# Short Fiction — Character guide

> Key figures in Short Fiction by Herman Melville.

- [Captain Amasa Delano](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/captain_amasa_delano.md): Delano commands the Bachelor's Delight and approaches the San Dominick with baskets of fish, assuming distress rather than danger. His defining trait is an almost willful benevolence: he reads strangeness as misfortune, 
- [Benito Cereno](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/benito_cereno.md): Cereno commands a Spanish merchantman carrying slaves between colonial ports, yet his authority looks hollow: he leans on his servant Babo, trembles at shadows, and seems unable to give a straight account of his voyage. 
- [Bartleby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/bartleby.md): Bartleby arrives at the narrator's chambers as a copyist, works with mechanical diligence, then one day declines to proofread with the phrase 'I would prefer not to.' He never explains, never argues, never leaves, and hi
- [Billy Budd](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/billy_budd.md): Billy is the 'Handsome Sailor' of the forecastle, admired by his messmates and instinctively trusted by most officers, yet he carries an occasional stutter that surfaces under strong feeling. When an afterguardsman appro
- [Captain the Honourable Edward Fairfax Vere](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/captain_vere.md): Vere is an aristocrat and a reader, carrying a compact library to sea and preferring Montaigne to mess-room banter, which earns him a reputation for pedantry among his peers. His settled convictions act as a dyke against
- [John Claggart](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/john_claggart.md): Claggart keeps the ship's discipline and its gossip, his messmates serving as convenient ears throughout the crew. He watches Billy with a gaze that shifts from melancholy yearning to a red flash of loathing, a contradic
- [Hunilla](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/hunilla.md): Hunilla belongs to the desolate world of the Encantadas, where the sea swallows husbands and brothers and leaves survivors marooned on volcanic rock. Her grief is not loud but absolute; she has learned to wait, to ration
- [Oberlus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/oberlus.md): Oberlus scrapes a living from potatoes and tortoises on a barren island, hoarding dollars and grudges in equal measure. After smugglers whip him and destroy his hut, he conceals his rage and lures passing seamen with fal
- [Jimmy Rose](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/jimmy_rose.md): Jimmy Rose was a generous host whose dinners and imported wines drew a crowd of admiring guests, many of whom drank his cellar dry while pretending friendship. When ruin comes, the same crowd melts away, leaving him to p
- [Turkey](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/turkey.md): Turkey has served the narrator loyally for years, his morning industry matched only by his afternoon chaos of blots, split pens, and muttered insolence. The narrator, fond of him and unwilling to lose his morning service
- [Nippers](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/nipppers.md): Nippers writes a neat, swift hand and dresses like a gentleman, but he chafes at the drudgery of copying and fancies himself a lawyer with clients of his own. His nervous testiness and endless fussing with the height of 
- [Bannadonna](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/bannadonna.md): Raised by the state and patronized by nobles who admire his genius while never letting him forget his origins, Bannadonna works alone in his littered shop on a mechanism no one fully understands. His still, Vulcanic face
- [Hautboy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/hautboy.md): A cheerful, contented fiddler who lives a simple life despite his talent.
- [Babo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/babo.md): Babo moves through the ship's uneasy world as Captain Cereno's devoted shadow, fetching water, steadying his master's arm, answering for him when speech falters. Yet his stillness reads less like service than surveillanc
- [Atufal](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/atufal.md): A powerful African chained on the San Dominick, secretly part of the slave revolt.
- [Alexandro Aranda](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/alexandro_aranda.md): A Spanish slave owner whose skeleton is displayed as a figurehead after the revolt.
- [The Dansker](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_dansker.md): The Dansker has spent enough years before the mast to have traded hope for grim prudence, and he sits apart from the crew with his black teeth and cryptic oracles. When Billy half-confides his troubles, the old man divin
- [Merrymusk](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/merrymusk.md): Mrs. Merrymusk lives at the edge of another man's prosperity, tending a consumptive husband and children in a hut that barely keeps out the weather. What she has instead of comfort is a rooster whose crow she treats as a
- [Blandmour](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/blandmour.md): A poet who romanticizes poverty and the simple life in his conversations.
- [The Stranger](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_stranger.md): A mysterious visitor who engages the narrator in philosophical discussions.
- [The Lightning-Rod Man](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_lightning_rod_man.md): A peddler who tries to sell lightning rods by instilling fear of storms.
- [The Narrator (Bartleby)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_bartleby.md): He is an elderly, unambitious attorney who has spent thirty years among rich men's bonds and mortgages, cultivating the easiest way of life and a reputation as an eminently safe man. When he hires Bartleby, he expects an
- [The Narrator (Encantadas)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_encantadas.md): He comes to the Encantadas as a voyager, sketching the islands' cinder landscapes, their tortoises, their castaway histories with the plain authority of a man who has actually been there. His voice moves between naturali
- [The Narrator (I and My Chimney)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_i_and_my_chimney.md): He is a genial, digressive country gentleman whose house is dominated by a vast central chimney, and whose wife and daughters have decided the chimney must go. What begins as domestic nagging becomes a siege, with archit
- [The Narrator (The Piazza)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_piazza.md): He is a leisured, self-amused man who measures his house against the mountains and finds it wanting, so he adds a piazza the better to worship the view. His contentment curdles into curiosity when a far-off cottage, lit 
- [The Narrator (The Apple-Tree Table)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_apple_tree.md): He is a man of wry, self-aware reason, fond of his old house, his two daughters, and his own unshakable good sense. When the apple-wood table begins ticking and a strange insect emerges, his daughters and the hired girl 
- [The Narrator (The Happy Failure)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_happy_failure.md): A young man who accompanies his uncle on a failed invention experiment.
- [The Narrator (Paradise of Bachelors)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_paradise.md): A visitor to a lavish bachelor's club in London who later sees a paper mill.
- [The Narrator (Poor Man's Pudding)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_poor_man.md): A visitor who observes the harsh poverty of a rural family during a rainstorm.
- [The Narrator (Rich Man's Crumbs)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_rich_man.md): A man who attends a lavish feast in London and later sees the poor scavenging scraps.
- [The Narrator (The Gees)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_gees.md): A visitor to a remote island who observes the peculiar customs of the Gee people.
- [The Narrator (Daniel Orme)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_daniel_orme.md): A sailor who recounts the story of the mysterious and solitary Daniel Orme.
- [The Narrator (The Bell-Tower)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_bell_tower.md): A historian who recounts the rise and fall of the architect Bannadonna.
- [The Narrator (Cock-a-Doodle-Doo!)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_cock_a_doodle.md): A depressed man who finds joy in the crowing of a magnificent rooster.
- [The Narrator (The Fiddler)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_fiddler.md): A struggling poet who meets a contented fiddler named Hautboy.
- [The Narrator (The Lightning-Rod Man)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_lightning_rod.md): A homeowner who argues with a lightning-rod salesman during a storm.
- [The Narrator's Uncle (The Happy Failure)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_happy_failure_uncle.md): An inventor who becomes obsessed with a draining machine that ultimately fails.
- [The Narrator (Encantadas Sketch Five)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_encantadas_sketch_five.md): A sailor who describes the frigate and ship Flyaway near the Encantadas.
- [The Narrator (Encantadas Sketch Six)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_encantadas_sketch_six.md): A sailor who recounts the history of buccaneers on Barrington Isle.
- [The Narrator (Encantadas Sketch Four)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_encantadas_sketch_four.md): A sailor who describes a Pisgah view from Rock Rodondo.
- [The Narrator (Paradise of Bachelors)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_paradise_bachelors.md): A guest at a lavish bachelor's dinner in the Temple, London.
- [The Narrator (Tartarus of Maids)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_tartarus_maids.md): A visitor to a grim paper mill where pale women work in harsh conditions.
- [The Narrator (Two Temples: First)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_two_temples_first.md): A man who is turned away from a wealthy church and finds solace in a theater.
- [The Narrator (Two Temples: Second)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_two_temples_second.md): A man who attends a grand opera performance in a New York theater.
- [The Narrator (Benito Cereno)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_benito_cereno.md): This narrator moves with a cool, allusive gravity, dropping classical and biblical echoes while refusing to explain what Delano cannot see. The tension lives in that gap: the reader senses wrongness in the ship's shroude
- [The Narrator (Billy Budd)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_billy_budd.md): This narrator is less a presence in the plot than a brooding intelligence over it, forever pausing to weigh a sailor's beauty, a master-at-arms's hidden envy, or the difference between justice and legality. He loves Bill
- [The Narrator (The Bell-Tower)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_bell_tower_third.md): A historian who narrates the story of Bannadonna's bell tower.
- [The Narrator (Poor Man's Pudding)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_poor_man_pudding.md): A visitor who observes the poverty of a farmer named Coulter and his family.
- [The Narrator (Rich Man's Crumbs)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_rich_man_crumbs.md): A man who attends a Guildhall feast and later sees the poor scavenging.
- [The Narrator (The Happy Failure)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_happy_failure_nephew.md): A young man who helps his uncle with a failed invention.
- [The Narrator (The Lightning-Rod Man)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_lightning_rod_man.md): A homeowner who confronts a lightning-rod salesman during a thunderstorm.
- [The Narrator (The Fiddler)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_fiddler_poet.md): A struggling poet who meets a cheerful fiddler named Hautboy.
- [The Narrator (Paradise of Bachelors)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_paradise_bachelors_guest.md): A guest at a lavish bachelor's dinner in the Temple, London.
- [The Narrator (Tartarus of Maids)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_tartarus_maids_visitor.md): A visitor to a grim paper mill where pale women work in harsh conditions.
- [The Narrator (I and My Chimney)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_i_and_my_chimney_owner.md): He is a stubborn, digressive householder whose identity is bound up with the monstrous chimney at the heart of his wide, low house. His wife and daughters want it altered or removed; he regards every proposal as an assau
- [The Narrator (The Apple-Tree Table)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_apple_tree_table_owner.md): He is a man of wry, self-aware reason, fond of his old house, his two daughters, and his own unshakable good sense. When the apple-wood table begins ticking and a strange insect emerges, his daughters and the hired girl 
- [The Narrator (The Piazza)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_piazza_builder.md): He is a leisured man of narrow fortune and wide aesthetic appetite, who quarries a piazza onto his old house so he can recline before Greylock as before a painting. His craving for tranquil, unhurried beauty is genuine, 
- [The Narrator (Billy Budd)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_billy_budd_third.md): He moves through the Bellipotent as an interpreter of men, pausing to anatomize Claggart's flickering glances and Billy's unguarded cheer. His sympathies lean toward the Handsome Sailor, yet his voice keeps a wary distan
- [The Narrator (Daniel Orme)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_daniel_orme_storyteller.md): A sailor who recounts the story of the mysterious and solitary Daniel Orme.
- [The Narrator (Two Temples: First)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_two_temples_first_visitor.md): A man who is turned away from a wealthy church and finds solace in a theater.
- [The Narrator (Two Temples: Second)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_two_temples_second_visitor.md): A man who attends a grand opera performance in a New York theater.
- [The Narrator (Encantadas Sketch Five)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_encantadas_sketch_five_sailor.md): A sailor who describes the frigate and ship Flyaway near the Encantadas.
- [The Narrator (Encantadas Sketch Six)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_encantadas_sketch_six_sailor.md): A sailor who recounts the history of buccaneers on Barrington Isle.
- [The Narrator (Poor Man's Pudding)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_poor_man_pudding_visitor.md): A visitor who observes the poverty of a farmer named Coulter and his family.
- [The Narrator (Rich Man's Crumbs)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_rich_man_crumbs_visitor.md): A man who attends a Guildhall feast and later sees the poor scavenging.
- [The Narrator (The Happy Failure)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_happy_failure_nephew_young.md): A young man who helps his uncle with a failed invention.
- [The Narrator (The Lightning-Rod Man)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_lightning_rod_man_homeowner.md): A homeowner who confronts a lightning-rod salesman during a thunderstorm.
- [The Narrator (The Fiddler)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_fiddler_poet_struggling.md): A struggling poet who meets a cheerful fiddler named Hautboy.
- [The Narrator (Paradise of Bachelors)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_28_se/characters/the_narrator_paradise_bachelors_guest_dinner.md): A guest at a lavish bachelor's dinner in the Temple, London.

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