Benito Cereno

Content Warning: This section discusses racism, enslavement, and implied cannibalism.

Captain Amasa Delano is the protagonist of Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno. Though he is not the narrator, the story is primarily told from his perspective. Hailing from Duxbury, Massachusetts, Delano is the captain of the Bachelor’s Delight, a whaling ship. Captain Delano does not experience an evolution or transformation, remaining a static character throughout the narrative.

Delano is characterized by naivety; the narrator describes him as “a man of such native simplicity as to be incapable of satire or irony” (34). He is also polite and generous, as he eagerly extends assistance to the San Dominick and Captain Cereno, fueled by a sense of pity. This naïve, trusting nature renders him unsuspecting of the events on the ship until they become glaringly obvious, while his preoccupation with good manners leads him to suspect Cereno, whose behavior strikes him as peculiar and therefore potentially indicative of deceit. His persistent misreading of the situation renders him a vehicle for exploring The Unreliability of Appearances: It is only when Babo assaults Cereno that Delano finally grasps what has happened on board the San Dominick, and even then, his racism may still influence his assessment of the facts.