O'Connell, ''Narrative Collusion and Occlusion in Melville's 'Benito Cereno'''

If A Reader Must Stay on Course, then why does an author insert literary devices and poetic references, such as slavery and character viewpoints, into a text that has a final meaning or one that can be usually seen through an ideal reading.

Need some help on this essay? Look at my page then, it may help.

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/AngelaPalumbo/2009/02/oconnors_objective.html

Not Just Unreliable, But Pretending to Be Reliable
“Readers’ willingness to trust and agree with the narrator is their ultimate undoing” (O'Connell 192).
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/GretaCarroll/2009/02/not_just_unreliable_but_preten.html

Who is the Reader?
“I argue that ‘Benito Cereno’ employs an insidiously unreliable narrator to ‘set up’ the reader, and that the reader is incorporated into the text in a subject position analogous or at least complementary to Delano’s.”
-From Catharine O’Connell’s “Narrative Collusion and Occlusion in Melville’s ‘Benito Cereno’” in Donald Keesey’s Contexts for Criticism, page 186
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/EricaGearhart/2009/02/who_is_the_reader.html

"The narrator is the shadow figure in "Benito Cereno" who operates in the background, stirring the pot and adding murkiness that appears unnecessary to the plot (unless a crucial plot element is seen to be the creation of confusion, not just in Delano, but in the reader as well).

"'Benito Cereno' formulates its indictment of antebellum radical ideology through first structuring identification with, or sympathy for, the character of Amasa Delano, and later exposing the terrible moral, political, and epistemological implications of a willingness to accept Delano's premises" (O'Connell 186).

Delano Innocent?
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JennaMiller/2009/02/delano-innocent.html

I think I get it...but hey correct me if I'm wrong!

"Readers' willingness to trust and agree with the narrator is their ultimate undoing."