Enigmatic

I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Benito Cereno" and found it to be an enthralling and suspenseful novella. The contrast between "The Heroic Slave" and "Benito Cereno" is obvious to the reader, but remains an interesting subject because the former portrays the plight of slaves sympathetically, and the latter reverses their role and characterizes them as bloodthirsty barbarians. "Benito Cereno" was full of contrasts, in fact, and one of the most apparent disparities often occurred within Amasa Delano's own train of thought. His thoughts constantly wavered between feeling secure and safe on the decks of the San Dominick to feeling overwhelmingly outnumbered and uneasy. For example,

"Poor fellow, thought Captain Delano, so nervous he can't even bear the sight of barber's blood... is it credible that I should have imagined he meant to spill all my blood, who can't endure the sight of one little drop of his own?" (86)

"Why decline the invitation to visit the sealer that evening?... What imported all those day-long enigmas and contradictions, except they were intended to mystify, preliminary to some stealthy blow?" (94)

I believe that this story was written to be purposefully enigmatic, especially regarding Melville's view of slavery (does he condone it? does he condemn it?) , and all of the dichotomy throughout the novella-- such as the antithesis of the colors black, white, and red and Delano's vacillating opinions of his own security-- add to the obscurity of the plot. This novel, like in Pym, also has numerous disparities between appearance and reality, for instance-- the ship looked like it was boarded by monks in the beginning rather than slaves, the skeleton of Don Alexandro on the bow was shrouded to look like it was just in disrepair, and Atufl was disguised as a prisoner when he was really an integral part of the mutiny.