Character Analysis
The Naïve Reader
Captain Delano is really just an observer in "Benito Cereno". But…the story is all about the observer. It's a tricky, twisty, oh that's not what you thought kind of story. It's based on getting the person looking to not know what they're looking at. It's an elaborate joke on the reader. And the reader in this case is not just you, but your stand in on the deck, the redoubtable Captain Delano.
Captain Delano is a "person of a singularly undistrustful good nature." (3.4) He (and you!) are people of "a native simplicity". (3.113) To put it simply: he doesn't read below the surface for malign motives. So the reader here—you—is presented as someone who doesn't question too hard, who doesn't look below the surface. Delano is someone who reads straightforward stories, who does not expect subterfuge or hidden meanings. To Captain Delano, a shave is just a shave.
The Racist Reader
But the shave isn't really just a shave. Melville turns things around on the naïve reader, Delano. Delano does not understand at all. Instead of a happy, friendly, idealistic guy, he (and the reader who walks along with him) turns out to be a dupe.
And more than a dupe. Part of the dupishness of Delano, the thing that makes him naïve, is that his "simplicity" maybe isn't so simple after all. He has an "undistrustful good nature"—but one of the things he's trusting is the very fact that his nature is good. His simplicity isn't just in reading other people in a cheerful way. His simplicity is in seeing himself that way too.
The happy slaves onboard the ship are neither happy nor slaves. But that means that Delano isn't who he thinks he is either. In his happy surface world, he can look around him and observe:
There is something in the negro which, in a peculiar way, fit him for avocations about one's person. Most negroes are natural valets and hair-dressers; taking to the comb and brush congenially as to the castinets…. (3.250)
The world is happy. Black people are servants. Therefore, black people like being servants. If black people like being servants, enslaving them isn't wrong. And if enslaving them isn't wrong, then Captain Delano, who is all in favor of slavery, is a good person. Ta da!
But when you learn that black people are not happy being servants, what happens? Yes, the surface world is not what it appears; Delano needs to trust it less. But you also find out, if you go just a little further, that Delano needs to trust himself less as well. His reading of himself is poor; he is not a person of a good nature; he is a person who enslaves others against their will. He's an evil avatar of death, like that skeleton nailed to the foremast. He just doesn't know enough to look in the mirror and see his bones.
Delano's Timeline