Benito Cereno

 Middle passage – from Africa to the Americas; 60 million perished, were shackled
 Amistad rebellion 1839, abolition of slavery 1833
 Omniscient narrator Amasa Delano, Bachelor’s Delight, New England, supports slavery
 Juxtaposition of Delano and Cereno. Delano is simple, humble, good, confused, self-reliant.
Cereno is elaborately dressed, ostentatious. The Spanish are depicted as weak (Spanish war),
feeble physically and mentally
 Metaphors:
Benito Cereno as Spain which is declining, European aristocracy as well, they are losing colonies.
 Follow your leader – the figurehead used to be Christopher Columbus, but now it is a warning
for America. Don’t follow Spain (anti slavery message)
 Delano is in the 1st part naïve, pleased to see Spain defeated – INTERWHITE RACISM
 Metaphor: refusal on the part of America to see what is wrong (the knot in the story). It’s not
just southern people who are racists and prejudiced
 Parallels between black people and animals , to them black people were 3/5 human
 Americans don’t want to recognize that slavery is wrong
1. They are “good Christians” yet blind and hypocrits
2. The partition of the states
 Crossroads – Delano remains unaffected , America didn’t learn anything!!!
 2nd part – focalization through the omniscient narrator, Cereno’s testimony from the court, their
point of view. He is incredulous, he couldn’t believe “things” can do anything
 Shock, disbelief
 Capital punishment for all slaves
 Blacks are treated brutally, so they are also brutal
 Americans don’t want to know what happened, they skip the descriptions as obvious
 Colonialism – superiority of the colonizators and lineage, from Ham in the Bible
 Material aspect of colonialism: cheap labour, countries providing raw material
 Racism – interwhite racism, Delano is benevolent but hypocritical (black are only good as
servants).