Benito Cereno

Benito Cereno is a great story. Filled with action, Melville describes one ships struggle through a cross-ocean voyage. Melville makes this story enjoyable by the development of the characters. Each character seems to have a specific trait that makes them unique either by the way they laugh or talk to their inferior sailors aboard.

While this story has great detail and is accompanied by colorful characters’, I feel Melville had intentions of delivering a message of race relations in this story. While I understand the irony of saying a story that focuses on a slave ship has a lot to do with the improvement of race relations, I do feel Melville did some justice for the appearance of slaves in the country at this time. First and foremost a slave is given an active role where is viewed as intelligent rather than just a cotton field worker. One image most striking to me is the image of Babo supporting and holding up Cereno during one of his fainting spells aboard the ship. This shows a black man supporting a high ranking officer; very unique for this time. While they still are viewed as slaves in this story they are given names and a high level of intelligence. This is special for this time because I feel that slaves were thought of as extremely inferior to whites. This shows that Melville is not afraid of letting the reader know that slaves are intelligent. While slaves are still suppressed in this story, Babo I feel is a prime example of how the author feels slaves are beginning to emerge to the public’s attention as intelligent and capable.