Benito Cereno uses “greyness” throughout the story to establish a mood of uncertainty and expectancy. Grey seems to be an intermediate color, wavering between black and white and ready to shift either way. The sense of idleness it carries calls for something to happen – however, we don’t know what that might be.

The reference is particularly prevalent in the opening third paragraph:

"The morning was one peculiar to that coast. Everything was mute and calm; everything grey. The sea, though undulated into long roods of swells, seemed fixed, and was sleeked at the surface like waved lead that has cooled and set in the smelter's mould. The sky seemed a grey mantle. Flights of troubled grey fowl, kith and kin with flights of troubled grey vapors among which they were mixed, skimmed low and fitfully over the waters, as swallows over meadows before storms. Shadows present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to come."

The word “grey” appears four times in this passage. First, the passage describes everything to be grey. This muteness and calmness renders the setting into a blank canvas ready to be painted with a story. Next, the sea is likened to lead – a grey liquid. This follows with a reference to the grey sky. Again, this implies something is going to happen because when the sky is that color, we expect it to rain. Grey fowl fly through grey fog and often, a flock flees an area when they sense trouble or ensuing threats. It closes by summing up the significance of grey – that it foreshadows deeper shadows to come.

Grey also becomes important on the San Dominick. There, blacks and whites mix and defy racial barriers. Coincidentally (not really), grey is the color between black and white. Grey, therefore, represents an amalgamation of two races.

Like this dominant color, nothing is clear in Benito Cereno. All through the story, we, like Captain Delano, are not certain of what will happen next.