The story Benito Cereno by Herman Melville depicts the story of Benito Cereno and his ship of slaves and the Captain Amasa Delano who finds the troubled ship, San Dominick. When Delano approaches the ship of the Captain Cereno, he notices that something is very off with this ship from the start. As the story progresses, you get a feeling of mystery as you the reader are trying to figure out the truth of what happened on the ship San Dominick along with Delano. He was trying to tell readers that Africans were not the caricatures that minstrels of the time were portraying them as. They were not the babbling, unintelligent buffoons that were on display at these shows but rather smart and cunning. Not only did Melville portray this, but he also conveyed a fear that every slave owner had at the time which was their slaves revolting against them.
If you look at the slave…show more content… They thought their loyal slaves would rebel and kill them to become free again. During this time of the century, many southern slave owners had a fear that they would lose their slaves. The North was trying to get slaves freed because of the inhumane treatment they saw the South do to these people. The South obviously thought that the North was trying to ruin their way of living. Of course, this didn’t mean that during this chaos that slaves wouldn’t try to take matters into their own hands. They could easily overpower the owner since there were more of them and take back their freedom which they originally had. Benito Cereno helps one understand the issue of racism that was happening in the 19th century. It helps convey the notion that African American’s were thought of as being lesser to their white counterpart. They were often thought of being very stupid and were made fun of for this reason through minstrel shows produced by white people. It also helps portray the fear that a revolt could happen against a white slave
