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“Though occasionally the four oakum-pickers would briefly address some person or persons in the crowd below, yet the six hatchet-polishers neither spoke to others, nor breathed a whisper among themselves, but sat intent upon their task, except at intervals, when, with the peculiar love in negroes of uniting industry with pastime, two and two they sideways clashed their hatchets together, like cymbals, with a barbarous din. All six, unlike the generality, had the raw aspect of unsophisticated Africans.”
Delano presents himself to the reader as a benevolent individual. However, he repeatedly reveals himself to be a deeply racist man throughout Benito Cereno. His above observation that Black people are “peculiar” and “unsophisticated” is just one example of Delano’s racist ideologies. This passage also anticipates a later moment in the novella in which Delano refers to white people as the “shrewder race.”
“Tell me, Don Benito… I should like to have your man here, myself—what will you take for him? Would fifty doubloons be any object?”
This line is delivered by Delano to Cereno towards the middle of the novella. It is a very short quote but it is one of the most disturbing lines in the text. Here, Delano jokingly asks Cereno if he can buy Babo from him because he is so impressed by Babo’s service. It is jarring to see a man be so cavalier the potential purchase of a human being. This interaction emphasizes the inhumane and deeply racist nature of slavery as these two white men commodify Babo and discuss whether or not he can be bought and sold like commercial goods.
