Billy Budd, Sailor

Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1924

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-12

Chapters 13-20

Chapters 21-25

Chapters 26-30

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Character Analysis

Billy Budd

Billy Budd is the novella’s protagonist. Melville spends more time describing Billy’s innocence—and by extension, his vulnerability—than any other of his traits. Billy is so innocent that he has never encountered evil and can’t conceive of a person acting maliciously. His name connotes a youthful innocence. His surname, Budd, likens him to the bud of a plant or flower. This is described to the extent that it almost seems satirical, particularly for a man who is involved on a warship. The narrator describes the archetype of the Handsome Sailor as “more or less of a mighty boxer or wrestler. It was strength and beauty. Tales of his prowess were recited. Ashore he was the champion; afloat the spokesman; on every suitable occasion always foremost” (8). Billy embodies some of these characteristics, but he is not proficient or sophisticated intellectually: “He possessed that kind and degree of intelligence going along with the unconventional rectitude of a sound human creature, one to whom not yet has been proffered the questionable apple of knowledge” (16). Through these qualities, Melville critiques the military’s control of naïve young men.

Billy is 21 years old, attractive, and good-tempered, and he is the seeming embodiment of positive human traits. This makes him the opposite of the nefarious Claggart. Because Billy has only experienced admiration—at least to his face—he is incapable of conceiving that anyone might do or wish him harm. Cynicism and guile are unknown to him, which makes him a poor, or oblivious, student of humanity. In this way he is juxtaposed with the narrator, who frequently makes philosophical asides.

Once he is on the Bellipotent, Billy’s staggering innocence, which has never caused him harm, becomes the weakness that leads to his death. Billy’s only other weakness is his stutter. The stutter is a physical impediment that makes his self-defense challenging. However, his stuttering doesn’t seem to be merely a physical tic that manifests under stress. Billy also lacks the language to condemn Claggart forcefully and acquit himself, because even the language of evil motives is foreign to him. He doesn’t have the tools to challenge Claggart because he doesn’t understand this type of antagonism.

Twice, with Red Whiskers and Claggart, Billy resorts to impulsive violence in his moment of greatest stress, unable to use his words to defend himself. The influences aboard the Bellipotent conspire against Billy, but he is unable to see the influence working, even as his frustration and unease mount. Billy suffers because he is subject to the darkness on the ship without being aware of its nature.

For all of Billy’s positive traits, Melville presents him as an ambivalent character. His appearance is handsome, and his temperament is worthy of emulation. However, his ignorance of human nature and his childlike innocence evoke pathos.

Captain Edward Vere

Captain Edward Vere, by all accounts, is a good captain with noble instincts and the respect of his men. Vere always likes Billy, which places him in the majority, but Claggart makes him uneasy. His mistrust for Claggart is a sign of Vere’s insight and intuition. As captain, he must hear Claggart’s accusation, but there is no sign that he believes him.

After Billy kills Claggart, Vere is conflicted. Billy defended himself physically, which led to Claggart’s accidental death. However, Vere doesn’t see Billy as having committed a heinous crime. Despite his sympathy, this is his personal opinion. Professionally, he is required to act impassively according to the dictates of duty and the law. Again, Vere represents The Struggle Between Morality and Lawfulness. In Vere’s case, he has to act as a Captain. Otherwise, he potentially opens the Bellipotent up to a possible mutiny if he shows his crew that he is willing to pass light judgment upon a murderer. In light of the Nore Mutiny, his decisiveness is more important than ever.

Vere chooses the requirements of his duty over his conscience. He is analogous to Pontius Pilate in the Bible, although as discussed above, Billy is flawed as a Christ figure. If Vere were to save Billy’s life, he would be elevating his own judgment above the laws that govern society and its individuals. Instead, he goes through with a sacrifice that he doesn’t support emotionally, deferring to his duty to the British Navy. Like Pilate, his decision torments him, even though he hides his internal struggle from most of the crew.

Vere is an unusual character in that he prioritizes reading and learning for their own sake. His love of literature and philosophy emphasize his faith in rationality. He has feelings and opinions but prefers to act objectively rather than from his intuitions. However, Melville suggests that rationality cannot solve every ethical quandary. Ironically, Vere’s commitment to law and reason means that he fails Billy. Vere represents the miniscule border described in the rainbow, “where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins” (64).

Vere’s death is also symbolic, given that he dies of wounds sustained in a battle with the Athée. While fighting with a crew whose vessel proudly states its godless nature, Vere performs bravely. However, his death does not result in redemption for his decision to execute Billy. When he speaks Billy’s name with his final words, he is going into the afterlife with Billy’s death on his conscience, sent there by a warship that boasts of not needing God’s support.

John Claggart

John Claggart is the opposite of Billy in every way. While his past is also mysterious, like Billy, Claggart is devious and he acts with a sophisticated focus on undermining and destroying Billy. He embodies the exact characteristics that Billy lacks, meaning their characters act as foils for the other. Claggart is gleefully duplicitous. He is capable of easy lies and has no qualms about being cheerful to Billy’s face. He is also described as “perhaps the only man in the ship intellectually capable of adequately appreciating the moral phenomenon presented in Billy Budd” (42). Claggart provides a window of insight into Billy’s nature because it is so unlike his own.

Claggart assumes that other people are capable of similar, nefarious behavior. He neurotically examines other people to determine the nature of their evil intentions. Claggart also shows narcissistic tendencies. Billy’s spilling of the soup is an honest accident on a swaying ship, but Claggart assumes that Billy did it on purpose to make him look foolish. Claggart’s response—which eventually leads to Billy’s death by hanging—is inordinate as retaliation.

If Billy is a Christ figure, and Captain Vere is analogous to Pontius Pilate, then Satan is the closest allegory to Claggart. Claggart’s goal is destruction, and he cannot be swayed from his purpose. The narrator compares him to a scorpion, or any other predatory creature who acts according to its nature, not because of a willful defiance of morality: “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” (42).

Claggart skillfully flatters, lies, and works at cross purposes to the other sailors in order to meet his goals. Before striking (and killing) Claggart, Billy had never committed an intentionally bad act. However, Claggart goads him into an impulsive, destructive response that destroys Billy’s innocence and is analogous to Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden after they succumbed to Satan’s wiles. Claggart is responsible for providing Billy with the apple of forbidden knowledge, which results in the loss of his innocence, as well as his death.

The nature of Claggart’s hate for Billy adheres to the allegorical form. Claggart achieves Billy’s fall from grace, as well as his physical death. As punishment for his interference, God cursed and stigmatized Satan. From then on, Satan was God’s archenemy whose most reliable feature was the eternal desire to undermine God’s plan. Claggart’s punishment is his death at Billy’s hands, but Billy’s death also makes Claggart the winner of the conflict. He represents an evil that cannot be bargained with, whose only purpose is mischief and harm for their own sake.