Benio Cerino

Herman Melville wrote "Benito Cereno" in eighteen fifty-five. The story is set in seventeen ninety-nine on a slave ship that has been taken over by the slaves. In the story Babo, the main slave, sets up the revolt so they can go back home to freedom. Amasa Delano, captain of a nearby ship, come over to help their broken down ship. He never realizes what is going on because he is so racist against African Americans. He doesn't think they could ever be incapable of planning a revolt and thinks, the Spaniard, Benito Cereno, is in charge of the ship and the slaves.

Captain Delano just did not contemplate what was happening aboard the ship. He sometimes sensed something weird was going on, but those senses were distorted by his thoughts on slavery which made him incoherent on what was really going on. Instead of realizing the truth, Delano simply believes Babo and the other slaves are incapable of taking over a Spanish ship. Delano says directly on page twelve, when talking about the slaves, "They were just too stupid."

Delano frequently compares the slaves to animals, on page two he describes Babo as a dog saying, "By his side stood a black of small structure, in whose rude face, as occasionally, like a shepherd's dog, he mutely turned it up into the Spaniard's sorrow and affection were equally blended." On page six Delano then asks Cereno if he had, "appointed shepherds to your flock of black sheep?" referring the tasks the slaves did on the ship. He also compares the Negroes to deer and pigs one morning while watching them sleep. He describes how they slept on page eleven, "like a doe in the shade of a woodland rock." He goes on so say the African women were "unsophisticated as leopardesses; living as doves." Delano didn't mean for any of his comparisons to be taken badly. He found them very entertaining and compared them in, what seemed to him, a very normal way.

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