By Herman Melville (1819-1891) A Study Guide | |||
Study Guide Compiled by Michael J. Cummings.© 2010 .......Herman Melville's Billy Budd is a short novel (novella) presenting the tragic story of a young sailor falsely accused of attempting to organize a mutiny aboard a warship. As in Melville's masterpiece, Moby Dick, the action in Billy Budd takes place at sea. Composition, Publication, and Editions .......Herman
Melville completed a rough draft of Billy Budd several months before
his death in 1891. About three decades later, Melville's granddaughter
gave the manuscript to a writer, Raymond Weaver, while he was conducting
research for a biography of Melville. After editing it, he included it
in a collection, Billy Budd and Other Prose Pieces, which was published
in London in 1924 by Constable and Company.
.......The narration begins in the nineteenth century, then flashes back to 1797 to present the story of a sailor named Billy Budd. The action takes place at sea between England and Gibraltar on a British merchant ship called the Rights-of-Man and on a British warship called the Indomitable, a vessel with seventy-four cannons on two decks. .......Raymond Weaver's 1924 edition of Billy Budd refers to Captain Vere's warship as the Indomitable, as Melville did in his manuscript. However, evidence exists that Melville may have intended to change the name to Bellipotent. Melville died before he had an opportunity to do so. Most of the later editions of Billy Budd identify the ship as the Bellipotent. Cummings Study Guides uses Indomitable. Billy Budd: Hard-working,
honest, benevolent, and strikingly handsome twenty-one-year-old seaman
who serves as a foretopman on the starboard side of the British warship
Indomitable.
As his surname suggests, he is a bud—that is, a callow, innocent youth.
The British Royal Navy impressed him into military service when he was
serving on a merchant ship, the Rights-of-Man. Billy is popular
with all the seamen with whom he works except John Claggart, the master-at-arms
on the Indomitable.
.......An unidentified nineteenth-century narrator who is probably in his sixties or seventies tells the story in third-person point of view, basing it on accounts he heard or read about concerning events aboard the two ships on which Billy Budd served. However, he occasionally comments in first-person point of view, using I, me, we, or our. For example, in the first paragraph of Chapter 4, he uses first person to alert the reader to a digression from the main plot: In this matter of writing, resolve as one may to keep to the main road, some by-paths have an enticement not readily to be withstood. I am going to err into such a by-path. If the reader will keep me company I shall be glad. At the least we can promise ourselves that pleasure which is wickedly said to be in sinning, for a literary sin the divergence will be........The narrator does not reveal how he obtained information about Billy Budd and other seamen in the story. It is possible that he was an acquaintance of crewmen serving with Budd. Based on the 1924 Edition, Entitled Billy Budd, Foretopman By Michael J. Cummings.© 2010 .......In
1797, twenty-one-year-old Billy Budd is serving on a homeward-bound English
merchant ship, the Rights-of-Man, when the British navy impresses
him into service aboard an outward-bound warship, the H.M.S Indomitable.
He is a splendid young man—handsome, strong, popular with his fellow crewmen.
Captain Graveling, master of the merchant vessel, complains to the impressing
officer, Lieutenant Ratcliff, that he is taking his best sailor. He also
notes that good-natured Budd had promoted harmony among the rowdy men of
the Rights. Without him, the crewmen will once again take to fighting
among themselves.
Themes Adam and Evil .......Billy
Budd has his flaws, including his stammer and lack of education. Morally,
however, he is almost irreproachable. It is as if he stepped out of Eden—an
Adam who never ate of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.
Injustice .......Billy Budd is an innocent man who is pronounced guilty in a court-martial. John Claggart is a guilty man who is pronounced innocent in a naval chronicle. Deceptive Appearances .......In his childlike naiveté, Billy fails to perceive the danger Claggart poses to him even when the Dansker warns him about it. Because the master-at-arms addresses him cordially, Billy cannot think ill of him. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Lady Macbeth tells her husband, “Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it." To Billy, Claggart looks like the flower, but he is really the serpent under it. Betrayal .......The narrator describes Captain Vere as fair-minded and courageous. But he betrays himself, Billy, and the truth when he persuades the court-martial panel to find Billy guilty in order to forestall any thoughts of mutiny among the crewmen. Rashness .......After Red Whiskers harasses Billy Budd on the Rights-of-Man, "Quick as lightning Billy let fly his arm [against Red Whiskers]," the narrator says. "I dare say he never meant to do quite as much as he did, but anyhow he gave the burly fool a terrible drubbing." Billy reacts in the same way when Claggart accuses him of organizing a mutiny. His rash action costs him his life. Mystery .......Very little is known about the background of Billy Budd and John Claggart. What events in their past motivate them? Why do they act as they do? The narrator does not provide the answers. The air of mystery about them helps to shape them as personifications of good and evil. Impressment .......Impressment
was the practice of seizing men against their will for service in a navy
or an army. This practice becomes an important issue in the novel after
an officer of the
Indomitable impresses Billy Budd when he is serving
aboard the Rights-of-Man, a merchant ship. Although Billy assumes
his new duties in the navy without protest, Claggart later accuses him
of organizing a mutiny among impressed seamen, maintaining that Budd "at
heart . . .resents his impressment." Mutiny was headline news in England
in 1797, the year that the action in the fictional Billy Budd takes
place. In real life, two major mutinies occurred in the spring of that
year, one at the Spithead anchorage near Portsmouth in April and May and
the other at the Nore anchorage at London in May and June.
Foreshadowing .......The encounter on the Rights-of-Man between Billy Budd and Red Whiskers foreshadows the encounter between Billy and John Claggart in Captain Vere's cabin on the Indomitable. Billy's violent retaliation against Red Whiskers helps to make his violent retaliation against Claggart seem consistent with his character and, therefore, believable to the reader. .......When
Claggart encounters Billy Budd, the master-at-arms determines to bring
the youth to ruin. Billy is like a perfectly constructed house of cards.
The temptation to cause its collapse is too great to pass up. And so Claggart
schemes to destroy Billy.
With no power to annul the elemental evil in him, tho' readily enough he could hide 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........If Claggart was born evil but could not “annul" this evil, he had no free will. He was like a predatory animal that follows its instincts. .......To present Billy Budd as a symbol of primal goodness, Melville compares him to an uncorrupted Adam. In Chapter 2, the narration says, "By his original constitution . . . Billy in many respects was little more than a sort of upright barbarian, much such perhaps as Adam presumably might have been ere the urbane Serpent wriggled himself into his company. In Chapter 19, the narration says, Now the Handsome Sailor, as a signal figure among the crew, had naturally enough attracted the Captain's attention from the first. Tho' in general not very demonstrative to his officers, he had congratulated Lieutenant Ratcliff upon his good fortune in lighting on such a fine specimen of the genus homo, who in the nude might have posed for a statue of young Adam before the Fall.Billy Budd and Christ .......To present Billy as an innocent victim of wrongdoing, Melville has his narrator suggest that Billy's life parallels that of Christ in several ways, including the following:
.......The climax occurs when Billy Budd, unable to defend himself verbally because of his stammer, kills Claggart (unintentionally) with a blow to his forehead. .......The denouement, or conclusion, of a story presents events set in motion by the climax. In Billy Budd, these events include the court-martial, sentencing, and hanging of Billy Budd; the account of the hanging in a navy news publication; and the spread of a ballad about Billy. .......Herman Melville himself served aboard several ships, working as a cabin boy, a sailor, and a harpooner. His extensive experience provided him the knowledge to write with authenticity about ships, their officers and crews, and the vocabulary of seagoing men. Following are nautical terms, gleaned from his years sailing the oceans, that he uses in Billy Budd. aft: At or near the
rear of a ship.
Allusions and Direct References Achilles: In Greek
mythology, the greatest warrior on earth. He spearheaded the Greek forces
in the Trojan War. (Chapter 9)
.......Following are examples of figures of speech in Billy Budd. Anaphora He had much prudence, much conscientiousness (Chapter 1, paragraph 7)Alliteration beamed with barbaric good humor (Chapter 1, paragraph 2)Metaphor Such a cynosure, at least in aspect, and something such too in nature, though with important variations made apparent as the story proceeds, was welkin-eyed Billy Budd. . . . (Chapter 1, paragraph 6)Simile the rose-tan of his cheek looked struck as by white leprosy (Chapter 20, paragraph 4)Irony In a legal view the apparent victim of the tragedy was he who had sought to victimize a man blameless (Chapter 22, paragraph 4) . .......Herman Melville, was born in New York City on Aug. 1, 1819, and died there on Sept. 28, 1891. His name was Herman Melvill until 1832, when the family added the final "e" to the name. He was one of eight children, four boys and four girls. Melville taught school briefly in Pittsfield, Mass., studied surveying, served as a cabin boy on a voyage to Liverpool, England, and in 1841 joined the crew of the whaling ship Acushnet for a voyage to the South Seas. He jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands and spent time there with the native people according to unconfirmed accounts. He also reportedly served on an Australian whaler, the Lucy Ann. Later, in Nantucket, Mass., he was hired as a harpooner on the Charles & Henry, then quit the ship in the Hawaiian Islands and signed on as a seaman with a frigate, the United States, and ended his sea career in 1844. His sea background, along with his extensive reading of the great works of literature, provided him the raw material for Moby Dick and other books, as well as short stories. Study Questions and Essay Topics
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