Character Analysis
The story is named after Benito Cereno, but he doesn't actually get to do a whole lot. Delano thinks that "had Benito Cereno been a man of greater energy, misrule would hardly have come to the present past." (3.23) The American captain is somewhat confused, but he's right that Cereno is not filled with vitality. Don Benito mostly wanders around the deck of his ship looking sad and depressed or occasionally terrified. Then he makes his one final bid for freedom…and then he goes back to being sad and depressed, and then he dies.
Benito's lethargy is partly an illusion; Babo walks close by him, sometimes literally holding on to him, as if to prop him up—but actually to control him. The illusion is also a reality though; Benito is exhausted and beaten by the terror and humiliation of being under Babo's mastery. "[Y]ou are saved: what has cast such a shadow upon you?" Captain Delano asks of his sick, ailing friend at the end of the novella. And Benito answers, "The negro." (3.427-428)
Don Benito directly means that Babo has traumatized him through his harsh treatment. But his response could also be interpreted another way. Don Benito has the black man's shadow upon him because Don Benito has become the black man. He has been enslaved, as black people are enslaved. And it has destroyed him. In this story, Benito Cereno is the slave—and so the title, "Benito Cereno" can perhaps be read as meaning, "Slavery"—the evil that shadows the story.
Benito's Timeline