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Slavery is dehumanizing.
At its core, Benito Cereno is a novella about the institution of slavery. As a result, the dehumanizing nature of slavery is the most crucial and central idea in the text. There are many moments throughout the novella in which the slaves are described as less than human. For example, Delano repeatedly compares the slaves to wild animals—some notable examples include wolves, dogs, and fish. Delano likens the slaves to creatures because he considers them to be a different species. Similar dehumanizing rhetoric occurs towards the middle of the novella, when Delano is so impressed by Babo’s loyalty and skills that he jokingly asks Cereno if he can buy Babo from him. This brief exchange proves that Delano, like any white person who is complicit in the slave trade, sees Black people as commercial goods or a means of currency as opposed to human beings with autonomy and free will. Each of these examples makes it clear that the white characters in the text do not view the Black characters as people. There has been much debate over Melville’s intentions in Benito Cereno. However, ultimately, it doesn’t really matter; whether Melville was against slavery or not, the novella highlights the very institution’s cruel and dehumanizing nature.
People see what they want to see.
For the duration of his stay aboard the San Dominick, Delano witnesses many curious interactions that initially lead him to believe that things are not as they appear. For instance, he watches a Black man strike a white man with no repercussions, a white sailor tries to warn Delano of something before he is quickly silenced, he is confused as to why Cereno is never left alone, and he endures a lot of strange and invasive questioning. However, while Delano does become suspicious many times throughout the novella, he always finds a way to justify the curious incidents, often laughing off the interaction and his own paranoia. A contemporary reader may be confused by Delano’s obliviousness, but his behavior becomes clear once one begins to contemplate the time period in which the story is set. Delano is a white man and the captain of a whaling ship. He is, therefore, accustomed to slavery and the belief that white people are superior to Black people. It simply does not occur to him that the San Dominick has been taken over by slaves because he has internalized racist ideologies and cannot fathom a reality in which Black people have complete control over white people. As a result, Delano only “sees” the reality to which he is accustomed and ignores the many warning signs that indicate that Babo is really running the San Dominick.
The institution of slavery traps people in a cycle of unending violence.
Benito Cereno is a violent text. Melville includes many depictions of the slaves fighting with the white sailors aboard the San Dominick. He also includes an extended sequence in which Babo draws blood and threatens Cereno under the guise of shaving him, and provides lengthy accounts of both the fight between the San Dominick and the Bachelor’s Delight and the bloody manner in which Babo and the rest of the slaves took control of the ship. The text even concludes with the gory image of Babo’s decapitated head mounted on a pole in the Plaza. Melville placed such a heavy emphasis on brutality throughout Benito Cereno because the institution of slavery traps people in a cycle of unending violence. All of the Black people aboard the San Dominick were violently and cruelly ripped from their home and shipped to foreign ports as slaves. It is not surprising, then, that Babo, Atufal, and the others jumped at the first opportunity to regain control in a violent uprising. As a result, Benito Cereno demonstrates the ways in which slavery generates a cycle of violence that can only be broken once the institution is eradicated entirely.
