Benito Cereno: Unveiling Our Preconcieved Notions

One of the things I found most intriguing about this novel was the way Melville utilized the novel and its plot to unveil preconceived stereotypes about slavery that the reader may have, including me. When I think of slaves and the transatlantic slave trade, I usually imagine the slaves placed in a subordinate position, chained up, and treated with the utmost disrespect. If they misbehaved, I would assume that the slaves would be harshly reprimanded by their owners/masters. However, in Benito Cereno the slaves are roaming about the slave trade ship, unchained. There are also instances where the slaves are hitting the Spanish soldiers and not being punished for it, such as when Delano witnesses the young sailor hit a Spanish sailor on the head with a knife. So, when the slaves are acting against this stereotype we as readers become suspicious of them, as if they must be up to something because they aren’t fitting with our preconceived notions of how slaves are supposed to behave. The reader automatically assumes something must not be right about this scene, that there must be something dubious going on when the slaves aren’t behaving as they stereotypically should.

Just because slaves are stereotyped as subordinate beings doesn’t necessarily mean this was always the case. It doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a slave trade ship in which the slaves were allowed to roam the cabin, so what makes this scene so suspicious? Is it simply the fact that the slaves are defying the stereotypes we have created for them or are their other aspects that add to the mystery of the “San Dominck.” Granted, the behavior of the slaves, regardless of whether they are behaving stereotypically or not, and the behavior of the Spanish sailors is a key element to the mystery of the novel and to the truth about what really happened to the “San Dominick”, but I just found it interesting that one of the reasons the “San Dominick” seemed so odd was the fact that these slaves were not behaving according to the way we would imagine they should be behaving and how in staging it this way, Melville is revealing stereotypes held by the reader regarding slavery.