Benito Cereno

Captain Delano of Benito Cereno is in many regards a classic example of an unreliable narrator, whose reporting of the events of the story is often biased by his own assumptions, prejudices, and motivations. At various points in the story, his narration seems inaccurate or biased by his own perspective. In particular, his condescending and racist attitudes towards the enslaved individuals on the San Dominick colors, or even impedes, the reader’s understanding of what is happening on the ship. When he suspects that Captain Cereno is involved in some criminal conspiracy, his heavily biased account reflects his status as an unreliable narrator: 

The whites, too, by nature, were the shrewder race. A man with some evil design, would he not be likely to speak well of that stupidity which was blind to his depravity, and malign that intelligence from which it might not be hidden? Not unlikely, perhaps. But if the whites had dark secrets concerning Don Benito, could then Don Benito be any way in complicity with the blacks? But they were too stupid. Besides, who ever heard of a white so far a renegade as to apostatize from his very species almost, by leaguing in against it with negroes?

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