Herman Melville distinctly emphasizes how innocence reflects everyday life, and if we as readers look beyond the surface of situations, it would really open our eyes - probably even more than we really want it to. In Melville's "Benito Cereno", Captain Amasa Delano boards a strange ship that he continuously misinterprets to be something that it is not. His being naive alone demonstrates his innocence throughout this literary work. Melville does this because he wants to continue to develop the story and build suspense, and keeping the protagonist unaware of what is really going on can be understood as being blind to the real situation and therefore, keeps the reader at the edge of his or her seat.
Delano's not realizing that the slaves that were onboard this once-predominantly white ship have revolted and threatened the white men who were left over with their lives demonstrates his purity. This same pure effect is seen in Melville's other literary work, "The Encantadas; or Enchanted Isles". The ship in "Benito Cereno" reminds me a lot of the second sketch in "Encantadas". In the second sketch, "Two Sides to a Tortoise", we read that these two sides parallel the same idea of blindness and innocence in "Benito Cereno". On the outside, a turtle has a rough, dark shell that anyone or anything could immediately see. However, its belly has a smooth, lighter in color and shinier in texture shell. This is very much like the ship as well as the slave who was holding Benito Cereno in captivity, Babo. The ship from the outside seemed only damaged on the surface, and Babo seemed to be a very caring servant to his "master", Benito. Both of these images as well as the image of the tortoise shell yield to the facade that innocence can tend to migrate towards and remain surface-level with.
Some good ideas. The ship is not deceptive; it is a wreck. The people on the ship are both hiding something and trying to tell Delano something.
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