Exploring Dramatic Irony, Perspective, and Race in Benito Cereno

Part 1: Exploring Dramatic Irony, Perspective, and Race in Benito Cereno

Answer the questions below each passage to analyze the passagesin terms of what they tell us about Benito Cereno’s perspective on race and slavery. Remember that each passage is heavily annotated in our course text and you can draw on the annotations to help you answer the questions. I have completed the first one as an example.

Example Passage (filled out by Prof. Michael):

The quarter-deck rose into an ample elevated poop, upon the forward verge of which, lifted, like the oakum-pickers, some eight feet above the general throng, sat along in a row, separated by regular spaces, the cross-legged figures of six other blacks; each with a rusty hatchet in his hand, which, with a bit of brick and a rag, he was engaged like a scullion in scouring; while between each two was a small stack of hatchets, their rusted edges turned forward awaiting a like operation. Though occasionally the four oakum-pickers would briefly address some person or persons in the crowd below, yet the six hatchet-polishers neither spoke to others, nor breathed a whisper among themselves, but sat intent upon their task, except at intervals, when, with the peculiar love in negroes of uniting industry with pastime, two and two they sideways clashed their hatchets together, like cymbals, with a barbarous din. All six, unlike the generality, had the raw aspect of unsophisticated Africans.

1. Contextualize and paraphrase the passage (explain when it occurs in the story and put it in your own words): In this passage, Captain Amasa Delano has just come aboard Don Benito Cereno’s ship, and is taking in the scene. He sees six black men sitting cross-legged cleaning the rust off of hatchets. These six men are silently working, and at regular intervals, they crash their hatchets together like cymbals.
2. How does Amasa Delano understand what’s going on? Captain Delano sees these six men as “unsophisticated Africans,” and reads their clashing their hatchets together as a mindless kind of playing – in line with his understanding that black people like to unite “industry with pastime.”
3. What is actually going on here? The six men he sees here are actually cleaning their hatchets and banging them together as a show of force to assert the dominance they won over the ship when they revolted.
4. What does this scene tell us about Captain Delano’s views on race and slavery? Captain Delano is blinded by the fact that he sees black people as simple and unsophisticated. He’s therefore unable to see that the black people on the ship are the ones in charge. This scene shows us that Captain Delano reduces black people to stereotypes of uncultured “savages.”

Passage 2:

He was rather tall, but seemed never to have been robust, and now with nervous suffering was almost worn to a skeleton. A tendency to some pulmonary complaint appeared to have been lately confirmed. His voice was like that of one with lungs half gone–hoarsely suppressed, a husky whisper. No wonder that, as in this state he tottered about, his private servant apprehensively followed him. Sometimes the negro gave his master his arm, or took his handkerchief out of his pocket for him; performing these and similar offices with that affectionate zeal which transmutes into something filial or fraternal acts in themselves but menial; and which has gained for the negro the repute of making the most pleasing body-servant in the world; one, too, whom a master need be on no stiffly superior terms with, but may treat with familiar trust; less a servant than a devoted companion.

Marking the noisy indocility of the blacks in general, as well as what seemed the sullen inefficiency of the whites it was not without humane satisfaction that Captain Delano witnessed the steady good conduct of Babo.

1. Contextualize and paraphrase the passage (explain when it occurs in the story and put it in your own words): In this passage, it is describing how Don Benito Cereno appears and looks to Captain Delano. The captain is observing Babos devotion and loyalty to Don Benito Cereno. It shows how Babo is humble and is trusted.

2. How does Amasa Delano understand what’s going on? Delano understands that Babo is a trusted slave to Don Benito. He sees him as a good slave. He sees that Babo has good character.

3. What is actually going on here? What is actually going on is Babo is making sure that Don Benito does not tell Captain Delano what is really going on in the ship, that the slaves are the ones in charged. He is keeping a close eye on Don Benito.

4. What does this scene tell us about Captain Delano’s views on race and slavery?

Captain Delano is blinded by his trusting to the black people but he still feels that black people are below him.

Passage 3:

Setting down his basin, the negro searched among the razors, as for the sharpest, and having found it, gave it an additional edge by expertly strapping it on the firm, smooth, oily skin of his open palm; he then made a gesture as if to begin, but midway stood suspended for an instant, one hand elevating the razor, the other professionally dabbling among the bubbling suds on the Spaniard’s lank neck. Not unaffected by the close sight of the gleaming steel, Don Benito nervously shuddered; his usual ghastliness was heightened by the lather, which lather, again, was intensified in its hue by the contrasting sootiness of the negro’s body. Altogether the scene was somewhat peculiar, at least to Captain Delano, nor, as he saw the two thus postured, could he resist the vagary, that in the black he saw a headsman, and in the white a man at the block. But this was one of those antic conceits, appearing and vanishing in a breath, from which, perhaps, the best regulated mind is not always free.

Meantime the agitation of the Spaniard had a little loosened the bunting from around him, so that one broad fold swept curtain-like over the chair-arm to the floor, revealing, amid a profusion of armorial bars and ground-colors–black, blue, and yellow–a closed castle in a blood red field diagonal with a lion rampant in a white.

“The castle and the lion,” exclaimed Captain Delano–“why, Don Benito, this is the flag of Spain you use here. It’s well it’s only I, and not the King, that sees this,” he added, with a smile, “but”–turning towards the black–“it’s all one, I suppose, so the colors be gay;” which playful remark did not fail somewhat to tickle the negro.

“Now, master,” he said, readjusting the flag, and pressing the head gently further back into the crotch of the chair; “now, master,” and the steel glanced nigh the throat.

Again Don Benito faintly shuddered.

“You must not shake so, master. See, Don Amasa, master always shakes when I shave him. And yet master knows I never yet have drawn blood, though it’s true, if master will shake so, I may some of these times. Now master,” he continued. “And now, Don Amasa, please go on with your talk about the gale, and all that; master can hear, and, between times, master can answer.”

1. Contextualize and paraphrase the passage (explain when it occurs in the story and put it in your own words): In this passage, Babo feels the secret of the ship is about to be exposed, he is trying to make Delano stop asking questions. Babo cuts Don Benito to scare him send him a message not to saying what is going on.

2. How does Amasa Delano understand what’s going on? Delano really does not understand what is going on. He seems actually confused as if Cereno is hiding something from him.

3. What is actually going on here? Babo is trying to keep the control and keep everything under control and hidden so that Delano does not find out the truth about what is going on.

4. What does this scene tell us about Captain Delano’s views on race and slavery?

In this scene Captain Delano, actually admires Babos loyalty to Cereno that he even

offers to buy Babo from Cereno. It shows that even though he see Babo is loyal and

admires that he still feels he is beneath him.

Passage 4:

Seating himself in the stern, Captain Delano, making a last salute, ordered the boat shoved off. The crew had their oars on end. The bowsmen pushed the boat a sufficient distance for the oars to be lengthwise dropped. The instant that was done, Don Benito sprang over the bulwarks, falling at the feet of Captain Delano; at the same time calling towards his ship, but in tones so frenzied, that none in the boat could understand him. But, as if not equally obtuse, three sailors, from three different and distant parts of the ship, splashed into the sea, swimming after their captain, as if intent upon his rescue.

The dismayed officer of the boat eagerly asked what this meant. To which, Captain Delano, turning a disdainful smile upon the unaccountable Spaniard, answered that, for his part, he neither knew nor cared; but it seemed as if Don Benito had taken it into his head to produce the impression among his people that the boat wanted to kidnap him. “Or else–give way for your lives,” he wildly added, starting at a clattering hubbub in the ship, above which rang the tocsin of the hatchet-polishers; and seizing Don Benito by the throat he added, “this plotting pirate means murder!” Here, in apparent verification of the words, the servant, a dagger in his hand, was seen on the rail overhead, poised, in the act of leaping, as if with desperate fidelity to befriend his master to the last; while, seemingly to aid the black, the three white sailors were trying to clamber into the hampered bow. Meantime, the whole host of negroes, as if inflamed at the sight of their jeopardized captain, impended in one sooty avalanche over the bulwarks.

1. Contextualize and paraphrase the passage (explain when it occurs in the story and put it in your own words): In this passage, Don Benito escapes the ship and the plot starts to unfold on what was really going on in the ship. That the slaves had control and Babo had control over Don Benito. Delano thinks Babo is trying to kill him but Babo is trying to kill Don Benito.

2. How does Amasa Delano understand what’s going on? The whole time Delano thought that Benito was trying to kill him but he was actually saving him that is why he was acting so strange.

3. What is actually going on here? Don Benito struggled to tell Delano what was going on. But by the time he jumped on the boat everything started to unfold.

4. What does this scene tell us about Captain Delano’s views on race and slavery? Delano’s views on race and slavery here I think it shows he is not for slavery but in reality, he is. He does not see black people as equal like him.