd, an American knight, rides for the honor of the Indian Princesses.

Of all the people Byrd meets on his journey, the Indian Princesses stand out as the group which receives the least amount of sarcastic criticism. The North Carolinians are calloused and lazy; Quakers are hypocritical and lazy; the inhabitants of Edenton are alcoholics and lazy, but the Indian princesses “would have made altogether as honest wives for the first planters as the damsels from aboard the ships,” and are, above all else, not lazy. Through simile Byrd states that though these Princesses are not the typical British “damsels” (they’re “Gentiles” after all) they are nevertheless quite comparable to British women and equally desirable. Even the terms used to describe the Indian women conjure up the images of a knight and his maiden. Byrd calls all women “damsels,” the connotation of which can heighten his role as a knight, but he calls the Indian women “princesses” exclusively. This sets this group aside from all the other women

Not only are the Indian Princesses “damsels.” More specifically, they are damsels in distress. Byrd seems to pity these Indian women. He notes that the work done by the Indians is done by the “poor women.” Also, seeing the Indians as heathens, it is partially Byrd’s job to spread the Christian message to them. Twice he emphasizes the idea that as a good Christian, it is his duty to “save [their] soul[s].” He also enforces the idea that intermarriage between colonists and Indians would be a very beneficial idea. Byrd may see marriage as a means of rescuing these damsels from the prison in which they are kept.

The attraction in these Indian women lies in their uniqueness. In many ways British settlers to the New World have tried to shape it into a new England (hence the title). But, there is also a very special intrigue about a virgin forest as part of a marginally undiscovered country. Byrd claims to have fallen in love with Maria because she “spoke Greek, the tongue of the Muses,” an attribute valued in the Old World. However, America poses a New Frontier. The Indian lifestyle, though they have adopted some British customs, still retain a unique and exciting culture to be explored. Maria represents an old, well trodden way of life. These new maidens present an unpredictable and new adventure, much more fitting for a knight to carry in mind.

One final thought, in the dubbed “secret” sections of The History…Byrd details many nearly avoided sexual transgressions, including a near rape. However, Byrd is very careful to clarify that nothing ever happens between himself and any women. He is always fortunate enough to avoid every tempting situation. Even when Byrd visits one of the princesses in her apartment, he is unable to see her “charms” because of the smoke made by the fire. This type of hyper-chastity could suggest that Byrd is lying to make himself look innocent in all matters of sexual impropriety on the journey. Or, as a counter argument, Byrd may be telling the truth in which case he may have needed to remain hyper-chaste in order to resist the temptations of the Indian Princesses. However, from either point of view, the attraction remains.

Overall, I’m not trying to suggest that Byrd engaged in any type of adulterous affairs on his journey along the Virginia-North Carolina border. Quixote never once met Dulcinea after traveling all over Spain. I am however suggesting that Byrd’s desire to take part in a uniquely American quest was urged on by a distinctly American Princess.

Cotton Mather - Funny Name, Good Salesman

The difference between being a simple theologian and being a charismatic minister is simple: marketing. A theologian can develop brilliant theories but a minister can sell brilliant theories to an audience. Throughout Cotton Mather’s The Christian Philosopher, Mather uses various, marketing techniques in order to connect with his audience and sell his point of view.

The very existence of the The Christian Philosopher can be seen as a marketing ploy. In the Age of Enlightenment, reason and science posed a significant threat to faith. In order for Mather to create and sustain an audience in the Age of Reason he had to adapt to the times. He saw the direction social interest was heading and was able to harness it in The Christian Philosopher. Rather than completely reject the change that was happening in the world, Mather explored the shift towards reason from a Christian perspective. Mather created a hybrid of scientific, secular culture and faith-based religious culture. This technique has been repeated many times throughout history (see Revolve or The Book). Mather was able to make a Christian world-view cool and hip by acknowledging non-Christian world trends.

Aside from the text as a whole, Mather also shows effective marketing techniques by sprinkling each essay with theological dogma. One of the most commonly known keys to good marketing is repetition, repetition, repetition (see Head On). Though Mather comments on a variety of subjects from essay to essay, there is a consistent talk about God. In fact, in all of The Christian Philosopher the single word that appears most frequently is “God” coming in with 523 occurrences. (The word coming in second is “upon,” with 385 occurrences, but nobody ever notices prepositions.) Whether the reader notices it or not, Mather is constantly drilling the idea of God into their heads.

There are two things Cotton Mather was born as: one is a Christian, the other is a salesman. In an age where change was overwhelming the world, Cotton Mather was able to provide a Christian point of view on hip, new ideas while still evangelizing using constant repetition, repetition, repetition.

God controls universal laws...apply directly to your dogma.

* The concordance used was located at www.Amazon.com.

An Introduction (Humility Aside)

- John David Reitz -

I'm passionate about many things. Though it may not always be a good idea, I pursue all my interests with vigor. It seems overwhelming at times but I'm never bored.

In my years before attending UNC I lived in Westfield, Indiana (age 0-12) and then in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (age 12-19).

At UNC I'm a freshman Teaching Fellow double majoring in English and Dramatic Arts with minor in Religious Studies. I also work at the Bull's Head Bookshop in the Student Stores building, as an IT operator for LearnNC, and as an office assistant for the Urology Division at UNC Hospitals. (The last one is constantly...surprising.)

I'm also a very avid improviser. I perform most weekends (often more than once) at the DSI Comedy Theater in downtown Carrboro (www.dsicomedytheater.com). I'm on a variety of different teams and have rehearsal or a performance around six nights a week. Through DSI, I've performed locally as well as in Richmond, Virginia and New York City. I'm also a member of UNC's improv company: CHiPs.

I'd someday like to teach English and Improvise in New York City (if only for a small time). I'd also like to someday visit the Vatican, meet Anderson Cooper, and have an extensive wine cellar.

I take my coffee black.
Sometimes with sugar though.
I also like tea.