Black or White

The story of Benito Cereno is at times very vague. Clearly the question of race is at hand throughout most of the story; it is the underlying tone that sets the stage for the meat of the novella as well as the ending. The ambiguity throughout the novel could partly be due to the fact that it is hard to tell the difference between Melville’s views and Delano’s. I felt as if Melville almost put words into Delano’s mouth near the end of the story. Even if Delano didn’t say them it was as if his thoughts have shifted and wavered throughout the drama.
It was easy to see through some of Delano’s quotes in the novella that he greatly underestimated the black culture. It was unbelievable to him that a black could be superior to a white. It was interesting to see how he couldn’t get himself to notice and piece together these mishaps that occurred on the Cereno’s vessel. For example, the black passenger hitting the other white passenger; although Delano is startled, he immediately deems himself stupid for thinking anything sour with the situation. Almost every time he saw a mishap involving crew members, one was black and one was white. And almost every time the black slave was over powering the white crew member. Near the end of the story Delano is discussing how he cannot believe that they were duped by the black slaves and will have to respect them more in the future.
I also think the relationship that Babo and Delano had was curious. Although they didn’t have too much dialogue I feel as if Delano was entranced by Babo and that he was in fact “following his leader”, who just happened to be a slave without even knowing it. The same thing could be thought of when thinking of Cereno and his passing. Was he following his past captain or did he follow his black slave that turned out to control him for the last months of his life.