SOURCE: “‘The Creature of His Own Tasteful Hands’: Herman Melville's Benito Cereno and the ‘Empire of Might,’” in Modern Philology, Vol. 93, No. 4, May, 1996, pp. 445-67.

In the following essay, Bartley analyzes “Benito Cereno” as a portrayal of inverted tyranny.

But how is it with the American slave? … He is said to be happy; happy men can speak. But ask the slave what is his condition—what his state of mind—what he thinks of enslavement? and you had as well addressed your inquiries to the silent dead. There comes no voice from the enslaved. We are left to gather his feelings by imagining what ours would be, were our souls in his soul's stead. (Frederick Douglass)¹

But with all this charming jollity and waggishness, the nigger has terrible capacities for revenge and hatred (which opportunity may develope, as in St. Domingo), and which ought to convince the skeptic...