Cereno

Cereno is a surname and is best known in literature for the title character Benito Cereno in Herman Melville's novella Benito Cereno, first published in 1855. The work centers on the American captain Amasa Delano, who encounters the Spanish ship San Dominick off the coast of Chile in 1799. Benito Cereno, the ship’s captain, behaves with apparent burden and distress, while the ship’s enslaved crew, led by a cunning slave named Babo, have seized control of the vessel. Through Delano’s perception and observations, the narrative builds a tense exploration of appearances versus reality.

The story is widely studied for its themes of race, power, and perception, and for its use of unreliable narration. Melville examines how social and institutional structures—such as slavery and European colonial authority—can distort judgment, and how a reader’s assumptions can be manipulated by surface details. The novella’s compact plot and provocative ambiguities have made it a notable subject in debates on 19th-century American literature, ethics, and narratology. In scholarly use, Benito Cereno is often discussed in relation to narrative perspective, symbolism, and the critique of imperial gaze, and it remains a frequent teaching text for its rich, challenging interpretive potential.