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Atufal
Benito Cereno’s childhood friend Alexandro Aranda is the owner of most of the slaves on the San Dominick before the slaves’ rebellion. Although not much is known about Aranda’s character, he seems trusting and optimistic, since he decides not to keep the slaves in chains, assuming that they are docile. This attitude reflects Captain Delano’s naïve, racist belief that black slaves are naturally passive and obedient. During the slave revolution, Babo orders a couple of Ashantee men to kill Aranda, in order to ensure the slaves’ freedom and, through terror, to keep the remaining sailors from rebelling. Babo orders Aranda’s body cleaned (through probable cannibalism) and his skeleton placed as the figure-head of the ship. Babo then uses this skeleton as a threat that, if the sailors try to revolt, they will “follow their leader” and die like Aranda.
Alexandro Aranda Quotes in Benito Cereno
The Benito Cereno quotes below are all either spoken by Alexandro Aranda or refer to Alexandro Aranda. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Benito Cereno
Quotes
Some months after, dragged to the gibbet at the tail of a mule, the black met his voiceless end. The body was burned to ashes; but for many days, the head, that hive of subtlety fixed on a pole in the Plaza, met, unabashed, the gaze of the whites; and across the Plaza looked towards St. Bartholomew’s church, in whose vaults slept then, as now, the recovered bones of Aranda; and across the Rimac bridge looked towards the monastery, on Mount Agonia without; where, three months after being dismissed by the court, Benito Cereno, borne on the bier, did, indeed, follow his leader.
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Alexandro Aranda Quotes in Benito Cereno
The Benito Cereno quotes below are all either spoken by Alexandro Aranda or refer to Alexandro Aranda. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Benito Cereno
Quotes
Some months after, dragged to the gibbet at the tail of a mule, the black met his voiceless end. The body was burned to ashes; but for many days, the head, that hive of subtlety fixed on a pole in the Plaza, met, unabashed, the gaze of the whites; and across the Plaza looked towards St. Bartholomew’s church, in whose vaults slept then, as now, the recovered bones of Aranda; and across the Rimac bridge looked towards the monastery, on Mount Agonia without; where, three months after being dismissed by the court, Benito Cereno, borne on the bier, did, indeed, follow his leader.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
