Billy Budd, Sailor

“Billy made no demur. But, indeed, any demur would have been as idle as the protest of a goldfinch popped into a cage.”

This quote foreshadows Billy’s ineffectiveness at defending himself. After a bird is put in a cage, it is too late for it to protest effectively—it can merely make noise. The narrator suggests that Billy goes along with the order to change ships cheerfully because he is subconsciously aware that nothing he could say would change the matter.

“He had much prudence, much conscientiousness, and there were occasions when these virtues were the cause of overmuch disquietude in him.”

Melville describes Captain Graveling and Graveling’s reservations toward Billy. Graveling pays attention to his duty and his men. When he sees that Billy doesn’t complain about transferring to another crew, it makes Graveling uneasy, as if he knows that Billy’s cheerful acquiescence will cause trouble for him on a less peaceful ship. Prudence and conscientiousness are the two qualities that make Graveling’s life more difficult. They have elevated him to his command, but also require him to observe methodically anyone who is subordinate to him.

“His duty he always faithfully did; but duty is sometimes a dry obligation, and he was for irrigating its aridity whensoever possible with a fertilizing decoction of strong waters.”

Duty is a motif in the story. Captain Vere in particular is charged with ensuring that his crewmen fulfill their duty, as well as suffering the consequences, should they lapse. In the novella, duty robs life of some of its exhilaration. This early characterization of Captain Vere’s relationship with duty foreshadows the agony of his choice at Billy’s trial. The concept of duty is scrutinized heavily during Billy’s trial, in which the reader must ask if it is ever wrong to fulfill one’s sworn duty.

“Well, blessed are the peacemakers, especially the fighting peacemakers.”

The officer who relinquishes Billy to Captain Vere’s command refers to Billy as the peacemaker of his ship. This ironically foreshadows the turmoil that Billy’s arrival will cause on the Bellipotent. He is better suited to create harmony on the Rights-of-Man than on a more aggressively warlike vessel. The comment also foreshadows the fact that Billy, despite his sweet temperament, has begun a progression that leads toward physical fighting.

“Nevertheless, to anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson's Victory, seems to float there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but also as a poetic reproach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads.”

The narrator discusses the innovations that have led to a change in naval warfare. The old ships seem to be archaic corpses, despite having once been cutting edge technologies. Now they are monuments and relics. Their aesthetically pleasing (and poetic) appearances are at odds with the modern warships. In this way, the contrast between their appearances and their functionality are analogous to Billy himself.

“Years, and those experiences which befall certain shrewder men subordinated lifelong to the will of superiors, all this had developed in the Dansker the pithy guarded cynicism that was his leading characteristic.”

The Dansker’s understanding of human nature is a product of his experiences. However, Melville states that this is also a characteristic due to his lifelong status as a subordinate. Ostensibly, he has seen various failures of leadership and knows that authority doesn’t guarantee rationality. The Dansker is cynical because of what he has seen and learned about humanity. Because he understands how terribly people can treat one another, and how quickly conflicts can erupt, he prefers a reserved, guarded nature that keeps attention away from him.

“But for anything deeper, I am not certain whether to know the world and to know human nature be not two distinct branches of knowledge, which while they may coexist in the same heart, yet either may exist with little or nothing of the other.”

The narrator recounts a conversation with a scholar as they spoke about the nature of epistemology. The scholar is uncertain about the relationship between knowledge of the world and knowledge of human nature. Evidence supports his belief that although both may be present in one being, it’s also possible that they have no influence over each other. Disharmony is common when objective knowledge clashes with irrational human fallibility.

“But the thing which in eminent instances signalizes so exceptional a nature is this: Though the man's even temper and discreet bearing would seem to intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the less in heart he would seem to riot in complete exemption from that law, having apparently little to do with reason further than to employ it as an ambidexter implement for effecting the irrational.”

Melville characterizes some of the contradictions that exist in Claggart. He is able to project the appearance of someone who adheres to the law, and whose mind appears to be governed by reason. However, his internal environment is at exact odds with his public self. Claggart uses reason itself—and the insight into humanity that it gives him—as a tool to produce chaotic, irrational results on the ship.

“Well, though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes of mitigated penalty pleaded guilty to horrible actions, did ever anybody seriously confess to envy?”

Melville describes the nature of Claggart’s evil, which, in part, arises from his natural envy for Billy. He suggests that envy is more shameful than an “horrible action” another human commits. Because he uses a rhetorical question, he does not say this outright but suggests agreement. This passage therefore aims to prompt self-reflection.

“With no power to annul the elemental evil in him, though readily enough he could hide it; apprehending the good, but powerless to be it; a nature like Claggart's, surcharged with energy as such natures almost invariably are, what recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and, like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act out to the end the part allotted it.”

Melville’s writing often focused on themes of free will and predestination. In this description of Claggart, he depicts a man who, while his actions are evil, acts only according to his nature, which is God’s design. Claggart has no more ability to act decently than the scorpion has to ignore its stinger, which allows it to immobilize its prey. Claggart is not simply bad; Melville describes him as “powerless” in terms of becoming good.

“For though consciences are as unlike as foreheads, every intelligence, not including the Scriptural devils who ‘believe and tremble’ has one.”

Claggart and Billy are foils in that neither has an obvious conscience, yet the former is because of evil, and the latter is because of innocence. Billy never weighs his decisions against an ethical framework. This protects him from the dangers of making selfish, even evil choices, but it also robs him of the ability to choose well or to demonstrate moral growth through his choices. This quotation therefore highlights their characterization as such.

“An uncommon prudence is habitual with the subtler depravity, for it has everything to hide.”

This passage suggests that evil, dishonest people are often more vigilant than good people in their determination to project goodness. If someone like Claggart is truly evil, he must go to greater lengths to convince people he is good, rather than risk discovery. This is why he suspects Billy of falseness. Like Satan, Claggart is driven by the assumption that everyone is secretly working to exploit and use those around him.

“A child’s utter innocence is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less wanes as intelligence waxes.”

All descriptions of Billy tend toward his innocence, primitive naivete, and by implication, his relative lack of intelligence. Billy’s lack of insight into the darker facets of humanity is satirical when contextualized by the war, since it allows Melville to expose the military subversively through Billy’s fresh eyes.

“Had the foretopman been conscious of having done or said anything to provoke the ill will of the official, it would have been different with him, and his sight might have been purged if not sharpened. As it was, innocence was his blinder.”

After Billy spills the soup, he is unaware that Claggart gives the accident nefarious motives. However, Billy has no idea that Claggart has any ill will toward him. Claggart is publicly affable and cheerful with Billy, so Billy never suspects that he could be plotting against him for the accident. In this case, Billy’s innocence allows Claggart to conspire in plain sight against him, because Billy is incapable of suspecting him of guile.

“Struck dead by the angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!”

Vere calls Claggart’s death a divine judgement from an angel. Ironically, he will soon be forced to carry out Billy’s execution. Vere acknowledges Billy’s nature, which borders on divine, while simultaneously illustrating that even an angel is subject to the rule of law on a naval vessel.

“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.”

Billy’s case is decided on a splitting of hairs that raises the question of subjectivity versus objectivity. The difference between mental stability and instability—or life and death—is minute. The rule of law is meant to make the distinction easier and more rational but does not spare people like Vere the pain of difficult decisions, highlighting The Struggle Between Morality and Lawfulness.

“Could I have used my tongue I would not have struck him. But he foully lied to my face and in presence of my captain, and I had to say something, and I could only say it with a blow, God help me!”

Billy tries to explain his reasons for hitting Claggart. He had wanted to speak but had not been capable of defending himself without stuttering. Without the ability to communicate with language, Billy expresses his anger with violence. This suggests that the rule and order of the military, which prevents subordinates from using their “tongue,” leads to harm.

“Quite aside from any conceivable motive actuating the master-at-arms, and irrespective of the provocation to the blow, a martial court must needs in the present case confine its attention to the blow's consequence, which consequence justly is to be deemed not otherwise than as the striker's deed.”

Captain Vere reiterates that the jury must pay attention to the consequences of Billy’s action, not his history or his affable nature. He also instructs them to ignore Claggart’s role, because responding to words with a killing blow—though unintentional—is Billy’s mistake. Claggart did not commit an act that the law would deem worthy of death, so they cannot take his motives into account, given that Billy killed him.

“Says a writer whom few know, ‘Forty years after a battle it is easy for a noncombatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to have to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.’”

Melville presents one of the problems with discussing history decades after the events. People who analyze the chaos of war from an academic standpoint, after the fact, will often speak with more certainty about logistics and strategy than the people in the actual conflict could at the time. However, like the attempt to analyze the meaning of Billy’s story after the fact, the clearest explanations—and the most distorted accounts—are often ventured by people who weren’t there as witnesses.

“The face he beheld, for the moment one expressive of the agony of the strong, was to that officer, though a man of fifty, a startling revelation. That the condemned one suffered less than he who mainly had effected the condemnation was apparently indicated by the former's exclamation in the scene soon perforce to be touched upon.”

One of Captain Vere’s senior lieutenants observes him leaving Billy’s holding room, after informing Billy of the verdict. He sees that Captain Vere is suffering more from the result than Billy is, even though Vere did his duty, and Billy has been sentenced to death. The phrase “agony of the strong” is an ironic presentation of Vere chooses law over morality.

“Stooping over, he kissed on the fair cheek his fellow man, a felon in martial law, one whom though on the confines of death he felt he could never convert to a dogma; nor for all that did he fear for his future.”

The chaplain is not worried about the state of Billy’s soul, even before his death. He can see that Billy exists in a state of serenity that would almost be enviable if he were not awaiting his execution. The chaplain, ostensibly a spiritual expert, can neither offer comfort to Billy, nor understand why Billy is so peaceful.

“The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction cannot so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact.”

Melville explains one of the pleasures and difficulties of writing fiction. What he calls pure fiction allows the author to make narrative and structural decisions that grant the reader a satisfying, symmetrical experience of a tidy story.

“Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges; hence the conclusion of such a narration is apt to be less finished than an architectural finial.”

The story of Billy Budd remains inscrutable and lacks a neat conclusion because, as Melville states, it is a story of uncompromising truth. The truth is messier than a work of pure fiction would be.