Benito Cereno

When dealing with novella about slaves one would immediately assume that the “other,” hegemony, and silence characters would be the Slaves; Herman Melville creates many scenes in Benito Cereno that leads readers to believe that this is case, but that is not case in the end. The slaves in Benito Cereno often described as animals. Capitan Delano often describes Babo as a loyal dog. Later on Delano describes seeing a mother and her child to:

His attention had been drawn to a slumbering negress, partly disclosed through lace-work of some rigging, lying with youthful limbs carelessly disposed, under the lee of the bulwarks, like a doe in the shade of a woodland rock. Sprawling at her lapped breasts was her wife-awake fawn, stark naked, it black little body half lifted from the deck, crosswise with its dam’s; its hands, like two paws, clambering upon her; its mouth and nose ineffectually rooting to get at the mark. (Melville 1205)

The idea of comparing people to animals dehumanizes them and creates them into this “other.” By

For example, “As master and man stood before him, the black upholding the white, Captain Delano could not but bethink him of the beauty of that relationship which could present such a spectacle of fidelity on the one hand and confidence on the other,” this line is the opposite of how hegemony is typically displayed to us because “the black” is upholding “the white” (Melville 1193).When we think of hegemony during the 1850s we think of the “the white” upholding “the black”. Another example, is when Babo makes a decision for ship, which puzzles Delano because Don Benito should be making that choice because Babo is just slave. Although, Babo is unsilenced for most of Benito Cereno there is still a group of slaves are being chained up while others are free, “Shut up in these oaken walls, chained to one dull round” (Melville