Billy Budd, Sailor

Herman Melville, the author of Billy Budd, Sailor, is a widely-read author today. However, when Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick, was published in 1851, it was lambasted by critics and quickly forgotten by readers. Moby Dick, now a famous American novel, was a radical departure for Melville, whose previous novels, Typee and Oomo, were successes as traditional adventure stories. Melville had experience as a sailor in the US Navy, and his adventure stories were enjoyable, if not ambitious.

Moby Dick revealed Melville’s weighty thematic obsessions, which had more depth than swashbuckling stories about sailors in danger. His interest in fatalism, nihilism, Gnosticism, allegory, philosophy, religion, and more were on full display, which led to the decline of his reputation and output. Casual readers sometimes did not want to read lengthy passages about rigorous topics.

Melville began writing Billy Budd in the final stretch of his life. He spent several years working on the novella, originally a poem. Melville had written poetry for three decades before returning to prose with Billy Budd. The composition process was chaotic, unfolding in bursts of activity across several documents and drafts, even though the novella would be comparatively short. Billy Budd wasn’t found until 1921, long after Melville’s death in 1891. The original version of this manuscript was published and later revised. His granddaughter, who found the manuscript, gave it to Raymond Weaver, who would then write a Melville biography that focused on Melville’s fascination with mysticism and other forms of esoterica.

Weaver released Billy Budd in 1924, which gave him new support for his biography. The biography resulted in the public’s elevation of Melville from a confused, critical flop to the status of a literary deity. The renewed focus on Moby Dick led to the increased study and status of Billy Budd. While Billy Budd is less well-known than Moby Dick, it is now well-regarded in its own right and has been adapted into several films and an opera.

Despite its lesser status compared to Melville’s whaling epic, Billy Budd is one reason that Moby Dick received so much attention after Melville’s death. The finding of the novella put Weaver in a position to engage with Billy Budd while writing Melville’s biography. That biography is the reason many readers discovered Melville, gave his writing another chance, and elevated him to the literary status he holds today. Melville died before he was able to see the overwhelming admiration his work would eventually receive. For example, Author Cormac McCarthy, whose novel Blood Meridian is another famous American novel, cited Melville as a great influence, both structurally and thematically. McCarthy’s work employs similar language, themes, and painstaking construction to Melville’s work. Billy Budd is still frequently taught in university literature courses and lends itself particularly well to Freudian, Acarnanian, and queer studies readings.