Benito Cereno

In Benito Cereno the quote, “… the American could not but think it another strange instance of his host’s capriciousness, this being shaved with such uncommon punctuality in the middle of the day,” suggests that the character Captain Delano is beginning to figure out that there is something suspicious on board of the San Dominick. Everything that has already happened that is already suspicious to the reader is now evident to the American and leaves the reader angry at him for his lackadaisical persona toward the Spanish ship. He just assumes that many things are different because they are of Spanish decent, and perhaps different cultures do things different such as shaving. He realizes that it is odd that Benito is shaving in the middle of the day and also that Babo offers for them to continue speaking while he is shaving Benito. However for the American, these suspicious events do not completely register as means enough for alarm.

Melville does a great job in aggravating the reader so to speak, in instances such as this one with the somewhat slow-acting American in Benito Cereno. All that is provided to the reader up until this point in the story, makes it known that something isn’t quite right and that this storyline does not follow typical stereotypical themes. Although with Captain Delano present during all of these events, and even making comments as he actually notices majority of them, he seems to misinterpret everything and just assumes it to be common among a different culture. Personally Melville did a great job at making me fall into this same literary trap, as he does with most of his audience’s. For that I applaud him on making such an interesting story that totally captures the reader and really brings them close to the character enough to know exactly what is going on and then having his characters not realize what we are realizing. Therefore this is an excellent device used to entrap the reader even more into finishing out the entire story and strongly poll for the good of the narrative characters.