Rihner, It's a trap!

Like Hawthorne, Herman Melville's concept of innocence deals with the unaware and unknowing; however, Melville also utilizes the elements of trust and expectation. Captain Delano, an innocent American, in "Benito Cereno" is very clearly placed into a mysterious and unknown atmosphere when he boards the corrupted Spanish ship. Visiting the unfamiliar vessel is also a display of the trust of innocence. Innocence trusts the unknown because it does not understand depravity. Captain Delano assures himself that he will be safe on the ship, and even wishes to bring supplies for the crewmen. Once upon on board, Delano recognizes the ship's rough condition as well as a strange relationship amongst the crew. Being an Innocent and a captain, Delano expects that these faults are due to the Spanish ship's captain. Delano does not understand the ship's crew, they are the unknown. Delano expects that the captain is to blame because he himself is a captain. Leadership is what Delano knows, the rest is beyond his innocence. Until the stories end, when the slave revolt is evident, does Delano lose his innocence (his trust, expectations, and unawareness) and accepts the situation.

We can find these same cases of innocence dealing with trust, expectation, and the unknown in Melville's "The Encantadas." In the ninth sketch, the hermit Oberlus tricks four innocent men into becoming his slaves. Oberlus greets the seamen with kindness and invites them to his home. The innocent men agree to trust Oberlus, expecting him to be a kind island dweller. They enter the unknown with just their trust to guide them, which leads to their own enslavement. Like in "Benito Cereno," the innocents have been tricked. In the sixth sketch, we are shown the remainders of traveling buccaneers. The narrator, an innocent, first believes that the island was a retreat for the buccaneers, a vacation for these exotic men. However, as the story proceeds, the narrator admits to finding corpses impaled with rusting daggers and swords. His expectations of the buccaneers, his innocence, is broken down by the truth.