Yellin, Jean Fagan. “Black Masks: Melville’s “Benito Cereno.” JSTOR. John Hopkins University Press, n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2015.

In “Black Masks” Yellin puts Melville’s “Benito Cereno” in a historical literary context, citing sources such as Jefferson and Thoreau. The Article begins by putting the story in historical context by examining the fact that Putnam’s Monthly was among the first publications in the Nation to condemn the practice of slavery. The story was actually modeled after an insurrection in 1804-1805, while Melville changed the dates to make it 1799. The article focuses largely on the fears of whites in the New World with regards to black insurrection. The article goes to blame the Haitian rebellion and the news of it as the impetus for this fear. This of course swelled in the United States in the wake of the insurrection that was quelled in Richmond Led by a Slave named Gabriel, and more famously Nat Turner’s rebellion in which the slaves had an uprising and killed all the whites except one non-slave holding family. Therefore the timing of “Benito Cereno” when the United States was still deciding the issue of Kansas, and free-soil. This story was written during a turbulent time in American history and strongly decried the evils of subjugation in an attempt to persuade people to the abolitionist cause.

American Innocence and Guilt: Black-White Destiny in “Benito Cereno,”” Paul David Johnson, Phylon 36.4 (1975): 426-34. Jstor. Web.

In “American Innocence and Guilt” Johnson shows Melville’s characterization of Slaves as the antithesis to the previous narrative, that Blacks in fiction generally represent atypical white characteristics. They generally appear as poorly functioning, and therefore necessitating paternalistic treatment. This article also addresses Melville’s decision to put the events in the pre-revolutionary past. The blacks in the story do not represent a poorly functioning piece of property but an affront to the moral righteousness of those who subjugate them, largely Captain Delano, as he sails off ignorantly hopeful and good-natured. Also, the name of the San Dominick gives strong evidence to the theory that the events that transpired in the story are in some way connected to the uprising on Santo Domingo (the Haitian revolution). The article also characterizes Delano’s temperament as that of a child. His ignorance to the ill will posed to him by both the Spanish Captain and the Slaves goes unrecognized by him throughout the story, he rather sees them as “mirroring back to him his own genial temperament.”

Horsley-Meacham, Gloria. “The Monastic Slaver: Images and Meaning in “Benito Cereno”” JSTOR. The New England Quarterly, n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2015

This article focuses on the ecclesiastical (religious) imagery in “Benito Cereno” and the importance that plays in understanding the novel and African bondage. It suggests that the decision to send Africans to the New World was made in large part because the Catholic Clergy was struggling against the ever present threat of Moorish invasion, and therefore the institution of slavery and Catholicism are inextricably tied to one another. Melville does make many ecclesiastical references in the story to lend credence to the hypothesis that he was insinuating the inseparability of the Church and Slavery. Horsley-Meacham also shows that the Jeronymite Fathers had been essentially the de facto rulers of Santo Domingo and asked the Spanish monarchs to send African labor to replace the dwindling supply of indigenous labor. According to Horsley-Meacham Melville draws from the Chirsian-Islamic conflict to show the ecclesiastic roots of African servitude. Melville even described the slave ship as appearing like a “monastery”

All three of these articles indicate the conflict between African and European forces, whether it is white vs black or Islam vs Catholicism; it shows the dichotomy in ideals and the role that that played in the subjugation of Africans as laborers. This also shows how these conflicst led to grave misperceptions, some of which are still prevalent today, as to the nature of race in terms of character and experience. The first two address this very directly citing that Jefferson’s characterization of blacks as similar to whites but holding certain atypical characteristics that make them inherently both not the same as whites and in many ways below them. This distinction is important, that just because something is not the same does not mean that it doesn’t have its merits, yet the characterization used is frequently one of degradation. Benito Cereno is a strong counterpoint to this as the slaves in this story are more cunning than their captors and overtake them. Everyone in the story is a slave, Cereno is a slave to Babo by means of his violent insurrection, Babo is a slave to Cereno as a result of his utter reliance on his navigation skills, and Delano is a slave to his own misconceptions, largely perpetuated by the volumes of literature that hold this mischaracterization of the African slave, such as that written by Jefferson. “Benito Cereno” humanizes the issue of slavery at the time in which the free soil debate was raging over Kansas. This story, though not as well-known as other works of abolitionist literature, came at a turning point in deciding the fate of blacks in America, and does so in a way that raises awareness by providing a human element to what was an abstract problem to many Northerners who had little or no experience with such things, and to Southerners whose views on the subject were obscured by their clinging to their archaic notions of paternalism.